# ⚙️ General Settings: A Complete Tour

> A tour of Cowlendar General settings: first day of week, hour format, quantity limits, global buffer time, booking limits, blocked dates, refunds and languages.

**General settings** is the first page of the Cowlendar settings. What you set here applies to all your services, so it is the place for rules that should be the same everywhere.

**Where to find it:** Shopify admin > Apps > Cowlendar Booking > **Settings** > **General settings**.

> **⚠️ Warning**
>
> A blue banner at the top warns you: *These options have priority over any other service-level configuration.* If something you set on a service seems to be ignored, check this page first.

![The General settings page with the blue banner, the left Settings menu and the live preview on the right](https://orka-chat.fra1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/prod/help/671a5e245d077ea954b2cd4c/1792169671152-mcp-claude-in-chrome-blob-1792169522864-4kpwwq.webp)

On the right you see a live preview with a **Mobile** / **Desktop** switch.

## The Settings menu

The left menu has 16 pages: General settings, Calendar design, Email settings, SMS settings, WhatsApp settings, Translations, Email history, SMS history, WhatsApp history, Services list page, Event calendar, Booking rules, Public API, Webhooks, Klaviyo and Tracking pixels.

## General preferences

| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Calendar first day of week** | The first day shown in your calendars (for example Sunday). |
| **Default hour format** (*Use 24h hour format*) | Show times in 24-hour format by default. |
| **Show teammates selector** | Lets the customer choose a teammate. If you hide it, Cowlendar picks the first teammate in the ordered list of the service. |
| **Create a Shopify order if a booking without checkout is made** | When on, a Shopify order is created automatically when a booking is made without Shopify checkout (instant booking). |
| **Disable autocomplete for customer information in manual booking** | Stops the browser from suggesting saved data while you create manual bookings. |

## Quantity

- **Show "Quantity: x" in the booking form and sidepanel**: show the quantity in those places.
- **Quantity on services**: a table with a row **All services**, a switch, and **Min** and **Max** inputs to set the least and the most a customer can book. Click **Add a service** to set different limits for a specific service.

## Buffer time

This setting only applies to services configured with availability per service.

Switch on **Use global buffer time** to set a default buffer time before and after bookings for all services. Teammates and equipment have their own buffer time. See [How Buffer Time Works in Cowlendar](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/how-buffer-time-works-in-cowlendar).

## Booking limits

| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Use daily bookings limit** | Set a maximum number of bookings per day for the whole store. Once reached, no service can be booked again that day, even if the limit of a specific service has not been reached. |
| **Maximum booking per timeslot** | Limits how many bookings can share the same time slot across your services and teammates. It does not apply to multiday services. Example: if only 2 yoga coaches work on a day, you cannot take more than 2 bookings per slot. |
| **Show free slots count in slots** | Tells customers how many seats are left in each slot. |

See [How to Limit My Time Slot to Be Bookable by One Person at a Time Across All Services](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/how-to-limit-my-time-slot-to-be-bookable-by-one-person-at-a-time-across-all-serv).

## Blocked times

The card has a **Timezone** selector. It applies to the break times and blocked dates of this page. It does not change the timezone of your services.

- **Break times** (**Add a break time**): block times across all services, for example lunch.
- **Block specific dates** (**Add a blocked date**): block dates across all services, for example December 25. Blocking dates does not affect or cancel bookings you already have; it only affects future bookings.
- **Public holidays** (**Add public holidays**): see [Blocked Emails and Public Holidays](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/blocked-emails-and-public-holidays).

![The Blocked times card with Break times, Block specific dates and Public holidays](https://orka-chat.fra1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/prod/help/671a5e245d077ea954b2cd4c/1792169673418-mcp-claude-in-chrome-blob-1792169543378-qzf0pa.webp)

Related guides: [How to Block Dates Across All Services](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/how-to-block-dates-across-all-services) and [How to Block Timeslots on All Services](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/how-to-block-timeslots-on-all-services).

## Blocked emails

Block specific emails from booking with you. See [Blocked Emails and Public Holidays](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/blocked-emails-and-public-holidays).

## Refund and cancellation settings

Five switches, all off by default, to automatically cancel orders and refund customers when a booking is canceled. See [Rescheduling and Cancellation Rules for Your Customers](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/rescheduling-and-cancellation-rules-for-your-customers).

## Developer settings

**Hide logs** disables the console logging of the widget on your website.

## Multi-languages

Show the booking widget in several languages.

- **Default language**: shown to everyone by default. Example: if English is your default and you add Spanish and French, a visitor from the USA sees English, a visitor from Germany sees English (you did not add German) and a visitor from France sees French.
- **Enable multiple-languages**: turns the feature on.
- **Detect the language**: how Cowlendar decides which language to show. It has two options:
  - **From Store language** (default): Shopify decides the language from the URL of the page. Example: when the page starts with /fr, it uses the French locale.
  - **From user preferences (browser)**: Cowlendar uses the default language of the customer's browser.
- **Enabled languages**: the languages you offer.

A blue note tells you how many languages are enabled. To edit the texts of each language, go to [Translations: Customize Every Text of Your Booking Widget](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/translations-customize-every-text-of-your-booking-widget). Related: [Am I Able to Use German, Spanish or Any Language as My Main Language](https://help.cowlendar.com/a/am-i-able-to-use-german-or-spanish-or-any-language-as-my-main-language).

![The Multi-languages card](https://orka-chat.fra1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/prod/help/671a5e245d077ea954b2cd4c/1792169675953-mcp-claude-in-chrome-blob-1792169579886-9vt94z.webp)