This is the day-to-day job of keeping your schedule right: creating rules, adjusting quotas, marking closures, and handling the awkward cases. For the underlying concept, read Understanding slot rules first.
Creating a rule
- Open Slot Rules and start a new rule.
- Pick the doctor and the location.
- Choose the consultation mode — walk-in or video consultation.
- Select the days that doctor consults.
- Add the sessions within those days, e.g. 10:00–13:00 and 17:00–20:00.
- Set the consultation length, which decides how many fit per session.
- Set the online and counter quotas.
- Save. Slots generate forward from the rule.
Monthly rules. For a doctor who consults on particular weeks of the month, make the rule monthly and tick the weeks with the weekdays: 1st to 4th, and Last — the last one of that day in the month (the 4th, or the 5th when the month has five). 2nd and last Saturday is one rule: tick Saturday under 2nd and under Last (10 and 31 October 2026; 14 and 28 November). Un-ticking every day under a week and saving clears that week.
If you pick video consultation, the counter quota is fixed at zero and disabled — video slots are online-booking only, and that cannot be overridden.
New and follow-up sittings
Every rule is either a New or a Follow-up sitting — the Appointment Type field. A follow-up can only be booked into a Follow-up sitting, and the Prescription Validity (days) you set on a New sitting decides how long a visit's follow-up stays due. Once a doctor has a Follow-up sitting open, patients with a follow-up due are shown follow-up times instead of new ones — on your website, in your app and at your front desk. Leave Prescription Validity blank if you want follow-ups offered but never required. Read How patients are guided to follow-ups before you enable one.
Getting quotas right
The quota split is the setting you will revisit most, and the one most worth thinking about.
| If you… | You get… |
|---|---|
| Give everything to online | A full morning online and nothing for the patient at the counter. |
| Give everything to the counter | A booking page that looks permanently full. |
| Start conservative and raise it | The usual approach — adjust once you see real demand. |
Changing a quota is one field and takes effect on future slots. It is not a decision you are locked into.
The Slot Rules list
Rules that are on are listed first and rules that are off at the bottom, each group in order of doctor and earliest sitting. Every row shows a badge under the doctor's name — green Active or red Inactive — so you can see at a glance which sittings are live.
Generate (behind the ⋯ button) appears only on rules that are on. To bring back a rule that is off, use Turn on — it builds the rule's dates as it switches on.
Editing a rule
Editing regenerates future slots. Patients already booked keep their appointments — the system does not rewrite bookings underneath people.
Changes you made to a single date in the Calendar are kept too: a date you turned off stays off, and seats you changed for a date stay. The message after you save lists them — for example "Calendar changes kept: Thu 20 Aug (turned off); Fri 21 Aug (15 online seats)" — and tells you if one no longer applies because the rule no longer has a sitting that day. Setting a date's seats back to the rule's own number makes that date follow the rule again.
Saving a rule, Turn on or Generate before your weekly opening time never opens the coming week early — it opens at your opening time, as scheduled.
Two habits worth keeping:
- Make structural changes — different days, very different timings — with a few days of clear air, not the evening before a busy clinic.
- After a significant edit, look at the booking page as a patient would and confirm the times are what you intended.
Your plan's appointments a day
When you save a rule or turn one on, Treatlly checks that your rules that are on do not offer more appointments on any day than your plan allows — online and counter together, in any mix. Rules that are off don't count. If a day would go over, the message names it, for example "Your active new-patient slot rules would offer 110 appointments on Mondays (online and counter together), more than your plan's 100 a day." Turn a rule off, lower its seats, or raise the allowance under Billing → Customize Limits. Lowering seats always saves.
Marking holidays
Use Holidays for closures — never delete a rule.
Marking a holiday removes the affected slots and flags any patients already booked for reschedule instead of silently cancelling them. Somebody still has to agree new times with those patients; the system surfaces the work rather than deciding for you.
Add known closures in advance. A holiday marked after patients have booked creates rescheduling work that a week's notice would have avoided.
Follow-ups that would land after their prescription validity
A follow-up has to take place within the Prescription Validity of the visit it follows. If moving patients off a holiday would put a follow-up after that last valid day, the preview lists it at the top — patient, booking number, time, last valid day and new date — and you choose for each one:
- Extend validity to the new date — the patient keeps the follow-up on the new date. The extension covers only this move; the patient cannot use it to book anything else.
- Cancel booking — the booking is cancelled and the patient is told by SMS; a patient who paid online gets a full refund. No OTP is asked of the patient, because the change is the clinic's. Only clinic admins and managers see this choice — reception staff and doctors can only extend.
Confirm & save stays blocked until every listed follow-up has a choice, and asks you to confirm when something will be cancelled. The holiday and the moves are saved first and the cancellations after; if one cannot be completed, the message names that booking, and saving the same holiday again retries it. The reschedule start date must be after the last holiday day.
Doctor unavailable at short notice
Mark it as a closure for that doctor's affected day. The patients on it are flagged, and your front desk can work down the list. Do not leave the slots live hoping a locum appears — patients will keep booking into them.
Adding a doctor to an existing clinic
Adding the doctor does not create availability. You must also create at least one slot rule for them, or they will never appear as bookable.
This is the most common "the new doctor isn't showing" cause.
Adding a second location
Slot rules are per location. A doctor who consults at both places needs a rule for each, and their sessions should not overlap — nothing stops you creating two rules that would put the same doctor in two places at once.
Routine checks
| When | Check |
|---|---|
| Weekly | Next fortnight's slots look right on the booking page. |
| Monthly | Quotas still match real demand — has online grown? |
| Before festivals | Closures marked in advance. |
| New doctor | Slot rule created, not just the doctor record. |
| Timing changes | Rule edited, and the booking page confirmed. |