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 and click Locations in the Set up group of Booked's own sidebar.
- Click Add locationAt the right-hand end of the bar that holds the search box, under the four summary tiles. If it is greyed out, your plan has no room for another location: switching one off frees a place, because only active locations count.
- Fill in the Details tabFour cards: the basics, address, contact and status. Name is the only field Booked insists on; leave it blank and it asks you to give the location a name first.
- Work through Opening hours, Staff and ServicesAll four tabs are one form. Switching between them saves nothing, and Cancel or the back arrow discards the lot.
- Click Add locationOne click writes the details, the hours, the special days and both tick lists, then takes you back to the list. On an existing branch the button reads Save changes, and Save in the header does the same.
How this branch appears when customers choose where to go.
Optional. Anything a customer should know before they pick it.
Goes on confirmations and reminders so people know where to come.
Shown to customers as the way to reach this branch.
An inactive branch keeps everything but cannot be booked and is not shown.
Open for bookingsNothing booked here yet.
The New location editor on its Details tab. The heading takes the name as you type it. Save at the top and Add location at the bottom do the same thing.
- 1Save — the only thing that writes anything. It sits in the header, with Add location (later Save changes) at the foot, and saves all four tabs at once.
- 2The four tabs — Details for the basics, address, contact and status; Opening hours for the week and special days; Staff and Services for the two tick 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. |
| A line about it | Optional. Despite the hint beside it, the booking form does not show this line at present, and nor do the messages. Put anything a customer must know in a service’s description or your confirmation email instead. |
| Phone / Email | The branch's own contact details. Phone is available in messages as {location_phone}; the email is kept for your team and not shown to customers. |
| Street address / Town or city / Postcode | Shown under the branch name on the booking form, and used to build the optional map. |
| Status | Open for bookings shows the branch to customers; switched off, it is hidden from them but kept in the admin. |
The address under Settings › Company details belongs to your account, not to a branch, and is not used for bookings or customer messages, whatever the hint on that screen says. Even a single-site pharmacy needs a location record.
Set the opening hours
The Opening hours 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.
When the branch takes appointments. Add a second interval for a lunchtime close.
Bank holidays, stock-takes, or dates with different hours. These win over the weekly hours.
The Opening hours tab: the weekly rows, and one closure below them.
- 1The weekly rows — one 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 (it starts as 14:00–18:00) 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: pick From and To, or a length, then whether it is Closed or has Different hours. The note is for your team; 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. Nothing stops you saving it like that; the only clue is No hours set in the list’s Hours column, and customers see “No times available on this day. Please try another date.” Times are worked out in WordPress’s own time zone (WordPress Settings › General), which should match the one under Settings › Region & currency.
Closures, training days and different hours
Special days sit under the weekly grid and handle bank holidays, stocktakes and refit weeks. Press Add time off and a closed day for today appears. Pick the dates, or a length (1 day, 2 days, Mon–Fri, 1 week, 2 weeks, each counted from the From date, so Mon–Fri simply means five days), then choose Closed or Different hours, which reveals a Monday–Sunday grid for that range only.
- A special day replaces the weekly hours for the dates it covers; the two are never merged. Different hours starts with every day off — a day left off is closed — 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 Staff tab (Who works here) and the Services tab (What is offered here) are tick lists, with Select all and Clear above them once there is more than one to pick from. They are the same links as a person's Works at tab and a service's 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 in the list, 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. Under Booking form › Layout, switch off Show location step or move it after the service in Steps & order. Hidden, Booked still picks the first qualifying branch.
- 2A branch card — the name, with the street address, town and postcode joined into the line beneath. Switch on Show a map on the location step under the same Layout tab 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 Street address field and nothing else — town and postcode are left out. If you want the full address in customer messages, put all of it in Street address.
Running more than one branch
- Branches cannot be dragged into an order. The booking form lists them in the order you created them; the admin list sorts by name, busiest this week or most staff, and its search box matches name, address, town, postcode, phone and email.
- 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 Diary to work one branch at a time.
Deactivating or deleting a branch
To take a branch off the booking form without losing anything, switch off Open for bookings under Status and save. An inactive branch does not count towards your plan’s locations, and switching it back on needs a free place again. It vanishes for customers at once but stays in the admin list, the diary filter and the booking editor's Branch dropdown — right for a temporary closure or a shop you are still fitting out.
The bin icon asks once (“Delete Bramhall branch?”, with Keep it or Delete location), 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.