Scheduling

Event types

Event types are the meeting formats prospects choose from when booking — define duration, location, and optional payment up front.

Personal vs. org event types

There are two kinds of event types in Cartoply:

• Personal event types — appear on your individual booking page (cartoply.com/[username]). Managed from Personal Event Types in the sidebar. These do not use territory routing.
• Org event types — appear on your org's booking page and support territory-based routing. Managed from the Event Types tab inside your org dashboard.

If you manage a field sales team, create your meeting types at the org level. Personal event types are best for individual outreach or one-off meetings.

Creating a personal event type

1. Go to Personal Event Types in the sidebar.
2. Click New event type. A prompt will remind you that org event types should be created in the Org Dashboard — click Continue to proceed with a personal type.
3. Fill in the name, slug, duration, color, and optional description.
4. Set the location option (none, you provide it, or guest provides their address).
5. Optionally set a price if you charge for meetings.
6. Click Save.

Creating an org event type

1. Open your org dashboard and click Event Types.
2. Click New event type.
3. Configure the same fields as a personal event type.
4. Click Save. The event type is now available on your org's booking page.

Event type fields

• Name — what prospects see when choosing a meeting type (e.g., "30-Minute Discovery Call").
• Slug — the URL-friendly identifier. Auto-generated from the name but editable. Must be unique per user or org.
• Duration — length of the meeting in minutes. Choose from preset options (15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120 min).
• Color — a visual label used to distinguish event types in your list.
• Description — optional text shown to prospects on the booking page to explain what the meeting is for.

Location options

Each event type has one of three location settings:

• None — no location is attached (virtual meetings, phone calls, or TBD).
• I'll provide — you enter a fixed location (Zoom link, Google Meet URL, or physical address) that all bookings for this event type will use.
• Guest provides — the prospect enters their address during booking. Use this for in-person field visits where you go to them.

Pricing

You can charge a fee for any event type. Leave the price blank for free meetings. To enable paid event types:

1. Connect a payment provider in Integrations (Stripe or PayPal).
2. On the event type form, enter a price and select the currency.
3. Prospects will be asked to pay before the booking is confirmed.

Charging upfront is a proven way to reduce no-shows for field visits — see our blog for more on this.

Scheduling limits

Every event type has a Scheduling limits section that controls when guests can book:

• Buffer before / after — required gap (in minutes) around each appointment. Use this for drive time between jobs or prep time between calls. Slots that would violate a buffer against an existing booking are hidden automatically.
• Minimum notice — how far in advance a guest must book (e.g., 4 hours). Prevents same-minute bookings you can't actually staff.
• Max bookings per day — caps how many confirmed bookings the attending person can take per day. Once the cap is reached, that day shows no slots. Leave blank for unlimited.
• Booking window — how many days into the future guests can book (default 60). Dates beyond the window are disabled on the calendar.
• Cancellation cutoff — how close to the appointment guests can still self-cancel or reschedule from their confirmation email (default 24 hours).

Limits are enforced both when slots are displayed and again at booking time, so a guest who leaves the page open can't book a slot that's no longer allowed.

Booking questions

Add up to 10 custom intake questions per event type — for example "What's the issue?", "Gate code", or "How did you hear about us?". Question types: short text, long text, dropdown, and checkbox; each can be marked required.

Guests answer during booking (every guest also provides name, email, and phone as standard fields). Answers appear in the confirmation and notification emails, on the booking record, and — for org bookings with Jobber connected — in the Jobber Assessment's instructions.

Booking approval (pre-qualification)

By default, bookings are confirmed instantly. Switch the Booking approval setting to Review requests to vet bookings before they're confirmed — useful for filtering out low-intent enquiries ("tire-kickers") before they take a slot on your calendar.

How it works:

• A booking that needs review is held as a request rather than a confirmed booking. It is not placed on your calendar and does not reserve the time slot — the slot stays open for other guests until you approve.
• The guest sees a "Request received" screen and gets an email saying their time isn't reserved until it's confirmed. You get a "new booking request" email with their answers.
• You approve or decline from the Requests tab on your Bookings page. Approving secures the slot for real (if someone else booked it in the meantime, you'll be told to ask the guest for another time). Declining cancels the request and optionally emails the guest a reason.

Screening rules. With no rules, every booking becomes a request to review. Add rules to only review some bookings — a booking is held for review whenever any rule matches the guest's answer, and everything else books instantly. Each rule reads one of your booking questions, for example "Service is any of Drywall repair, Other" or "Budget is less than500". Operators include is, is not, is any of, contains, is blank, is less than, and is greater than.

Note: manual approval currently applies to free event types only. Set the price to 0 (or use instant booking) if the event charges up front.

Specializations (answer-based routing)

On org event types, specializations route a booking to specific team members based on a guest's answer. For example, if a guest selects "Tankless water heater" for the service question, send that booking only to the reps who handle tankless work.

• Each specialization is a rule (same questions and operators as screening) plus the team member(s) or group(s) to route to. A group expands to its members.
• The first matching rule wins. One target means the booking is assigned to them; several means it round-robins among that set.
• Routing still respects territory and availability — a specialist who isn't available for the chosen time won't be assigned.
• If a matching rule names no eligible member (for example they were removed from the event type), Cartoply falls back to normal routing so a real customer is never turned away.
• Specializations compose with approval: a held request is pre-routed to the right specialist, so approving it confirms with that person.

Eligible groups (org event types)

Use Eligible groups to restrict an org event type to one or more groups. Only members of the selected groups can be booked, and round-robin rotates within that set. Leave it empty and every member is eligible (the default). This is a cleaner alternative to excluding members one by one.

Toggling event types on and off

Use the toggle switch on each event type card to activate or deactivate it. Inactive event types are hidden from your booking page without being deleted — useful for seasonal or temporary meeting types.