HoppingIn provides you the tools to manage how easily parents can book spots in your center. For example, by default HoppingIn requires that all bookings require approval from the director before a spot can be fulfilled. But what if you were to remove that requirement? How can you ensure that children don't book spots overnight and show up to a stunned teacher the next morning? 

Enter the cutoff. 

The cutoff dictates how close to a spot actually happening someone can book.

Before we just into an example, it's important to note that using the cutoff is important if you're using on-demand booking but might be irrelevant (and even a nuisance) if you're using the default setting that requires director approval before booking. 

Now, let's use an example. 

Parent A logs in to HoppingIn at 2am to book a spot that starts later that same morning. 

This booking could be quite jarring to the Happy Feet director who would only find out about this booking the next morning and might not provide her enough time to ensure that she has enough staff. 

However, if Happy Feet Childcare sets their cutoff time to 1 day at 5p then it would be impossible for Parent A to book the spot. This is because HoppingIn shuts down the possibility to book spots at 5p the day before those spots would happen. This cutoff is completely configurable by you, the director. 

If I'm not using on-demand bookings why would I find this a nuisance? 

You might want to allow people to request and transact spots on the day of a spot. For example, you might know that you have capacity and know a child that needs to book that spot. In this case you might tell the parent to log into HoppingIn and book the spot which you will immediately approve. But, if cutoffs are turned on then they wouldn't be able to even request it. 

Information about setting and adjusting the cutoff feature can be found here.