--- title: "Fill cancellations with a waitlist" summary: "Patients join from your booking page. Practor offers freed slots down the queue, and you can offer, reorder or remove entries yourself." source: https://practor.app/en-za/help/scheduling/manage-a-waitlist published: 2026-09-14T06:45:13.730Z updated: 2026-09-29T07:14:53.054Z category: "Scheduling and calendar" --- Patients put themselves on the waitlist. You don't add them. Your booking page offers **Join waitlist** beside **Book appointment**, so someone can put themselves on the list for that schedule whether or not the times on offer suit them. From there a slot can reach them two ways: Practor offers it when one frees up, or you offer one yourself. ## Turn on the waitlist Open **Calendar → Availability**, choose the schedule, and go to **Waitlist**. **Waitlist configuration** holds two settings: - **Enable waitlist** turns it on for this schedule. It starts off. - **Offer expiry (minutes)** is how long a patient has to answer an offer before it passes on. It starts at 15 and accepts anything from 5 minutes to 1440. ![The waitlist settings on a schedule](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/waitlist/enable.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#848x272 "Each schedule has its own two settings.") Each schedule has its own settings. Turning it on for one leaves the others off. The list has a limit. Once enough people are on it, waiting or holding an offer, **Join waitlist** stops appearing until somebody leaves. ## What the patient tells you | | | | --- | --- | | The dates they're available between | A time of day, or any | | Particular days of the week, or any | How much notice they need | Notice is **Same day**, **1 day**, **2-3 days** or **1 week**. They don't choose a practitioner or an appointment type. The list belongs to the schedule they were looking at, so that's already settled. ## Where you see the list The **Waitlist** card on your dashboard shows who is waiting, in order. It reads **Nobody waiting** when the list is empty. > [!NOTE] > The card is on the practitioner dashboard. A practice support profile has a different home and doesn't carry it. Each entry opens to show what that patient asked for, and has four actions. ## Offer a slot yourself **Offer slot** opens **Offer slot to** and the patient's name, above what they asked for and a day's times. Only the times that suit them are listed. Turn on **Show all** to see the rest, and each one that doesn't suit gets a small **!**. Pick it and the pill beside the time reads **Outside preferences** instead of **Matches preferences**, so you offer it on purpose rather than by accident. This is how you fill a gap Practor hasn't spotted, or hand a slot to someone further down the list. ## Reorder or remove someone **Move up** and **Move down** change someone's place in the queue, which changes who gets offered the next matching slot. **Remove** takes them off the list entirely. ## What happens when a slot frees up Practor waits a minute before doing anything, then checks the slot is still free. Someone booking it in the meantime ends the matter, and a slot whose time has already passed is left alone. If it's still free, Practor goes down the waitlist in the order the queue is in, the order **Move up** and **Move down** set, and offers it to the first person whose preferences fit that slot. Preferences fit when the slot falls inside their date range, matches their time of day and chosen weekdays, and is far enough ahead to meet their notice. Two people are skipped: - Anyone who was offered a slot earlier the same day and let it lapse. - Anyone who has already declined this exact slot. ## The offer the patient receives The offer gets sent by email and by text, to whichever of the two you hold for them. The text needs SMS switched on for your practice and the patient's consent to general messages; without those, the email gets sent on its own. Both hold a link to a page with **Accept appointment** and **Decline**. Answering on that page is the only way to take it: replying to the text does nothing, and there's nothing on your side to accept it for them. Accepting confirms the appointment and takes them off the list. The offer holds for the number of minutes you set. When an offer expires, it's marked expired and the patient goes back onto the list as waiting. They keep their place, but they won't be offered anything else that day. An open offer doesn't hold the slot. Until the patient accepts, anyone can book that time the ordinary way. ## What the patient can do without you Anyone who joined gets a link. It opens **Your waitlist status**, where they can change what they asked for or leave the list, and it needs no account. A patient who does have a Practor account also sees their places under **Appointments**, with **Leave the waitlist** on each one and **A time is waiting for you** when an offer is open. Either way, a patient who leaves frees a place for the next person wanting to join. ## Related - [Turn on online booking](/help/scheduling/turn-on-online-booking) - [What happens after you book an appointment](/help/scheduling/what-happens-when-you-book)