Working hours shape the calendar and are the only hours online booking offers. Staff can still book outside them by hand when a patient needs it.
Set the weekly hours
Working hours live on the practitioner, not on the calendar. Open Settings, then Users & Practitioners, open the practitioner and go to their practitioner settings, then Availability. A practitioner who works at more than one location has separate hours for each, so choose the location first. Administrators can do this for anyone; a practitioner can do it for themselves.
Switch on each day they work
A day that's off stays shaded on the calendar for the whole day and offers no online booking times.
Set the start and end time for that day
Hours and minutes are chosen in five-minute steps. Different days can have different hours, so a Tuesday 12:00 to 20:00 beside a Wednesday 8:00 to 14:00 is fine.
Add breaks with Break
A break is a gap inside the working day, such as lunch from 12:30 to 13:15. Add up to five a day and remove one with the cross beside it.
Save
The calendar shading updates at once for everyone.
What the hours do
- On the calendar, time outside the hours and inside breaks is shaded, so everyone can see at a glance when the practitioner is normally working.
- For staff booking, the hours are a warning, not a wall. If you book a patient on the practitioner's day off, outside their hours, during a break or over an unavailable block, the booking form tells you exactly which, for example Outside Sarah Malik's working hours (08:00–17:00) or During Sarah Malik's break (12:30–13:15), and offers Book anyway. Editing an existing appointment only warns if its practitioner, date or time changed.
- For online booking, the hours are a wall when Respect practitioner availability is on in the online booking settings: patients are only offered times inside the hours and outside breaks. When it's off, online booking uses the location's opening hours instead; see Holidays and closures.
Hours that change from a future date
Saving new hours changes them from now; there's no way to store a schedule that starts in three weeks. If a practitioner is dropping Fridays from 1 December, keep their current hours and add a weekly unavailable block for Fridays starting on that date, so the calendar and online booking stop offering those Fridays. Once the change has started, update the weekly hours and delete the block series.
For leave, use an unavailable block rather than switching days off, so the weekly hours stay right for when they're back.