Troubleshooting Availability

When customers report they can't find a time slot — or you see availability that doesn't match what you expect — there's usually a specific setting that needs adjustment. This article covers the most common issues and how to resolve them.

No time slots showing on the booking page

Symptoms: A customer visits your booking page and sees no available slots for any date, or you see an empty calendar when previewing your booking page.

What to check:

1. Business hours are configured — Go to Setup > Company and verify your business hours are set. If all days are toggled off, no slots will appear. See Setting Business Hours.

2. At least one team member is eligible — Open the appointment type (Setup > Appointment Types) and check which teams or members are set as eligible. If no active members are assigned, there's nobody to show availability for.

3. Eligible members have availability — Check that the eligible team members have their availability set (either inheriting business hours or with custom hours). If a member has all days turned off in their individual availability, they contribute no slots.

4. External calendar isn't blocking everything — If a team member's connected Google or Outlook calendar is packed with all-day events or overlapping meetings, those events block all their availability. Ask the member to check their external calendar for conflicts.

5. Booking window isn't too restrictive — Check the appointment type's booking window settings. If the minimum advance time is set to 7 days and the maximum is set to 14 days, customers can only see a 1-week window. If the maximum is less than the minimum (a misconfiguration), no slots will appear at all.

6. Team members are active — Go to Setup > Users and confirm the eligible members have an Active status. Pending or inactive members don't contribute availability.

Availability not matching expectations

Symptoms: Time slots are showing, but not at the times you expect. Hours seem shifted or certain days are missing.

What to check:

1. Member-level overrides — A team member may have set custom availability that differs from your business hours. Go to their profile and check the Availability tab. Their individual schedule takes priority over organization defaults. See Team Member Availability.

2. Timezone settings — This is the most common cause of shifted availability.

   • Check the organization timezone in Setup > Company.

   • Check each eligible member's timezone in their profile.

   • If a member's timezone is wrong (e.g., set to Pacific instead of Eastern), their availability will appear shifted by the difference.

3. Buffer times — Large buffer times between appointments can eliminate slots. If you have a 1-hour appointment with a 1-hour buffer, Driive needs a 2-hour window for each booking. Check the appointment type's buffer settings. See Buffer Times and Booking Windows.

4. Max appointments per day — If a team member has hit their daily cap (set in their profile), they won't show additional slots for that day even if they have open hours.

Service area rejecting valid addresses

Symptoms: A customer enters an address you know you serve, but Driive tells them it's outside your service area.

What to check:

1. Radius is too small — Go to Setup > Company > Service Area and verify the radius covers the address in question. Use the map preview to visually confirm. You may need to increase the radius. See Configuring Your Service Area.

2. Center address is wrong — If your center address is incorrect or set to a different city, the entire radius is shifted. Verify the center address pin on the map matches your actual business location.

3. Address formatting — Sometimes a customer enters an address in a way that Google can't geocode accurately (e.g., a P.O. box, a rural route, or an incomplete address). The address check relies on Google's ability to locate the address on a map.

4. Edge cases — The radius is calculated as a straight-line (as-the-crow-flies) distance, not driving distance. An address that's 25 miles by road but only 18 miles in a straight line might pass, while an address that's 22 miles as-the-crow-flies but 35 miles by road might also pass even though it's a long drive. Keep this in mind when setting your radius.

External calendar blocking all time slots

Symptoms: A team member's availability looks completely blocked even though their business hours are set correctly.

What to check:

1. All-day events — An all-day event on a connected calendar (like "Out of Office" or "Vacation") blocks the entire day. Check the member's Google or Outlook calendar for all-day events.

2. Recurring events — A recurring event (like a daily standup or weekly meeting) might be consuming a chunk of availability every day. If the member has multiple recurring events throughout the day, the available windows between them might be too short for the appointment duration plus buffer.

3. Calendar sync status — Make sure the calendar integration is still active. Go to Setup > Integrations and verify the connection. If the sync is broken, Driive may be using stale data.

4. Multiple calendars — Some team members have multiple calendars in their Google or Outlook account (personal, work, holidays). Check which calendars are being synced. Driive may be reading events from a calendar the member didn't intend to share.

Tip: Ask the member to look at their external calendar for the specific day and time in question. Often, there's a forgotten event or an all-day block they didn't realize was there.

Customer sees different available times than expected

Symptoms: A customer reports seeing availability at times that seem wrong — too early, too late, or on the wrong days.

What to check:

1. Customer timezone — Booking pages display times in the customer's local timezone (detected by their browser). If the customer is in a different timezone than your business, the times shown will be adjusted. A 9 AM slot in Eastern Time appears as 6 AM Pacific to a customer in California.

2. Organization timezone — Verify your organization timezone is correct in Setup > Company. If it's set to the wrong timezone, all availability calculations will be off.

3. Daylight Saving Time — Around DST transitions (spring and fall), there can be a brief period where timezone offsets shift. If a customer reports a 1-hour discrepancy, check whether a DST change recently occurred.

4. Booking page preview vs. live — When you preview your booking page as an admin, you see slots in your own timezone. A customer in a different timezone will see the same underlying slots but displayed differently.

Appointments available outside business hours

Symptoms: Customers can book at times you didn't expect — like late evening or weekends when you're closed.

What to check:

1. Business hours — Double-check that the correct days are toggled on/off and the start/end times are correct. A common mistake is setting an end time of 5:00 AM instead of 5:00 PM.

2. Member overrides — A team member may have set individual availability that extends beyond what you intended. Check their schedule in their profile.

3. Timezone mismatch — If the organization timezone is wrong, "8 AM to 5 PM" in the wrong timezone could translate to unexpected hours in your actual timezone.

Still stuck?

If you've checked all the settings above and availability still isn't behaving as expected, reach out to Driive support. Include:

• The appointment type name

• The specific date and time that's problematic

• Which team members are eligible for that appointment type

• Screenshots of your business hours and any member-level overrides

This helps us diagnose the issue quickly.