Time slots

This article teaches you to build a diary: moments at which your visitor can come, each with its own number of seats. You do not create them one by one but all at once, with a generator. Allow twenty minutes for your first month.

What is a time slot?

A time slot is one moment with a maximum number of seats.

Take a local history society that gives guided tours. There is a tour at 2 p.m. and one at 4 p.m., and twenty people can join each time. Those are two time slots: "Saturday 2.00 – 3.30 p.m., twenty seats" and "Saturday 4.00 – 5.30 p.m., twenty seats".

The 2 p.m. guide cannot say: "thirty people have already been this afternoon, so do come along". Every moment stands on its own. That is the whole idea of a time slot: it divides your day into pieces that can be full or empty independently of one another.

Other examples: the sauna session from 10 a.m. to noon, the 3.30 p.m. sailing, the 11 a.m. brewery visit, the 8 p.m. escape room game.

When do you need time slots?

Switch time slots on when your visitor has to choose an hour and not just a day. If you simply sell day tickets for a museum where people wander in and out, you do not need them — you create an ordinary admission ticket instead. See Products and prices.

Three reasons why organisations switch to time slots anyway: you need a guide who can only handle one group at a time, your room or your boat is physically limited, or you want to spread out the crowds so that eighty people are not standing at the till at 11 a.m. all at once.

What is capacity?

Capacity is the number of seats you sell on one time slot. Not the number of chairs you have, but the number you want to sell.

That distinction is not hair-splitting. If you have a room for twenty-five people and you want to keep five seats free for people who turn up at the door unannounced, you set the capacity to twenty. With every sale the number of free seats drops by one. When the counter is at nought, nobody can buy the time slot any more: your ticket shop shows it as sold out and the counter point of sale refuses it too.

Capacity sits on each time slot separately. The generator fills in the same number for all the slots it creates, but after that you can adjust one on its own. The Sunday morning tour may perfectly well have thirty seats while all the others have twenty.

What you need beforehand

• An account with the Owner or Administrator role.
• An active product of a type that can handle time slots. Those are: Timed ticket, Guided tour, Event, Series and Group. An ordinary admission ticket is deliberately not on that list — no hour belongs to it.
• A venue that is active.
• Your opening hours, if you want the generator to stick to them.
• An idea of your weekly schedule: which days, from what time to what time, every how many minutes, and how many seats.
• Twenty minutes.

If you come across a word you do not know, it is in the glossary.

Creating time slots

Step 1 — opening the generator

1. In the menu on the left, click Sales and then Time slots.
2. You now see the diary: all the time slots from today onwards, grouped per day. If there is nothing there yet, you see the message that there are no time slots yet.
3. Click Create time slots at the top right. A window opens with the message: existing time slots stay as they are, only the missing ones are added.

Step 2 — filling in the generator

The window has ten fields. Here is what each field does.

Field	What you fill in
Product	The product the slots apply to. Only active products that can handle time slots are in this list.
Venue	Where it takes place. Only active venues are in it. Also determines which opening hours apply.
From	The first day of the period. Today by default.
Up to and including	The last day. In a month's time by default.
On which days?	Ticks for Monday to Sunday. All seven are switched on.
First start	The time at which the first slot of a day begins.
Last start	The time at which the last slot of a day begins.
Every how many minutes?	The time between two starts. At least 5. 60 by default.
Duration in minutes	How long one slot lasts. At least 5. If the product has a Duration in minutes, it is filled in here automatically; otherwise 60.
Seats per time slot	The capacity of every slot created here. 20 by default.

At the bottom there is one more switch: Stay within the opening hours of the venue. It is switched on. See below what it does.

Note: Last start is the time at which the last slot begins, not when it ends. If you set the last start to 4 p.m. with a duration of 90 minutes, that slot runs until 5.30 p.m.

