Why does my fence scheduler keep double booking me?

Process: Double booking and capacity. Trade: Fence contractor. Reviewed 2026-10-07.

Short answerA fence scheduler double books when install days are scheduled without a crew count and material check. Give each crew its own calendar, schedule post setting and panel hanging as separate stages, and flag two installs on the same crew before either is confirmed.

The explanation

The estimate system books a start date for each customer. With a busy spring season, two customers get the same Monday and the crew has to choose.

Assign each install to a named crew, stage the work and require a check against the crew calendar before a start date is given.

To test your own setup, make one booking by phone and one on the website for the same hour, in fence terms the same crew and the same length, and see whether the second is refused. If it is not, the calendars are not sharing one source of truth. Repeat that test after any change to services or staff, since a new service with no length is a common source of overlap. Write down each result so the next change has a record to compare against.

Steps

List every place a fence request can enter: website, phone, text and walk-in.
Move all of them into one calendar so no channel works from a private list.
Set a real duration on every service.
Set the number of crews, techs or tables as the true limit.
Test with two competing requests for the same hour before you trust it.

What to watch for

A second calendar that never syncs.
Manual overrides made without checking the board.

In fence contractor

Fence crews are small and seasonal. One overlap during the busy months can push a customer by weeks because no spare crew exists. All fence contractor scheduling questions.

How Apex does it

In progress

Part of this is built. The rest is not. Status as of 2026-10-07; the badge shows the least-built feature involved.

Apex shows visitors real availability, holds an online request as pending until the owner confirms it, and can add buffer time between jobs. An overbooked warning on the schedule board is built as a demo screen and is not yet saving live data.

BK04Show real availability to visitors(Built, rolling out)
BK11Booking requires owner approval (request mode)(Built)
BK14Buffer time between jobs(In progress)
SC39Overtime / overbooked warning(Rolling out)

Apex Flow Scheduler is in early access. See how we label status.

Where this question comes from: we wrote it from research on common owner problems. It is not measured search demand.