Booking rules that protect your day

Rule 1: Decide what customers can book themselves

Only services with a predictable length and scope should be instant-bookable. Sort every service you offer into one of three groups:

• Instant booking: fixed-length, low-risk appointments. Examples: a 45-minute physio follow-up, a one-hour estimate visit, a drop-off slot at a repair shop, a trial class at a studio.
• Request, then confirm: services that need a quick check before committing. Examples: a renovation consultation, an emergency-style call, a job outside your usual area.
• Phone or message only: anything where the scope is unclear until you talk. Examples: commercial work, multi-day jobs, unusual requests.

Most businesses put too much in the first group at launch. Start narrow and widen it once you trust the rules.

Rule 2: Set durations from real jobs, not hopes

Time ten recent appointments of each type and use the honest average plus a margin. If your "one-hour estimate" has really been taking 75 minutes, the calendar should say 75. Underestimated durations push every later appointment back and turn a good day into a run of apologies.

For clinics and studios, include the turnover between clients: notes, cleaning, setting up the room. For home-service trades, include the time to park, carry tools and talk with the customer at the end.

Rule 3: Build travel buffers around Burnaby's geography

A flat 15-minute gap between home visits doesn't work across a city this size. Burnaby is split by Burnaby Lake, Deer Lake Park and Burnaby Mountain, and the City's community plans organise it around four Town Centres: Metrotown, Brentwood, Edmonds and Lougheed. Crossing between them at the wrong hour takes far longer than a map suggests.

A practical approach is to divide your service area into zones and set buffers between zones rather than between every pair of addresses:

Treat those as starting points only. Spend two or three weeks recording actual travel times, then adjust. If your scheduling tool can't handle zones, consider limiting each crew to one or two zones per day instead.

Zones also help with the names customers use. People say "North Burnaby", "the Heights" or "near Highgate" more often than an official area name, so map those everyday names to your zones in the booking questions.

Rule 4: Ask the access questions before confirming

In Burnaby's towers and townhouse complexes, access problems waste more time than traffic. Around the Town Centres, many customers live in strata buildings, where a visit can depend on elevator reservations, loading bays, visitor parking and concierge rules.

Add three to five screening questions for home visits:

1. What type of home is it: detached house, townhouse, low-rise or high-rise apartment?
2. Is there visitor or loading parking, and does it need to be booked?
3. Does the building require an elevator or move-in booking for tools or materials?
4. Will someone be home, or will a concierge or property manager provide access?
5. Is strata or landlord approval needed for this work?

Five questions is the upper limit. Every extra question loses some customers, so keep only the ones that change what your crew does.

Rule 5: Use deposits only where the numbers support them

Work out what no-shows cost before deciding. Here is the arithmetic.

Suppose a studio near Brentwood runs 120 appointments a month at $90 each, and 8% of clients don't show or cancel too late to refill the slot. That is about 10 missed slots a month, or roughly $900 in lost revenue, close to $10,800 a year.

Now compare options:

• Reminders only: a text the day before and a short one two hours before. If that recovers even a third of the missed slots, about 3 a month, that is $270 back each month for very little cost.
• Reminders plus a deposit: a $20 deposit, credited to the appointment, with clear terms shown before booking. This tends to discourage casual bookings, but can also deter some genuine new clients.

For a home-service trade quoting larger jobs, the maths often goes the other way: the first estimate visit is a sales opportunity, and a deposit could cost you more in lost enquiries than it saves. Run your own numbers, and if you add a deposit, state the cancellation terms plainly at the moment of booking.

Rule 6: Protect space for urgent work and regulars

Never open every slot to self-serve booking. Keep some time free each day or week for:

• urgent jobs and same-day requests
• long-standing customers who always phone
• follow-up visits that come out of earlier jobs
• admin, ordering and travel you can't predict

A common pattern is to open 60 to 70% of capacity for self-booking and hold the rest for staff to fill. Adjust once you see how bookings arrive.

Rule 7: Write confirmations that answer the obvious questions

A good confirmation prevents half the phone calls a booking would otherwise create. Include the date, time window, address, what the customer should prepare, how to reschedule and your cancellation terms. A template, with placeholders:

Hi [Customer first name], you're booked with [Business name] on [Day, date] between [Time window] at [Address]. Please make sure [Access instruction, e.g. visitor parking or elevator booking] is arranged. To reschedule, reply to this message or call [Business phone]. [Cancellation terms in one sentence.]

If many of your customers prefer another language, a second version of the confirmation, written or checked by a fluent speaker you trust, is a thoughtful touch in a city as multilingual as Burnaby.

A sample rule set for a small home-service trade

Adapt this starting point rather than inventing rules from scratch.

• Instant booking: estimate visits only, 75 minutes, weekdays 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• Request-and-confirm: repairs and anything outside Burnaby and New Westminster.
• Zones: four, with buffers as in the table above.
• Self-booking capacity: 65% of each crew's day.
• Screening questions: home type, parking, elevator booking, who provides access.
• Deposits: none for estimates.
• Reminders: the day before at 5 p.m. and two hours before.
• Review after four weeks: durations, buffers and no-show rate.

Common mistakes

1. Launching publicly on day one. Test with staff and regular customers first.
2. Copying another business's rules. Your durations and travel patterns are your own.
3. Separate calendars for phone and self-serve bookings. That guarantees double bookings.
4. Hidden cancellation terms. They cause disputes and bad reviews.
5. No review date. Rules that made sense at launch drift out of date within months.

Next steps

Booking rules sit on top of clean customer records and lead naturally into reminders. If your records are scattered, read choosing a CRM first. For reminders and follow-ups, continue with automated follow-ups. If you'd like help, our customer booking service sets all of this up with you, and the Burnaby areas page explains how different parts of the city affect the rules. Call, text or email to talk it through.