Setting capacity limits

Capacity limits stop an offering from taking more bookings than you can deliver — a fixed vaccine stock per day, a weekly quota from a funding scheme, an overall cap on a pilot program. When a limit is reached, Light closes new public availability for that offering until the next period opens. Existing bookings are unaffected.

Steps

1. Open the offering's Limits tab

   Go to Settings›Services, open the offering, and switch to the Limits tab.

2. Add capacity limits

   Tap Add (or Edit if limits already exist). The Set Up Capacity Limits sheet opens with a row per period and a switch beside each.

3. Turn on the limits you want

   Enable any combination of Daily limit, Weekly limit, Monthly limit, Yearly limit, and Total limit. Enter the maximum number of bookings for each.

   Limits have to follow the natural hierarchy — daily ≤ weekly ≤ monthly ≤ yearly ≤ total. If your daily cap is 20, weekly can't be 100 unless that maths out across the days you actually run.

4. Choose how cancellations affect the count

   Cancellations restore capacity is on by default — cancelling or rescheduling a booking frees its slot back up. Turn it off for schemes where a used slot stays used regardless of outcome (closer to a "fair issue" model).

5. Decide how existing bookings count (first-time setup only)

   If the offering already has bookings when you first set limits, Light asks whether to Count existing bookings (past and future count against the cap) or Count from now onwards (only new bookings count).

   Pick count from now if you're introducing a cap for a fresh period and don't want old bookings eating into it.

6. Save

   The Limits tab now shows the configured caps and the offering's current utilisation.

What happens when a limit is reached

• The offering closes to new public bookings until the next period opens. Light shows the date availability resumes on the offering and in public booking flows — "The earliest public availability of this offering is on or after date, because period capacity limit has been reached"
• Staff can still create bookings from inside Light if needed; the cap is primarily a public-portal safeguard
• The Total limit is absolute — once hit, the offering stops taking new bookings permanently unless you raise or remove the limit

Removing or changing limits

• Edit on the Limits card reopens the sheet. Turn off a period's switch to remove just that limit, or leave it on and change the number
• To remove all limits at once, the card offers a Remove all capacity limits action. That returns the offering to uncapped behaviour

Variants

Limits are set per offering. When an offering has variants, see Configuring a service for how caps interact across the parent and its variants.