By the end of this guide, your widget will refuse new bookings inside the cutoff window — protecting your cleaning time, prep time, or just your evenings.
What you'll need
- A property under Places or a service under Services, with Booking behavior set to Accept bookings (or Accept payments)
- ~3 minutes
- The shortest notice you can realistically accept
- A clear cutoff for new bookings
- Fewer "can you turn this around tonight?" emails
Where it lives
This setting only appears when Booking behavior is set to Accept bookings or Accept payments. If you're in Availability only, the field is hidden — there are no bookings to gate.
- Places: Place detail → Bookings section → Booking deadline.
- Services: Service detail → same section, same name.
Step 1: Decide your number
The setting is in hours. A few common shapes:
| Number | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | No deadline. Guests can book up to midnight of the check-in day (places) or up to the slot's start time (services) |
| 2 | Two hours of buffer — common for tour services that need prep |
| 24 | One day of notice — common for nightly stays where you need to clean |
| 48 | Two days of notice |
| 2.5 | Decimals work — 2.5 means two hours thirty minutes |
Important: 0 means "no deadline," not "no bookings allowed." Setting 0 is how you turn the deadline off.
Step 2: Save
Type the number, click save. The widget cache invalidates automatically.
How it actually works
The cutoff is calculated in the property's time zone — not the guest's. So if your property is set to Europe/Prague and you set 24 hours, a check-in for May 10 stops accepting bookings at 00:00 Prague time on May 9.
For services, the cutoff is relative to the slot's start time, not the date. A slot at 14:00 with a 2-hour deadline stops accepting bookings at 12:00 the same day.
What guests see
- Places: Dates inside the deadline window appear greyed out / un-selectable in the widget. If a guest somehow submits a deadline-blocked date (e.g. they had it selected before midnight), the booking submission fails with "This date can no longer be booked. The booking deadline has passed."
- Services: Slots inside the deadline window are simply omitted from the slot list. The guest sees fewer slots — no error, no explanation.
Step 3: Test it
Pick the date or slot closest to your deadline boundary and try to book it as a guest (an incognito tab on your widget URL works). Dates inside the cutoff should be unavailable.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Guests are still booking past the deadline | The property's time zone is wrong — the cutoff is being calculated against a different "midnight" than yours | Open Property basics and confirm the time zone matches the property's actual location |
| The field is missing on Place detail | Booking behavior is set to Availability only | Switch booking behavior to Accept bookings — the deadline field will appear |
| 0 isn't blocking anything | That's the expected behavior — 0 means no deadline | Set a positive number to start blocking |
| Decimal numbers like 2.5 aren't accepted by my browser | Some locales' number inputs reject the decimal point depending on regional separator | Try typing it in another browser, or round up — the next whole hour is usually close enough |
| I changed the deadline but a guest who already had dates selected got through | The check runs at submission time. If they submitted a millisecond before your cutoff, they made it | The deadline is a wall, not a teleport. New visits after your save respect the new value |
Related guides
- Property basics (time zone matters here) — Property basics
- Instant vs. Request booking — coming soon