Step 3 — a complete example

Suppose you give guided tours in October, from Tuesday to Sunday, every hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., an hour and a half long, twenty people at a time. You fill in:

• Product: Guided tour
• Venue: Visitor centre
• From: 01/10/2026
• Up to and including: 31/10/2026
• On which days?: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday (Monday unticked)
• First start: 10:00
• Last start: 16:00
• Every how many minutes?: 60
• Duration in minutes: 90
• Seats per time slot: 20
• Stay within the opening hours: on

Click Create.

You now see a message at the top right saying how many time slots have been created, "189 time slots created" for instance. If there were already slots in that period, the same message says how many already existed. If slots fell outside your opening hours, that is mentioned too.

After that you see the diary itself. It is grouped per day, with a heading "Thursday 1 October 2026" and below it the slots for that day:

Column	What you see
Time	10:00 – 11:30 for instance
Product	What this slot belongs to
Seats	The capacity
Sold	How many have gone already
Free	What is left. Nought is shown in red.
Status	Open, Sold out, Closed or Cancelled

At the top there are filters: on product, on venue, on status and on period. The From today filter is switched on by default, so that you do not have to scroll through last month's slots every time.

The opening hours limit the generator

If Stay within the opening hours of the venue is switched on, the generator only creates slots that fall entirely within an opening block of your venue. If you close at 5 p.m., no slot running from 4.00 to 5.30 p.m. is created. A closed Monday produces no Monday slots, even if the tick for Monday is switched on.

If your venue has no opening hours filled in at all, nothing limits anything and the generator simply creates everything you ask for. You can also switch the limit off yourself with the same switch — handy for an evening activity outside your usual hours.

In the message after creating you can see how many slots were skipped for this reason. If you get nought slots while you were expecting hundreds, this is almost always the cause.

What happens if you run the generator twice

Nothing bad. The generator does not touch existing slots.

If you run it a second time over the same period, it checks per start time whether a slot for that product is already there. If it already exists, it skips it and counts it as "already existed". If it does not exist, it is added. That is how it has been made on purpose, and it is handy:

• Adding a day. You had forgotten the Mondays. Run the generator again over the same month with only Monday ticked.
• Adding an hour. You want an extra slot at 5 p.m. Run the generator again with first start 17:00 and last start 17:00.
• Adding the following month. Same settings, different period.

A slot for which sales have already been made keeps its capacity and its counter. So a sold ticket never disappears because somebody clicks the generator once more.

Note: what the generator does not do is adjust existing slots. If you want to change the capacity of a whole month, running the generator again with a different number of seats is not enough. You adjust the capacity slot by slot, with the Change capacity button next to that slot.

What your visitor sees

In the ticket shop your visitor first chooses a day and then an hour, with the number of free seats next to it.

The calendar opens on the next day on which there are still seats, and not on the current month. If your first free day is only three weeks away, your visitor does not have to click the arrow three times.

A slot that is full stays visible but cannot be clicked. A slot you have closed or cancelled disappears from the shop entirely.

A time slot closes online at its start time. At 10.01 nobody can book the 10.00 slot any more; whoever is late comes to the desk, where you decide yourself whether there is still room.

Capacity, closing, reopening and cancelling

Next to every slot in the list there are buttons. Four actions, and all four mean something different.

Button	What it does
Change capacity	Changes the number of seats of this one slot.
Close	Stops the sale. Tickets sold stay valid.
Reopen	Undoes the closing or the cancelling.
Cancel	The moment is not going ahead.

Adjusting the capacity

Click Change capacity. A window appears with the current number of seats, and below it the sentence saying how many have already been sold: "lower is not possible". If you type a lower number anyway, the window refuses it. If it were possible, you would have sold seats that no longer exist, and you only notice that at the door with two visitors and one chair.

If you set the capacity equal to the number sold, the slot jumps straight to Sold out.

Closing versus cancelling

This difference matters and is often confused.

Closing means: nothing more can be sold, but the moment goes ahead. Use it when you want to keep the last five seats for a school group that still has to confirm, or when you no longer want to sell online on the day itself. The people who have already booked simply come.

Cancelling means: the moment is not going ahead. The guide is ill, the boat is out of service, the weather is too bad.

When cancelling you see straight away how many seats had been sold. That is the number that counts: that is how many people you have to notify. The tickets sold stay in place — they do not quietly disappear from your visitor's phone. That is deliberate: you can see who to ring, and your visitor keeps their proof of payment until something has been arranged. Refunding and cancelling the tickets is done afterwards in the order. See Cancelling and refunding.

Reopening works for both. A slot that is full in the meantime comes back as Sold out and not as Open — otherwise reopening would quietly create an extra seat.

Closing and reopening can also be done for several slots at once. Tick them on the left and use the button at the top of the list. Closing in bulk skips a cancelled slot: it stays cancelled, so you keep seeing who needs to be told. The message says how many slots were left as they were.

How double selling is prevented

On a busy Saturday your ticket shop sells online while two tills are selling at the same time. Three people who all want the last seat at once: that is the classic problem, and two things happen to solve it.

The counter is checked and raised in one movement. There is no first checking whether there is room and then booking — between those two actions there is a gap, and on a busy day a second sale slips through it.

Seats are held during checkout. Between "I choose two seats" and "I have paid" several minutes soon pass at your bank's payment page. Those two seats are held for ten minutes during that time. If your visitor pays, they become final. If they drop out or take too long, they come free again by themselves — you do not have to do anything.

That is why a slot can briefly show as full while nobody has paid. That resolves itself within ten minutes.

Common mistakes

Running the generator on a product that cannot handle time slots. You cannot find your product in the drop-down list. That is because it is of the Admission ticket type. Turn it into a Ticket with a time slot or a Guided tour, or create a new product.

Forgetting that you are closed on Mondays. You tick all seven days and get no Monday slots. Look at the message after creating: it says how many slots fell outside the opening hours.

Confusing the last start with the end. You set the last start to 5 p.m. while you close at 5 p.m. With a duration of 90 minutes that slot falls outside your opening hours and is not created.

Cancelling a slot in order to stop the sale. Use Close for that. Cancelling tells yourself and your colleagues that the moment is not going ahead.

Lowering the capacity to mark a slot as full. That works, but only down to the number sold. If you simply want to sell nothing more, use Close.

What if …

What if the generator creates nought time slots?

Three possible causes, in order of likelihood:

1. Everything fell outside your venue's opening hours. Switch the switch off or adjust your opening hours.
2. The slots already existed. The message then says "this many already existed".
3. First start is later than Last start.

What if I have created a whole month wrongly by accident?

Filter the list on the product and on the period, tick everything and close the slots. They then disappear from the shop. Deleting is not possible on this screen: a closed slot does nobody any harm, and this way what was once planned stays visible. Then create the right slots with the generator.

What if a visitor wants a different hour?

Moving a ticket to another slot is not possible: a ticket belongs to the time slot it was sold for. Let your visitor book a new ticket for the other hour, and cancel and refund the old one in the order. See Cancelling and refunding.

Note: a cancelled ticket does not free up its seat in the time slot by itself. If you want to sell that seat again, raise the capacity of the old slot by one.

What if my time slot is not in the shop?

Check in this order: is the status Open, is there still a free seat, has the start time not yet passed, is the product active, and does the product have an online price. A product without an online price is never in the shop, however many slots you hang under it.

Frequently asked questions

Can I create slots for a whole year in one go? Yes. Set the period to a year. Do bear in mind that you then also have a year's worth of public holidays and school holidays in your diary that you may want to close.

Can two products share the same time slot? No. A time slot belongs to one product, with one counter. If you sell both adult and child tickets at the same hour, each of those two products gets its own time slots with its own number of seats. See Events.

Do the tickets stay valid if I cancel a slot? Yes. They stay in place so that you can see who to notify. They do not sort themselves out: refunding and cancelling the tickets remains your decision.

How long are seats held during checkout? Ten minutes. After that they come free again by themselves.

What exactly does "Sold out" mean? That the number of seats sold is equal to the capacity. The slot stays visible in the shop but can no longer be clicked. If you raise the capacity, it jumps back to Open by itself.