Booking cut-offs and date blocking

Two settings save you from the classic daycare headaches: a booking that lands at midnight for the next morning, and having to delete time slots one by one when you want a day off. Only Managers and above can change them.

Booking cut-offs (minimum notice)

A cut-off is the minimum notice customers must give before a booking starts. Set it to 24 hours, for example, and nobody can book a 7am drop-off at 10pm the night before — you get time to roster staff properly.

1. Go to Settings → Closures (the Closures & Availability page).
2. In the Booking Cutoff card, enter the minimum lead time in hours — anywhere from 0 (no cut-off, bookings accepted at any time) up to 720 hours (30 days).
3. Save. Customers must then book at least that many hours before the booking start time.

Blocking individual dates (blackouts)

Blackout dates are for one-off closures: Christmas Day, a staff training day, or a day you're closed for maintenance.

1. On Settings → Closures, find the Blackout Dates card.
2. Choose the location (or All locations), pick the date, and add a reason, e.g. "Staff training".
3. Click Block Date. The date is blocked for the whole day and appears in the list below, where you can remove it later.

Dates blocked automatically as public holidays show a Public Holiday badge in the same list.

Seasonal closures (date ranges)

For longer breaks — "closed 25 December to 2 January" — use a seasonal closure instead of blocking days one by one:

1. On the same page, find the Seasonal Closures card.
2. Choose the location (or All locations), the start and end dates, and an optional reason, e.g. "Christmas Break".
3. Click Add. The whole range is covered by one entry, and you can delete it from the list below.

Public holidays, automatically

Don't block Easter and Christmas by hand every year. In the Public Holidays card, turn on Auto-block public holidays and WagDay blocks Australian national public holidays from accepting bookings — including New Year's Day, Australia Day, Easter, Anzac Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Which one do I use?

• Blackout date — a single closed day (or a few unrelated days).
• Seasonal closure — a continuous closed range of two or more days.
• Public holiday auto-block — set-and-forget for the national holidays.

Bookings created through the API

These rules are not just a portal thing. Bookings created by an external system through your API key are held to the same standard, so an integration can't quietly fill your calendar on a day you're closed.

A booking request from the API is refused, and no booking is created, when:

• the dates hit a blackout date, a seasonal closure, or a public holiday you've auto-blocked
• the start time is in the past, or inside your cut-off window
• the booking is longer than the maximum booking length allowed
• the requested time falls outside the location's opening hours, judged in that location's own timezone. For a stay spanning several days it's the drop-off day and the pick-up day that are checked against opening hours — the same as the portal and the booking wizard. To close off a day in the middle of a stay, use a blackout date or a seasonal closure
• the location is already at capacity for one of the dates, or that pet already has an overlapping booking

The response tells the integration which rule it hit, so a well-built integration can show the reason to whoever is booking rather than failing silently.

What customers see

If a customer tries to book a blocked date, or inside the cut-off window, the portal tells them politely that the date isn't available — before any payment is taken. Existing bookings made before you set the block are not cancelled automatically; contact those customers and rebook or refund them as needed.