# Working hours, breaks and closures

> How opening hours, each person's own hours and time off combine to decide when customers can book — including split shifts and days that run past midnight.

_Last verified: 2026-09-05. Source: https://bookodile.com/docs/working-hours_

Bookodile never asks "when are you open?" just once. Availability is an
**intersection**: the business's hours, the specific person's hours, and
anything blocking the calendar all have to agree before a time is offered.

Understanding that one idea explains most availability surprises.

## The layers

| Layer | Where you set it | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Business hours | Settings → Working hours | The outer bound. Nothing is bookable outside it. |
| Each person's hours | That team member's own hours | Narrows the business hours further, never widens them |
| Time off | Calendar | Removes specific dates |
| Calendar blocks | Calendar | Removes specific stretches of a day |

A person cannot be booked outside business hours even if their own hours say
otherwise. The narrower of the two always wins.

## Split shifts are supported directly

A day can hold **up to four separate ranges**. A genuine split shift —
09:00–12:00 and 15:00–19:00 — is expressed as two ranges on the same day, not
faked with a calendar block.

This matters because a block and a closed period behave differently elsewhere:
a block is a thing on your calendar, a closed period is simply not open. For a
lunch break you take every day, use two ranges.

## Days that run to midnight, and past it

A day can be marked as full-day, which makes it open for the whole 24 hours.
This is what venues and rentals use.

For anything that runs past midnight, bookings are not designed to cross the
day boundary unless the service is a full-day one. A late-night service ending
at 01:00 needs the day it *starts* on to be open until at least 01:00 — so a
closing time of `24:00` is meaningful and a closing time of `01:00` on the same
row is not.

## The whole appointment has to fit

A time is only offered if the entire service fits inside working hours, not just
its start.

Close at 17:00 and offer a 90-minute service, and the last bookable start is
15:30. Customers frequently read the empty 16:00 slot as a bug. It is the
service not fitting.

Buffer time counts too: a 30-minute service with a 15-minute buffer needs 45
minutes of room before closing.

## Changing hours does not move existing bookings

Narrowing your hours has no effect on bookings already in the calendar. They
stay exactly where they are — you will simply see them sitting outside the
shaded open period.

That is deliberate. Silently cancelling or moving a customer's appointment
because someone edited a settings page would be worse than showing you the
conflict. If a booking now falls outside your hours, move or cancel it yourself
so the customer is told.

## Worked example

A studio open Monday to Friday 09:00–18:00. One instructor works Monday,
Wednesday and Friday, 10:00–14:00.

- Tuesday: the studio is open, the instructor is not rostered. Their booking
  page says so by name rather than showing an empty week.
- Monday 09:30: the studio is open, the instructor is not. Not offered.
- Monday 13:30 for a 60-minute class: the instructor's day ends at 14:00, so the
  class does not fit. Not offered.
- Monday 13:00 for a 60-minute class: fits exactly. Offered.

## Limits

- **Four ranges per day** is the maximum.
- **A person's hours can only narrow the business's**, never extend them.
- **Time off and blocks look identical to a customer.** Both simply mean no
  times — the booking page never says which, and never says "fully booked",
  because from outside those are indistinguishable.
- **Each branch has its own hours.** A second location does not inherit changes
  made to the first after it was created.