Add your first location
Your branch, its address, and the opening hours everything else sits inside.
A location in Booked is one branch: a name, an address, opening hours, and the staff and services attached to it. Nothing can be booked outside those hours, so this is the record to get right first.
Create the branch
Open Booked in your WordPress menu, expand the Business group in Booked's own sidebar and click Locations.
- Click Add locationTop right of the list, which until now reads "No locations yet. Add your first branch to get started."
- Fill in the General tabName is the only field the server insists on; leave it blank and the save is refused with "A location name is required."
- Work through Times, Employees and ServicesAll four tabs are one form. Switching between them saves nothing, and Cancel or the back arrow discards the lot.
- Click Save locationOne click writes the details, the hours and both assignment lists.
Locations
The New location editor, on the General tab. The same Cancel / Save location pair sits at the top and the bottom.
- 1Save location — the only thing that writes anything. It appears at the top and bottom, and saves all four tabs at once.
- 2The four tabs — General for details, Times for hours and closures, Employees and Services for the two assignment lists.
- 3Name — the only required field, and the one customers see.
| Field | What it affects |
|---|---|
| Name | Required. Shown to customers, printed into messages, and used on synced calendar events. |
| Phone / Email | The branch's own contact details. Phone is available in messages as {location_phone}. |
| Address / City / Postcode | Shown under the branch name on the booking form, and used to build the optional map. |
| Status | Active shows the branch to customers; Inactive hides it from them but keeps it in the admin. |
The address under Settings › Company belongs to your account, not to a branch, and is never used for bookings or customer messages. Even a single-site pharmacy needs a location record.
Set the opening hours
The Times tab holds the branch's normal week, and it is the outer limit for everything. Staff working hours are cut down to fit inside it: a pharmacist on 08:00–16:00 at a branch opening 09:00–17:30 is bookable 09:00–16:00 only, and where the two never overlap that person produces nothing.
Locations
Add more than one interval for a lunchtime close (e.g. 09:00–13:00 and 14:00–18:00).
+ Add interval · Apply to all days
Closures or different hours for specific dates (e.g. a training day) — these override the weekly hours above.
+ Add special day
The Times tab: the weekly grid, and one closure below it.
- 1The weekly grid — one row per day, Monday first, each with an on/off toggle. Turning a day on seeds 09:00–17:00; + Add interval adds a second block for a lunchtime close, as Wednesday has here. No appointment can straddle that gap.
- 2Apply to all days — copies that day's intervals onto all seven, weekend included, over whatever was there. Use it first, then fix Saturday and Sunday.
- 3A special day — a date range that replaces the weekly hours. New rows start today → today and Closed. The note is for you; customers never see it.
Two things catch people out. Toggling a day off and back on resets it to a single 09:00–17:00 interval, so a split shift has to be rebuilt. And an interval whose end is not later than its start is still shown but discarded by the booking engine — the day looks open and offers nothing, which is why overnight opening cannot be expressed.
Create a location by hand and every day starts closed, with no warning anywhere — the usual reason customers see "No times available on this day. Please try another date." The Dashboard checklist ticks "Locations & opening hours" as soon as one branch exists; it counts records, not hours. Hours are read in your WordPress site timezone (WordPress Settings › General), not the Timezone box on Booked's Localisation tab.
Closures, training days and different hours
Special days sit under the weekly grid and handle bank holidays, stocktakes and refit weeks. Pick a date range, then choose Closed, or Custom hours to reveal a Monday–Sunday grid for that range only. For one day, set the same from and to date.
- A special day replaces the weekly hours for the dates it covers; the two are never merged. Custom hours starts with all seven days off, so saving it untouched closes the whole period.
- Only one special day applies to any date. Where two ranges overlap the earlier start date wins and the other is quietly ignored.
- None of them repeat annually, so next year's bank holidays must be entered again.
Say who works there and what you offer
The Employees tab ("Employees at this location") and the Services tab ("Services offered here") are lists of chips — click a name to switch it on or off. They are the same links as an employee's or a service's own Locations tab.
Three links must all be in place before a single time appears: the service is offered at the branch, the person works at the branch, and the person can perform the service. Miss one and the branch or service disappears from the customer's form with no error anywhere. Every staff member appears as a chip, inactive ones included.
Saving replaces the branch's whole staff and service lists, so a colleague's change made while your editor sat open is wiped. Video consultations have no branch at all and ignore both this tab and your opening hours.
What your customers see
The location step on the public booking form.
- 1The Location step — on by default and first in the order. Hide it or move it after the service step under Customisation › Booking Form › Layout. Hidden, Booked still picks the first qualifying branch.
- 2A branch card — the name, with Address, City and Postcode joined into the line beneath. Switch on "Show a map on the location step" to add a map.
Only Active branches appear, and only those offering at least one service with qualified staff. When a single branch qualifies the step is skipped and that branch chosen silently — which is why a one-site pharmacy never sees this screen.
The {location_address} placeholder in confirmations and reminders prints the Address field and nothing else — City and Postcode are left out. If you want the full address in customer messages, put all of it in Address.
Running more than one branch
- The list stays in creation order and cannot be reordered. Its search box matches name, city, phone and email — not the address or postcode.
- Staff have one weekly pattern that applies at every branch they work at. Priya Sharma doing Mondays at Bramhall and Tuesdays at Hazel Grove shows as available on both days at both branches. For a genuine split, create separate staff records.
- Use the All locations filter on the Calendar to work one branch at a time.
Deactivating or deleting a branch
To take a branch off the booking form without losing anything, set Status to Inactive and save. It vanishes for customers at once but stays in the admin list, the calendar filter and the booking editor's Location dropdown — right for a temporary closure or a shop you are still fitting out.
The bin icon asks "Delete this location?" once, then removes the branch, its hours, its special days and both assignment lists. There is no check for future bookings, and any that pointed at the branch are neither deleted nor moved — the branch then shows blank in your lists and empty in later messages. Move or cancel them first.