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How-to

Set up locations, departments, and working hours

Create a location for each place you operate, add the departments that do the work inside it, then set each department's weekly hours. The schedule is a full seven-day week — days you are closed are marked closed, not left out — and it is what booking draws its available slots from.

Requirements: a role that can manage locations and departments.

Steps

  1. Create the location. Name it for the place — the city, the branch, the site — and give it its address and contact details. A location is created together with its first department, so you will name that at the same time.
  2. Add the other departments. A department is a team or function within the location: consultations, servicing, sales, the workshop. Split by the work that is actually done, because departments are what keep records separated and what carry their own schedules.
  3. Set each department's weekly hours. Give every day of the week its opening and closing time, and mark the days you are closed as closed. The schedule always covers the full seven days — a closed Sunday is a day marked closed, not a day left out.
  4. Add exceptions for the days that differ. Public holidays, a one-off late opening, a seasonal closure — these are exceptions on top of the weekly schedule, so you do not have to distort the regular week to express them.
  5. Check the result. If the department is meant to take bookings, confirm its hours are in place before anything is booked against it — then continue with make a collection bookable.

Why the hours matter so much

Working hours are not decoration — they are what booking is computed from. A department with no open day cannot take a booking at all: availability comes back empty and any attempt to book fails because the department is closed. If bookings are not working, this is the first thing to check, and usually the answer.

Notes and limitations

  • The weekly schedule is always seven days. To close a day, mark it closed — do not remove it. A department with fewer than seven days configured is in an invalid state for booking.
  • Hours belong to the department, not the location. Two departments at the same address can keep different schedules, and each is set separately.
  • Holidays and one-offs are exceptions, layered on the weekly schedule rather than replacing it.
  • A location or department cannot simply be deleted. Because records and bookings belong to them, removing one requires moving its dependents somewhere else first — plan the move rather than expecting a quiet delete.
  • Every business starts with one location and one department already created; you extend that rather than starting from nothing.

How these pieces feed booking end to end is in setting up booking; turning a collection into something bookable is in make a collection bookable. Why locations and departments exist at the business level is covered in businesses and multi-tenancy and create your first business.

Frequently asked questions

How do I mark a day we are closed?
Mark that day closed in the weekly schedule. Do not delete the day — the schedule must always cover all seven, and a missing day leaves the department invalid for booking.
Booking says the department is closed even though we are open.
Almost certainly its working hours are not set. A department with no open day has no availability at all and rejects bookings as closed.
Can two departments in one location have different hours?
Yes — hours are set per department, so a sales desk and a workshop at the same address can keep entirely different schedules.