How to configure shared bookings page in Bookings App

The advice to create appointments to represent availability is the part I’d change. An appointment is a booking, not an opening for a customer to claim. Turning off “Events on calendar affect availability” doesn’t convert it into an available slot.

For your setup:

1. Set Business hours to the overall hours you operate, such as Monday–Friday, 8–6.
2. Set the service duration to one hour, assign the five staff, and make sure each booking requires one available staff member, not all five.
3. Use each staff member’s working hours as their normal availability. For weekly differences, block unavailable periods using Time off in Bookings or Outlook events marked Busy, with calendar availability checking enabled.
4. For service-wide exceptions, use date-specific availability where offered. Those restrictions apply to the service, not independently to each staff member.

Remove the placeholder appointments you created for testing, keeping genuine bookings intact. Then test with one staff member and one known free hour before expanding to all five.

The generic error doesn’t prove a scheduling conflict. If that simple test still fails, check that the assigned staff member has accepted any required Bookings approval, and capture the exact booking time and error for support. Overlapping staff availability is normal and shouldn’t itself prevent booking.