How to block out time with Busy Time

If you need to block out time in the calendar with things other than appointments (e.g. irregular breaks or staff meetings etc), then you can use our Busy time feature.

They are different from breaks which happen every day at the same time and are set as part of normal working hours.

You can choose when adding busy time to the calendar, if you would like to prevent any online bookings during this time. If a staff member works at multiple locations, this will block out their availability at both locations.

You will be able to add a unique description to the busy time, which will be shown in the calendar. This is handy if you want to make a note of a staff absence, remind a staff member of a specific task, or keep track of customers who would like to be squeezed in today.

In this guide we'll cover how to:

1. Add busy time to your calendar.
2. Add recurring busy time to your calendar.
3. Reschedule or move busy time.
4. Remove busy time from the calendar.

Add a busy time to the calendar

To add busy time to the Calendar:

1. Click on a spot in the calendar as you would when adding an appointment.
2. Select Busy time from the pop up: 
3. Specify a Start time or use the default:
4. Enter a Duration in hours and minutes (e.g. a one hour lunch would be set to 1:00): 
5. Choose a Staff member from the dropdown list.
6. Add a simple Description to make a note of what the busy time is for (e.g. staff meeting).
7. Finally, check the Prevent online bookings during this time? checkbox to stop appointments from being booked during the busy time:
8. Click Save to add it to the calendar.

Set up a recurring busy time

Busy times can be set to repeat at regular intervals such as daily, weekly or fortnightly. 

All you need to do is:

1. Add busy time as you would above.
2. Go to the Recurrence tab: 
3. Choose an option from the Repeat dropdown list (e.g. weekly):
4. Select a number of time the busy time should repeat from the Repeat every dropdown list (e.g. 2).
5. Choose when the recurrence should End by selecting a specific date, number of times (e.g. 5) or to recur indefinitely, never.
6. Finally, choose which day or days to repeat on (if relevant).

Reschedule or move busy time in the Calendar

If you want to move a Busy Time to another time, there are a couple of ways you can do this:

1. Click on the busy time in the Calendar.
2. Adjust the start Time as required.
3. To move it to another date, click the Change date link to return to the calendar and select another date:
4. When you're ready, click Save to apply your changes.

Busy time can also be rescheduled or adjusted by using the click and drag options. This allows you to change the start time, duration, date or even the staff member involved:

Remove busy time from the Calendar

If you want to remove a Busy Timely from the Calendar, it's easy to do.

1. Click on the busy time in the Calendar.
2. Click the Delete button to remove the busy time: