In Amelia I have the following situation:

1. Each employee has a few services

2. The services are divied into groups like = 2-10 people, 11-50 people, 51 -100 people

3. The user selects how many people in the service and then pay accordingly to zar amount x amount of people selected

Currently amelia just gives me the option to select a min and max time for example:

It takes 3 min to do the service per person

So if a user selects the service for 11-50 people and select 11 people the time of 33min needs to be booked BUT Amelia books the max time, so it books 150min out for 11 people.

Is there a way around this max time problem and allow it to book according to the amount of people selected?

Here is a detailed explanation

Biometric Police Services we offer in South Africa (R = our ZAR currency) - BOOKING OPTIONS/SERVICES:

Visit us > R280

Our employee drives to a client's location:
1 client = R330
2 - 10 people = R280 pp
11 - 50 people = R250 pp
51 - 100 people =  R220 pp
101 - 200 people = R200 pp

= 6 options available to be booked

Our employees only do certain cities and suburbs so for simplicity we create 2 forms with the Formidable plugin:
1. Where we can load 100+ employees fast to Amelia
2. Where a client can search for a specific city or suburb - then they select our employee in their area and click on BOOK

The client then receives this Amelia booking screen: 
https://checknet.co.za/test/

This interface of Amelia works well as the pricing can be dynamic as they need to select the exact amount of people and pay accordingly to the amount of people selected.

This is the following times for the different services:

1 person
10mins 
30min buffer

2-10 people
5mins pp
30min buffer

11-50 people
3min pp
2h buffer

51 - 100 people
3min pp
2h buffer

100 - 200 people
3min pp
4h buffer

THE PROBLEM I RAN INTO IS THE TIMES CAN NOT BE DYNAMIC.

For example:

1. Person selects the 11 - 50 people = R250 pp > service
2. They indicate they are 11 people
3. The pricing adjusts accordingly and they pay 11 x R250 = R2,750

4. On the booking page - AMELIA takes the max time for the service:
3min pp x 50 people = 150min

And NOT 3min x 11 people (user selected) = 33min

So my question is:

Can time be dynamically adjusted based on the amount of clients?
OR
Does Amelia only work with min & max time for a service?

CHAT GPT's Response:

In Amelia, the plugin calculates the time based on a range (min and max), which doesn't work perfectly for dynamically adjusting time per person. However, here are a couple of workarounds you could try:

Option 1: Use Custom Duration for Each Service

Instead of using a group with a min/max range, you can create separate services for each group size (e.g., 2-10 people, 11-50 people, etc.). In each service:

• Set a custom duration based on the number of people. For example:
  • 11 people × 3 minutes = 33 minutes.
• Then, create pricing rules that scale based on the number of people selected.

Option 2: Dynamic Pricing with Custom Fields (Workaround)

You could set the service duration for the maximum time but use custom fields to calculate the actual time and price per person:

1. Create a service for a general group (e.g., 11-50 people) with the max time (e.g., 150 minutes).
2. Add a custom field where the user inputs the number of people (11, 12, etc.).
3. Apply a dynamic pricing formula based on that custom field.
4. Although this might not directly solve the time issue, you could add an admin note or use internal workflows to manually adjust the time based on the input.

Option 3: Conditional Booking Rules with Custom Code

If you're comfortable with coding or working with developers, you could extend Amelia by adding custom booking rules using hooks. This would allow you to write a function that calculates the duration based on the number of people and adjusts the booking time accordingly.