Precision Scheduling- What is it?
Precision Scheduling actively suggests the best booking times for you and your clients, just like you would place appointments on your own calendar.
It helps maximize revenue retention, boost bookings, and improve the client experience by reducing wait times. Clients see these optimal times during self-booking, and staff see the same suggestions in the dashboard when using the “Best Times” option.
We designed Precision Scheduling with a human touch. Our team analyzed real booking scenarios, shared them with customers, and asked: “Where would you book this and why?”
What factors help Precision Scheduling decide what times are optimal?
The main purpose of Precision Scheduling is to identify and analyze potential gaps in your schedule that could lead to lost revenue. It evaluates the potential cost of each gap using key factors based on your Boulevard setup.
Primary Factors
The most common service(s) performed
The duration of that/those service(s)
The cost of that/those service(s)
Secondary Factors
Because client experience directly impacts recurring revenue, Precision Scheduling also considers a few secondary factors when suggesting times.
Staff changes during an appointment
– If a client books two services that require different staff members, Precision Scheduling evaluates how to coordinate those transitions efficiently.
Resource changes for specific services
– When a client books two or more services that require different resources (e.g., rooms or equipment), Precision Scheduling accounts for those needs when suggesting times.
Wait times between service or provider changes
– Precision Scheduling limits any wait time between service or staff transitions to no more than 15 minutes.
Efficient use of provider calendars
– Precision Scheduling places appointments to maximize provider availability and reduce unusable gaps in their schedules.
If an appointment involves just one service, uses the same provider or resource, or has the same wait time no matter where it's placed, Precision Scheduling relies only on primary factors to find the best time.
Where does Precision Scheduling provide optimal times to my staff/clients?
Clients can see optimal times in several places:
During the online booking process
When rescheduling through the "manage appointment" link in emails (the client client portal)
When booking through Facebook, Instagram, or Reserve with Google, if those integrations are enabled in your dashboard settings
When staff use “Best Times” in the dashboard, they’ll see both Optimal and Alternative Optimal suggestions. The scheduling window highlights these times with an “Optimal” badge. Hovering over a suggested time reveals whether it’s Optimal or Alternative Optimal. Other visible time slots, those without badges, serve as filler options to give additional scheduling flexibility.
NOTE: During online booking, clients see optimal times, but the “Optimal” badge doesn’t appear.
Precision Scheduling- How it works
What are “Optimal” and “Alternative Optimal” times, and how are they chosen?
Precision Scheduling uses a sliding 90-day window of service data to rank services from most to least performed. It updates this window every two weeks.
Example: If the current window is 2/1– 4/1, the system slides it forward two weeks from the end date. The new window becomes 2/15 – 4/15.
With this data, Precision Scheduling ranks all potential appointment times based on their ability to recover potentially lost revenue. It then uses those rankings to determine which times to offer as Optimal or Alternative Optimal.
For example, consider the following setup:
Most Common Service: Haircut
Duration: 1 hour
Cost: $100
Provider Schedule: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Current Bookings: None
Based on this information, Precision Scheduling aims to offer times that avoid creating small, unusable gaps on the calendar. Since the schedule is completely open, the best Optimal times are:
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM, which leaves 8 open hours afterward
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM, which leaves 8 open hours before
These placements help preserve the largest possible blocks of availability. Below is a more detailed breakdown:
Optimal Time #1: 9:00 AM
Why? This appointment ends at 10:00 AM, leaving an 8-hour block afterward, enough time to book eight more 1-hour services.
Optimal Time #2: 5:00 PM
Why? This appointment ends at 6:00 PM, preserving an 8-hour block before it.
Alternative Time: 1:00 PM
Why? This appointment ends at 2:00 PM, leaving a 4-hour gap before and after. That allows room for four 1-hour appointments on each side. Precision Scheduling marks this as an Alternative Optimal time because the gaps are smaller and more likely to result in unusable time blocks.
What if my client doesn’t want to book the “Optimal” or “Alternative Optimal” times?
As mentioned earlier, Precision Scheduling highlights the top-ranked times as Optimal and also includes additional options called filler times. These appear alongside Optimal suggestions and don’t carry an Optimal badge.
By default, Precision Scheduling uses a 60-minute interval for filler times. So if 9:00 AM is marked as Optimal, the next filler time would appear at 10:00 AM, assuming the calendar is completely open. This default interval is part of the Recommended Baseline optimization setting.
Why does Precision Scheduling leave gaps?
The feature focuses on creating large gaps in the schedule because larger gaps offer more opportunity to maintain your revenue stream. It assigns a monetary value to available time on the calendar to guide those decisions. Using the same example from earlier:
Let’s use this example setup:
Most Common Service: Haircut
Duration: 1 hour
Cost: $100
Provider Schedule: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Current Calendar Bookings: None
Based on this setup, here’s how Precision Scheduling assigns value to time on the calendar:
Time Slot Values:
1 hour = $100
45 minutes = $75
30 minutes = $50
15 minutes = $25
5 minutes = $8.33
With this data, Precision Scheduling aims to stack appointments back-to-back and leave larger, more usable gaps in your schedule. Over time, it helps reduce smaller, harder-to-fill openings because losing $8.33 worth of time is a lot easier to absorb than losing $100.
Precision Scheduling for developers
See the developer portal article to use Precision Scheduling in apps and integrations.
The Precision Scheduling API is designed solely to surface appointment times that would naturally appear through the Precision Scheduling feature, whether during online booking or manual booking within the dashboard.
It does not support modifying settings or disabling Precision Scheduling via the API.
For more information on how Boulevard’s Precision Scheduling feature delivers customizable flexibility and how you can make adjustments, check out this article.