Bookable services

A service is the thing a client books: a 45-minute consultation, a haircut, a Tuesday evening class. It is the single row that decides how long a booking runs, what it costs, whether the client pays, and which start times your booking page offers at all. Everything in Appointments — the calendar, the reminders, the public page — reads its settings from a service. If you have used DMLY’s older Meetings screen, a “meeting type” and a service are the same record under two names. See Meetings.

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Three kinds of service

A service is one of three types, and the type decides how it behaves:

• Appointment — a one-to-one booking against a staff member’s available time. This is the default and the most common.
• Class — a fixed session with a seat pool that several clients book into. Classes work differently enough to have their own page: see Classes.
• Add-on — an extra you attach to an order. Add-ons are never bookable. They never appear on your booking page and no one can book a time against them.

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What a service sets

Only two settings change what a booking is:

• Duration (min) — how long the booking runs. This is the block of time taken out of a staff member’s day.
• Slot interval (min) — how far apart the offered start times sit. A 60-minute service on a 30-minute interval offers 9:00, 9:30, 10:00 and so on, so a gap left by an earlier booking can still be filled.

The rest shape when a client is allowed to book. On the service form (Offerings → Services) these sit together under one row:

• Buffer before and Buffer after — padding either side of the booking, so back-to-back bookings leave you room to clean up, write notes, or travel.
• Min notice (min) — the least amount of notice before a booking can start. Stops someone booking the 9:00 slot at 8:55.
• Days ahead — how far in advance clients can book.

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The workspace has its own notice and horizon

Notice and horizon exist at two levels. Alongside the service fields above, your workspace sets Minimum notice (hours) — Least amount of notice required before a booking can start. — and Booking horizon (days) — How far in advance clients can book. Leave blank for no limit. — under Booking policy at Appointments → Settings. Note the different units: the workspace fields are in hours and days, the service fields in minutes and days. Cancellation deadline (hours) and Reschedule deadline (hours) live in that same Booking policy section, and only there — they are set once for the whole workspace and cannot be varied per service. They govern what the client can do themselves on the booking’s own management page. They do not restrict you: you can always cancel or move a booking from the calendar. Each service can also carry its own location. Choosing the Zoom (auto link) location makes DMLY create a Zoom meeting and join link for every booking automatically — see Zoom.

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Price and payment mode

A service’s Payment mode decides whether money changes hands, and when: Pay before booking is the strict one, and it is worth understanding before you switch it on. The booking is created as a 15-minute hold. During that hold nothing else fires — no confirmation message, no reminders, no calendar event, no automation trigger. All of it waits for the payment. If the client pays, the booking confirms and everything catches up. If they never pay, the hold expires after 15 minutes and the slot goes back on sale. If the payment fails, the slot is released too. Pay after the appointment confirms first and asks second. Sending the payment link is best-effort: if your gateway is missing or errors, the booking stays confirmed regardless. You get the booking; you chase the money yourself. Payment behaviour is covered in full on Appointment payments.

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Booking with credits

A service can carry a Credit cost — Number of credits this service consumes when a client books with a plan. When the service has a credit cost and the client has the balance, booking draws down one lot of credits, once per booking. See Plans and credits.

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How services drive availability

You do not set opening hours on a service. Hours belong to staff. A service decides which staff can deliver it, and the offered slots are then built from those people’s working hours. To produce the times a client sees, DMLY starts from the assigned staff member’s Working hours — read in that staff member’s own timezone, so a remote colleague’s 9-to-5 is their 9-to-5 — and then removes: Whatever survives is offered. If the service is set so clients do not pick a person — Hide staff selection, Clients won’t choose a staff member; one is assigned automatically — the page offers the union of every eligible staff member’s free slots, and DMLY assigns someone when the booking is made. A slot appears if anyone who can deliver that service is free.

A service with no staff assigned at all

A service can carry its own weekly availability, and DMLY falls back to it when the assigned staff member has no hours of their own. This is how the older Meetings screen worked before staff existed. It still functions, but it is the fallback, not the design — set hours on your staff and let the service stay a service.

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Getting a service onto your booking page

A service appears in your public booking catalogue only when it is active, set to be publicly visible, and is an appointment or a class. Add-ons never appear. If your booking page shows nothing at all, it is because no service passes all three tests.