Mini sessions
A mini session is a set day split into short slots, sold individually. Autumn family portraits, Christmas sets, graduation days.
The economics only work if the day fills, so mini sessions are built to be shared and claimed quickly rather than negotiated.
How it's different
An ordinary direct booking finds a gap in your diary. A mini session is the opposite: you declare the day, chop it into slots, and clients claim one.
Your general availability, minimum notice and booking window don't apply. The dates you add are the whole schedule.
Setting it up
A mini session service has four tabs: Details, Price & slot, Dates & location and Booking flow.
Price & slot
Price per slot is what one client pays for one slot.
Slot duration is chosen from a list: 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 or 60 minutes. It defaults to 20.
Spots per slot is how many clients can book the same time, up to 50. Leave it at 1 unless several people genuinely share a slot, like a themed set where families rotate through.
Currency, Tax and Add-ons sit on the same tab. See Add-ons.
Dates & location
Under Schedule, click Add date for each day you're running. Each date carries:
- Date
- Booking gap, the time kept free between sessions on that day
- Start time and End time. With the slot duration, these decide how many slots that day holds
- Location name and Address, so a date at a different venue doesn't need a separate service
Dates are saved with the rest of the service when you press Save. They aren't saved one at a time, so a half-filled date blocks the save until you finish it.
The Location section above sets a default: "Set a default location. You can change it for individual dates." A mini session has no Location type field, because every date names its own venue.
Block shared availability, at the top of Schedule, decides whether bookings here "also block the same time for services using shared availability". It is on by default. Leave it on unless the day genuinely doesn't consume the same time.
What the client sees
The service page opens on Select a date and time: a row of your dates, then the slots for whichever one they choose.
A slot that seats more than one shows how many are left. A full slot reads Full, and so does a date with nothing left in the date strip. A service with nothing left anywhere shows a Sold out badge on your booking page and can no longer be opened.
Under the times they're told: "Your slot is held for 30 minutes once you continue." Pressing Continue brings up We'll hold this slot for you, naming the date and time. The countdown starts only once they continue from there.
Pricing
Mini sessions are normally a fixed price paid in full at booking. That's the point: the client books and pays in one action and you don't chase anyone.
You can take a deposit instead, but for short cheap sessions the admin usually costs more than it saves. See Pricing and deposits.
Filling the day
Once it's published, share the link directly. Mini sessions do best sent to your existing client list and posted somewhere public, rather than left on your booking page to be discovered.
Slots disappear as they're claimed, so nobody can book a spot that's gone.
After the day
Each booked slot is a normal booking with its own client. Mark them complete as you go, and deliver as usual. If you're delivering a lot of small galleries at once, separate galleries are usually less work than chapters inside one.
Practical notes
Leave yourself a gap. Back-to-back 15-minute slots with no buffer means one late client puts the whole day behind. A short booking gap absorbs that.
Publish early, share hard. The service being live isn't the same as anyone knowing about it.
Don't over-subscribe a slot. More spots per slot means more people arriving at once. That works for some formats and is chaos in others.