Appointments vs. Availabilities
timum is about bookable times and booked or scheduled times. In general, these are often grouped under the umbrella term "appointment". To reflect different use cases and needs, a distinction is made between appointments and availabilities.
An availability is a period during which you are open for appointment bookings, but your calendar is only blocked once a customer selects a time within the availability and requests or books an appointment. Through availabilities, you can offer several appointment types for customers to choose from. The appointment created by a booking is transferred directly to linked calendars and CRM systems.
A bookable appointment is a fixed appointment with one or more free, bookable participant slots. These are fixed, planned appointments that block your calendar directly. You also set the appointment type directly for bookable appointments. Contacts therefore cannot and do not need to make a choice — they book themselves into these predefined appointments as participants.
Personal appointments are, on the one hand, individual appointments that you enter (book in) for a specific contact. These appointments are not accessible through the usual booking views. However, personal appointments can also be closed events that admit several participants; these participants are invited via a special link, which is the only way to book these otherwise hidden appointments.
The difference
| Availability | Bookable appointment | Booked appointment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is it? | Time range in which customers choose the start time themselves | Fixed appointment with a start time and duration that you specify | Appointment with at least one participant |
| Who creates it? | You (individually or via a consultation-hours rule) | You (individually or as a series) | Created through a booking or request – or you enter it as a personal appointment |
| Multiple participants? | One booking per selected time; several with "Group appointments" | Yes, via "Participants per appointment" (group appointment) | Up to the configured number of participants |
| Typical use | Viewings at a time chosen by the customer, consultations | Open house, group viewing, seminar | – |
| Calendar synchronization | No, only booked appointments appear in calendars. | Yes, even appointments that are still open are synchronized directly to calendars. | Yes, booked appointments are synchronized to linked calendars. |
How are they related?
- You create availabilities (time ranges) or set up bookable appointments (fixed times)
- Customers book from these
- A booking becomes a booked appointment with the customer as a participant
- The availability or bookable appointment is reduced according to the number of participants, or disappears from the offering
Important to know
- Appointments can also be created without a prior availability: you enter them as a personal appointment
- Availabilities without bookings do not disappear automatically
- If a cancellation occurs, the spot becomes free again, provided the availability or bookable appointment still exists