Porter gives you full control over how clients can book appointments with you. By customizing your booking settings, you can prevent last-minute appointments, limit reschedules, and optimize your schedule for the way you work best.
🔧 Booking Settings Overview
Book Ahead Limit
Set how far into the future clients can book
Example: If you only want to allow bookings up to 6 months out, set this to 180 days
Book in Advance
Set how much advance notice you need before a client can book
Prevents clients from scheduling something that starts in 30 minutes
Ideal for giving yourself time to prepare for each appointment
Max Appointments per Day
Set an optional daily appointment cap
Clients won’t be able to book more than this number in one day
You can always override this limit manually if needed
Client Reschedules
Choose whether to enable or disable client reschedules. When disabled, clients will not be able to reschedule their appointments through Porter and will need to reach out to you to reschedule.
Choose how many free reschedules the client gets
Choose how many days in advance the client must reschedule their appointment
Reschedule Policy: When either of the above two limits are exceeded (I.e., the client is rescheduling for a second time and you only allow one free reschedule, or they're rescheduling 1 day before the appointment and you have a 2 day notice) - you can choose to either:
Charge a new deposit (will charge them the same amount as their original deposit to reschedule the appointment)
Charge a flat reschedule fee
Allow a free reschedule anyways
Block rescheduling (I.e., they can not reschedule more than your policy limits allow)
Minimum Appointment Price
Set an optional minimum price for bookings
Helps ensure your time is being booked for meaningful work
🧠 Smart Scheduling Tools
Stack Days
Encourage clients to book on days where you already have appointments
Great for artists with flexible schedules — helps you consolidate bookings into fewer days so you can take other days completely off
Stack Times
Avoid getting small appointments placed awkwardly in the middle of your day
Clients will only see:
The first available time
Or the last available time
Optional setting to force longer appointments (over half your available time) to be booked at the start of your day
💬 Messaging & Policies
Standard Reply Message
A template reply sent when you accept a booking request
You can customize this message per request, but it’s helpful to set a default response to save time
Cancellation Policy
From your booking settings, you can edit your Cancellation Policy. Here, you can choose to Enable or Disable cancellations as a whole. If you disable cancellations, clients will never see an option to cancel their appointment within Porter and will have to reach out to you to cancel.
The Cancellation Policy is a message that is shown to clients when they pay the deposit and confirm their appointment and helps set clear expectations around refunds and cancellation rules
Need help fine-tuning your booking preferences? Our support team is happy to help you optimize for your ideal schedule.