Setting up each team member's hours

Once more than one person takes bookings, the business's opening hours stop telling the whole story. One therapist works mornings, another only Thursdays and Saturdays, and someone is on leave next week. If your booking page does not know that, clients book times nobody can take. Here is how to set up each person's hours so it does.

Business hours come first

Your business hours are the outer frame. They decide when you are open at all, which days are closed, your public holidays and any special hours. Nothing on your booking page can appear outside them, however a team member's hours are set.

So start there. Set your weekly opening hours and close your public holidays before you go on to individual people. If your opening hours change for summer or winter, change them here, and every calendar follows.

Give each calendar its own working week

In BookAndGo each person, room or chair is a calendar. A calendar can carry its own working week: which days that person works and the hours on each. Those hours sit inside the business's hours and narrow them; they never widen them. If the business closes at 5pm, a therapist set to work until 6pm still finishes at 5pm on your booking page.

A calendar with no hours of its own simply works whenever the business is open. That keeps setup quick for a small team: only set hours for the people who do not work the full week.

Days off and leave

Each calendar also has its own days off. Add the dates someone is away, and their times vanish from your booking page for those days while everyone else carries on. That is the cleanest way to handle annual leave, a training day or a sick day, without closing the whole business.

A day off always wins. Even if that person would normally work a Tuesday, a day off on that Tuesday means no bookings for them.

How bookings are placed

When a client books a service that more than one person runs, they can pick any available time. BookAndGo places the booking with someone who is working and not already booked at that time. If nobody who runs that service is working, the time is not shown at all.

Clients can also choose a person by name. If they do, the booking goes to that person or not at all: it is never quietly moved to somebody else. The owner can still place a booking with someone outside their usual hours as a deliberate exception, for the times you agree it with your team.

Keep it current

The setup only helps if it matches reality. Make updating hours part of how your team requests leave: when leave is agreed, the days off go in. When someone changes their regular days, update their working week the same day. A two-minute habit saves a lot of awkward phone calls.

A worked example

A Christchurch physio clinic opens 7am to 7pm on weekdays and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays. One physio works Monday to Thursday, 7am to 3pm. Another works Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. A third works afternoons and evenings. The massage therapist who shares the clinic works Wednesdays and Fridays.

The clinic sets its business hours once, then sets each person's working week on their calendar. Monday morning shows only the first physio. Thursday evening shows only the third. Saturday shows the second physio until 1pm, because the clinic closes then. When the first physio takes a week's leave, the clinic adds those days off to her calendar and the rest of the team keeps taking bookings as usual.