Set your weekly hours
Shop hours are the outer envelope. Staff hours slot inside them.
Booked won't show a time as available unless the shop is open and the staff member is on shift. Get the shop hours right first — staff hours are intersected with them, so a stylist can never be bookable outside the shop's opening times.
Steps
- Open Dashboard → Hours.
- For each weekday, set open and close, or untick Open to close that day.
- If you close for lunch, click + Add a break and adjust the two ranges. Nothing is bookable in the gap, and an appointment cannot span it either.
- Save.
Three settings, three different jobs
These sit near each other and are easy to confuse. They do not do the same thing.
| Setting | What it actually does |
|---|---|
| Booking buffer | Padding around every existing appointment. A 15-minute buffer keeps the 15 minutes before and after a booked slot free, so you get turnaround time between clients. It has nothing to do with how soon someone can book. |
| Minimum notice | How far in advance a customer must book. Set it to 2 hours and the next bookable slot is two hours from now. This is the one that stops someone booking the slot you are standing in. |
| How far ahead | The last date customers can book. Counts today, so 30 means today plus the next 29 days. |
If what you want is an hour's warning before anyone can book you, that is minimum notice, not the buffer. Setting the buffer to 60 instead puts an hour of dead space either side of every booking in the day, which will quietly remove most of your availability.
Closing for a holiday
Use Closures and special hours, further up the same page, rather than editing the weekly grid — you do not have to remember to put the hours back, and your booking page tells customers the shop is closed instead of just showing them an empty day. The same section covers trading different hours on one date.
Staff hours
Staff schedules are further down the same Hours page. They can be narrower than the shop's hours but never wider — the two are intersected when availability is worked out.