Seasonal and day-limited services

Offer something only in flu season, only on Tuesdays, or for one clinic that runs once.

Plenty of what a pharmacy sells is not on offer all year, or every day. Flu vaccinations run autumn to spring; ear syringing might only happen on the days your trained pharmacist is in. Booked handles both from one card on the service: a list of weekdays it can be booked on, and date ranges that either come back every year on their own or run once.

Where the window lives

Go to Services, click the service, and open the Availability tab. One card, When can this be booked?, holds both restrictions. The note underneath is worth reading twice: "Restrict this service to certain days or a time of year. Leave everything open for no restriction. (This is on top of your staff and location opening hours.)" All six tabs are a single form — moving between them saves nothing, and Save service writes the lot at once.

• 1Availability — the second tab across the top of the service editor. Nothing on it is saved until you press Save service.
• 2Available on these days — seven buttons, Monday first, as everything in Booked is. Dark means bookable; here Sunday is switched off.
• 3The hint underneath — the only reliable way to tell whether a restriction is live. It reads "Only the highlighted days can be booked." when one is, and "All days can be booked." when there is none.
• 4One date range — a month and a day at each end, then Every year or a specific year for a one-off period. The bin removes it, and the line underneath spells the range out: “1 Oct – 31 Mar, every year”, or “Pick both ends of the range.” while one end is missing.
• 5Add date range — adds another row. Booked keeps up to 24 ranges per service, so a clinic running in several short bursts is fine.

Limiting a service to certain days

Switch off any day you do not run the service and the hint flips to "Only the highlighted days can be booked." Ear syringing on Tuesdays and Thursdays means highlighting those two and nothing else.

The catch is at the other end. Switching all seven back on is stored as "no restriction" rather than a list of seven days — the same thing in practice, but it means a brand-new service with no restriction also renders with every button lit. Read the hint rather than the buttons.

Setting a season, or a one-off period

A date range is a month and a day at each end, followed by a year menu. Leave the year on Every year and the range comes back on its own: set flu jabs to 1 Oct – 31 Mar once and the service reappears each October without you touching it. A range whose start falls after its end wraps across New Year, so 1 October to 31 March behaves as you would read it.

For a clinic that runs once, pick a year instead of Every year. The range then covers those dates only and never comes round again. Booked offers this year and the next three. If the range crosses New Year, the end is moved into the following year for you, and the line under the row shows both years, for example “1 Oct 2026 – 31 Mar 2027”.

Add several ranges when the service runs in bursts: a date only has to fall inside one of them to pass.

The Day dropdown offers 1 to 31 whichever month you pick. On an every-year range, 31 February is accepted and behaves as the end of February, though 28 is clearer to whoever reads the setting next. On a range with a year picked, an impossible date such as 31 February or 31 April makes Booked throw the whole range away when you save.

How a window narrows what you already offer

Availability windows only ever take time away. They cannot open a day the branch is shut or a member of staff is not working — ticking Sunday changes nothing if nobody works Sundays. Booked tests the date against the window first, before it looks at anyone's hours. If it passes, the usual layers apply: branch opening hours, then each qualified person's working hours cut down to the branch's, then bookings, breaks and the least notice you ask for.

• 1The seasonal range — tested first. Every date in November sits inside 1 Oct – 31 Mar, so the whole week passes.
• 2The weekday allow-list — Sunday is not highlighted, so it returns nothing before any hours are read.
• 3Branch opening hours — Bramhall is shut on Sundays anyway. Window and branch agreeing is normal and harmless.
• 4Staff working hours — Priya is the only vaccinator on this service's Staff tab, and she works Tuesday to Thursday. Monday, Friday and Saturday go because of her rota, not the Availability tab.
• 5What is left — three days. Adding Sunday back to the allow-list would not produce one extra time, because the layers below are still closed.

What customers see out of season

On a date the service is not offered, the form has no times to show. It never explains why, and there is no "back in October" message anywhere.

• 1The Sunday column — dimmed all month, because Sunday is switched off on the service. A dimmed day cannot be clicked, and nothing says why.
• 2Previous and next month — customers page through the months with the arrows. Go back to September and every day is dimmed, because the season has not started. This is the month people ring about.
• 31 October — the season opens and normal times appear, with a dot under each day that has any, and nobody switching anything on.

How plainly customers can see a closed season depends on the Date picker chosen at Booking form › Layout:

• Calendar grid. Loads the month on screen and dims every day with nothing free, as above. The clearest choice for a seasonal service.
• Week. Seven days at a time, with the number of free slots under each and a dash on empty days. Customers page forward a week at a time.
• Next free. Lists the first five days with times in the next two weeks. Out of season it says “No availability in the next two weeks. Please contact us.” — expected in August for a service starting in October, not a fault.
• Dropdown (the default). Loads one day at a time and greys nothing out, so a customer in September picks date after date and reads “No times available on this day. Please try another date.” each time. If people complain about hunting for a date, switch the layout.

A booking link opens a shorter card that only looks about 40 days ahead, so a link to a service whose season is further away than that shows “No times available just now.”

When a service vanishes and you did not mean it to

An availability window is one of several ways a service goes quiet with no warning anywhere in the admin. Work down this list:

• Read the hint on the Availability tab. "Only the highlighted days can be booked." means a restriction is live. If a range row has gone missing since you saved, it was incomplete.
• Check today's date against your ranges. A range that wraps New Year is fine, but one typed back to front for a season that does not wrap will exclude most of the year.
• Check Status is Active on the General tab. Only active services reach the form.
• Check the Staff and Locations tabs. A service reaches the booking form only when it is Active, linked to at least one branch, and at least one active staff member is linked to both the service and that same branch — the last part is set on the staff member’s Works at tab.
• Check nobody overwrote those two lists. Saving a service replaces both outright, and the same links are editable from Staff and Locations — whoever saves last wins.

Related: A service isn’t on the booking form · Booking rules and appointment IDs · Layout, steps and pickers.