Book Appointment
What this screen is for
The step-by-step wizard where a customer requests an appointment at a business: one question per screen — the service, a staff member where there is one to choose, the day, the time, a repeat cadence where the service offers one, then the note and phone, and a summary at the end. Which steps get drawn is decided by the business's settings and the service chosen; there are never fewer than five or more than seven. What the last step sends is a request: the appointment isn't approved at that moment, that depends on the business's decision.
When you would use this
The customer has already seen the service they want at a business and has decided to pin it to a particular day and a particular time; they know what they are getting, and they decide when here.
Who sees it
Any signed-in customer; a business owner can't book their own business, the server refuses that separately.
Where it lives
The screen exists only in the mobile app; the panel has no way to create a booking on a customer's behalf.
What you can do here
Move through one step at a time
One question is on screen at a time. A line naming which step it is and what that step asks ("Step 2 / 6 · Staff member") accompanies it, along with one progress bar per step; the bars only report, they are not tappable. Above the current step, every answer given so far sits as a one-line trail, and each line's edit control goes straight back to the step that produced that answer. The back control moves one step back, and leaves the screen when it is pressed on the first step.
Pick a service
If the business allows only one service, tapping a row both selects it and moves on, and the step carries no other button. If it allows several — which is what applies when the setting was never written — the rows stay tickable and the selection is finished with "Continue"; there is no moving on with nothing selected. Each row prints the service's duration and its price, and where there is no fixed price it prints "At the salon" instead.
Arrive with a service already selected
Coming from a service row on the business profile, that service arrives ticked on the first step. The step is not skipped: the customer sees the selection, can change it, or — where the business allows several services — add another beside it. A service deactivated or deleted in the meantime is dropped from the selection and never reaches the request.
Prefer a staff member
With staff mode on and at least one active person able to perform every staffed service in the selection, the staff choice becomes its own step. "No preference" always heads the list — it is what the server assumes when nobody is named — and tapping a row selects and moves on. Adding a staffed service that person does not perform makes them ineligible, and the preference falls back to "no preference".
Pick a day
Fourteen days from today are shown as a list broken up by week headings; each row prints the day's name and date, plus "Closed" on the days the business is not open. A closed day cannot be tapped; tapping an open one selects it and moves on to the time step.
Pick a time
The times generated from the selected services' total duration, the business's working hours, its blocked intervals and its slot interval are shown in a three-column grid. The ones that are full are drawn differently and cannot be tapped — they are not hidden, because how busy the day is happens to be part of what the customer reads out of the grid. Availability is asked separately for the combination of service, person and day; a line says so while that query is running.
Request a recurring appointment
When every selected service supports the same cadence, the repeat becomes its own step: "No repeat", weekly or monthly. Tapping "No repeat" moves straight on; choosing a cadence does not move on — it opens a list asking how many occurrences to request and a preview of the dates the series would land on. A cadence even one selected service does not support is not listed, and if none is left the step is not drawn at all.
Note and phone
The note is always optional and is visible to the business. The phone field is drawn only when the business's setting asks for a number, and in that case there is no moving on until it is filled. For a customer with a number on their profile the field arrives filled with it, but it is not hidden: the number stays editable for this appointment.
Review the summary and confirm
The last step repeats every answer in a single card — service, staff member where there is one, date, time, repeat cadence where there is one, and the note if one was written — and each row's edit control goes back to the step that produced it. The amount sits at the foot of the card: the total of the fixed-price services grouped by currency, or the total duration instead when none of them is priced. The amount has no edit control, because it is derived from the services chosen. Confirming sends the request, and a successful send moves to the booking-sent screen.
What the server accepts and refuses
The number of steps depends on the business, and can grow as the selection is made
With staff mode off the staff step is neither drawn nor counted; the same holds for the repeat step when the selected service offers no cadence. That leaves never fewer than five steps and never more than seven. Because who performs which service and which service can repeat both depend on the selection, those two steps can only appear once a service is chosen: the counter can say five on the first screen and rise to six or seven after the selection, rather than promising up front a step that may never exist.
Going back to a step clears what the later steps decided
Going back to the service drops the chosen person and the time, going back to the person drops the time, and going back to the day drops the time as well. A time was something known to be free for one particular service, one particular person and one particular day; carrying it while one of those is being changed would show as free a slot that may no longer be.
A business can't book itself
The server refuses a booking request made with the account that owns the business being booked; the business keeps appearing in discovery, only the booking request itself is blocked.
A booking cooldown can limit how often one business is booked
If a business has turned its booking-frequency limit on, a customer with a pending or approved appointment there can't send another request until the set number of days (one day by default when on, off unless a business sets it) has passed; the request is refused, and the customer sees a generic message telling them to try again later; the server computes exactly when they may retry, but that instant never reaches the screen. The limit is per business — it never affects booking at another one.
The slots shown are an estimate; the real answer arrives with the send
The taken/open marks on screen come from a separate capacity check made just before sending; the moment the request is actually sent, the server recomputes capacity once more inside its own transaction, so a slot that looked open can still turn out full and the request refused. After such a refusal the chosen time is let go and availability is asked again, because the answer standing on screen has gone stale.
A recurring request is limited to 2 through 12 occurrences
The most occurrences that can be requested at once is 12, the fewest 2; an unavailable date doesn't stop the whole series, it just skips that one occurrence and sends the rest to the business.
Writing the entered number to the profile needs consent only when the profile already has one
For a customer with no number on their profile at all, the number they enter is written to the profile without anything being asked. When the profile does have a number and the entered one differs from it, a consent checkbox appears; leaving it unticked uses the number for this appointment alone. The write is attempted in the background either way, and even if it fails the appointment request has already gone through and is never undone by it.