Advanced Availability Rules
Last reviewed: 2026-05-22
On this page
Advanced Availability Rules are available on the Ultimate plan. You can upgrade from Settings > Pricing in the app.
Most service businesses don't have uniform demand. A wine tasting room is quiet midweek and packed on Saturday afternoons. A fitness studio runs lean through summer and gets slammed in January. A tour operator hosts twice as many groups in peak season as in shoulder months. Setting a single fixed capacity and a single fixed roster for every date forces a bad trade-off — cap too low and you turn people away on your busiest days, cap too high and you end up with half-empty sessions or staff stretched thin.
Advanced Availability Rules solve this by letting you change how your event behaves on specific dates without touching your defaults. You keep your regular setup for the 90% of dates that are predictable, and add a rule only where reality diverges.
For a given date range, a rule lets you:
- Change the capacity on specific dates — raise or lower how many attendees each availability can take per timeslot.
- Change the availabilities on specific dates — pick a different set of staff, rooms, or resources to use during that range (for example, only your summer instructors over July and August).
Combined, you can fully tailor a single event to seasonal demand, staffing realities, special events, and one-off changes — without creating duplicate events or constantly editing your defaults.
When to use a rule
| Scenario | How a rule helps |
|---|---|
| Peak season demand | Raise capacity per availability from 1 to 2 across June–August |
| Seasonal staff | Use only your summer instructors during a date range |
| Temporary reduction | Drop one availability while an instructor is on leave, leaving the others active |
| One-off special event | Custom capacity and a custom availability mix for a single holiday week |
| Phased reopening | Start with a smaller availability set this month, expand next month |
Enabling the feature
Advanced Availability Rules are off by default. Turn them on once at the store level before they appear on individual events.
- In the app, go to Settings > General.
- Find the Advanced Availability Rules section.
- Click Enable.
Once enabled, every event's Number of Attendees card gains a Date-based rules section where you can add and manage rules.
Adding a rule
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Go to Dashboard > Show all events and click Edit on the event.
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Scroll to the Number of Attendees card. The default value above is the capacity per availability per timeslot when no rule is in effect.
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In the Date-based rules section, click + Add rule.
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In the New capacity rule modal, fill in:
- Rule name — a short label only you see (e.g. "Summer season", "Holiday closure").
- Date range — the start and end dates the rule applies to.
- Capacity per availability — how many attendees each selected availability can take per timeslot during the range. The helper text shows what default this overrides.
- Availabilities for this rule — check the availabilities (staff, rooms, resources) that should be active for these dates. By default the rule uses all of your event's availabilities; uncheck any you want to exclude, or click + Assign another availability to add one that isn't normally on this event. Click Reset to default to restore the original selection.
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Confirm the calculated total at the bottom of the modal — for example, "On Jun 1, 2026 – Aug 31, 2026: 8 capacity × 3 availabilities = 24 attendees per timeslot."
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Leave Rule enabled on (or toggle it off if you want to save the rule for later).
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Click Add rule.
Total capacity for a timeslot is always capacity per availability × number of selected availabilities. If you want a slot to hold up to 30 people and you have 3 availabilities active, set the capacity to 10. The same number can be reached different ways — pick whichever matches how you actually staff the date.
Managing your rules
Each row shows a status pill (Active now, Upcoming, Past, or Disabled), the selected availabilities, the date math, and the per-availability capacity. Use the toggle to disable a rule without deleting it, the pencil to edit, and the trash to remove. Changes save immediately.
Avoid overlapping date ranges
Keep each rule's date range distinct. Overlapping rules make it harder to predict what capacity applies on a given date, and the rules list becomes harder to read when ranges run together. If you need a different capacity for part of an existing range, edit the existing rule and add a second one for the remaining dates rather than layering them.
If your dates overlap an existing rule, the modal shows a yellow warning. Treat that as a prompt to split the range or shorten one of the rules before saving — not as something to dismiss.
If overlapping rules do end up saved, the rule listed first applies on the overlapping dates. For example, with "Holiday closure" (Dec 22–28) above "December special" (Dec 1–31), Dec 24 falls under "Holiday closure" because it's first in the list. This fallback exists so the app always has a definite answer, but it's not a pattern to design around.
Lowering capacity or removing availabilities does not cancel existing bookings. The rule only prevents new bookings from pushing the count higher. Review the Bookings tab before tightening a rule that covers upcoming dates.
A rule's per-availability capacity can't go below your event's Minimum number of attendees per time slot per booking — the modal blocks Add rule until you raise the capacity or lower the minimum on the event's Advanced tab.
Frequently asked questions
Do rules apply to all services or just one event? Rules are per event. If you want the same change across several events, add a rule to each one.
What time zone do the dates use? Your event's time zone. A rule ending Aug 31 includes all slots on Aug 31 in your local time and excludes anything on Sep 1.
Can I set a different capacity for individual timeslots within the range? Not in v1 — each rule applies a single per-availability capacity to every slot inside its date range.
Can I close days entirely with a rule? Uncheck every availability in the rule. For a hard block regardless of availability setup, use a date override — see Blocking off time and days.
Next steps
- Group bookings & guest management — configure default capacity and minimum attendees
- Setting your availability — set up the availabilities that rules can include or exclude
- Waitlist — let customers join a waitlist when a slot is full
- Blocking off time and days — close specific dates entirely instead of running a rule