Why isn't all my availability showing online? (It's usually this one setting.)

If your clients can't see all of your available appointments online, don't worry it's usually an easy fix. In many cases, the Minimise Gaps setting is working exactly as intended, but may need a quick adjustment to match the way you want to take bookings. Here's what it does and how to check your settings.

One of the most common questions our Customer Success team receives is:

"Why can't my clients see all of my available appointments online?"

If you've checked your roster and know you're available, it can be confusing when certain appointment times don't appear on your online booking page.

The good news? It's often not a problem at all.

In many cases, your Minimise Gaps settings are doing exactly what they're were designed to do.

What is Minimise Gaps?

Minimise Gaps is designed to help you make the most of your day by reducing awkward gaps between appointments and encouraging bookings that create a fuller, more efficient schedule. Rather than displaying every possible appointment time, it intelligently limits the options your clients see based on the rules you choose.

Many businesses use this feature to:

• Keep their day running efficiently.
• Reduce hard-to-fill gaps between appointments.
• Create a busier-looking schedule.
• Maximise the number of appointments they can fit into a day.

How does it work?

Once enabled, you can decide exactly which appointment times are offered online.

For example, you can choose to:

• Show the first available appointment of the day.
• Show the last available appointment of the day.
• Show appointments immediately before or after existing bookings or breaks.
• When there is a gap, set the minimum gap time between appointment.
• Show all availability on completely empty days.

These options give you complete control over how your online availability is presented.

Why can't my clients see every available time?

Because Minimise Gaps is designed to hide some available times.

For example, imagine your day looks like this:

• 9:00am – Existing booking
• 10:00am – Free
• 11:00am – Free
• 12:00pm – Existing booking

With Minimise Gaps enabled, you may choose to only offer the appointment that sits directly after the first booking, helping keep your diary grouped together rather than creating isolated gaps.

This leads to a more efficient schedule and can make it easier to fit additional appointments into your day.

How to adjust your Minimise Gaps settings

To update your business-wide settings:

Minisite → Minimise Gaps

From there, simply enable the feature and choose the options that best suit how you want your calendar to fill.

Different employees? Different rules.

Not every team member needs the same booking behaviour.

You can override your business-wide Minimise Gaps settings for individual employees, allowing each person to have their own online booking preferences. This is particularly useful if some staff are fully booked while others are still building their client base.

To save Minimise Gaps settings for a particular employee:

Manage → Employees → Edit → Minimise gaps

Still not seeing the availability you expect?

While Minimise Gaps is the most common reason, there are a few other things worth checking:

• Your employee is rostered on.
• The employee is enabled for online bookings.
• The employee is enabled for the service, and online bookings for it.
• The service is available for online booking.
• Any required resources (such as rooms or equipment) are available.
• Your Booking Threshold or Booking Future Limit isn't restricting availability.

Final thoughts

Minimise Gaps is one of Ovatu's smartest scheduling features. While it can sometimes make it seem like appointments are "missing", it's actually helping you build a more profitable and efficient calendar. If your clients can't see every available appointment online, don't assume something is broken. Take a quick look at your Minimise Gaps settings first, you'll often find everything is working exactly as intended.