Business Hours
Set opening times, holidays and time zone.
On this page
Your hours tell your receptionist when you’re open. They don’t control when it answers — it answers around the clock either way.
Where to find them
Business Config → Hours. Your time zone sits alongside them, and everything here depends on it being right.
What they control
- Which slots can be offered
- It will never book outside your hours, so you're never committed to a time you wouldn't work.
- Whether it says you're open
- Outside hours it tells the caller you're closed rather than implying someone is there.
- When after-hours rules apply
- Emergency handling, transfers and alert routing all key off these hours.
Setting them
- 1
Time zone first
Get this wrong and everything below is wrong. It is the most common setup mistake, by a distance.
- 2
Enter the hours you genuinely work
Not the hours on your website. If you take Saturday mornings, enter Saturday mornings — a lot of lost work hides in that one line.
- 3
Handle half days properly
A 1pm Saturday finish means nothing is offered at 2pm.
- 4
Leave a buffer at the end of the day
If you don’t want a job landing at 5:55pm, end at 5. Your hours are taken literally.
Don't list hours you won't work
Holidays and closures
Set closures for public holidays and any day you’re shut. Your receptionist still answers and still captures the lead — it just won’t offer that day.
- Public holidays you don't work
- The days between Christmas and New Year
- A week away with nobody covering
- Days blocked out for a large install
What the caller hears
A Sunday evening call
Sample call
It never pretends you’re open, and it never leaves the caller with nothing. That combination is what turns an out-of-hours call into a morning job.
Common mistakes
- Wrong time zone
- Silently breaks everything at once. No error, just callers told you're closed at 10am.
- Saturday left blank
- Owners who work most Saturdays but never entered them lose weekend bookings for months without noticing.
- Hours wider than reality
- Produces bookings you cancel. Shows up in hold rate, not in anything obvious.
- Confusing hours with availability
- Hours say when you're open; your connected calendar says when you're free. You need both.
That’s your calendar, not your hours. Connect a calendar under Connections and it will only offer genuinely free time inside your hours.
Only if you’d genuinely work them. Keeping honest hours and setting up after-hours handling properly captures the same calls without committing you to appointments you don’t want. See After-Hours Calls.