Breaks, holidays and time off

Lunch cover, annual leave, and one-off changes to a person's hours.

Nobody is available every hour their branch is open. Lunch, a training afternoon, a fortnight away — all of it is set on the person rather than the branch, and Booked keeps two separate tools for it. Here is how to use both, plus the shortcuts in the Diary and what customers see when the only qualified person is away.

Breaks and time off are different things

Both live on the same tab — Staff › the person › Hours & time off — but they behave differently. A break repeats every week and blocks part of a day. Time off closes whole dates. Pick the wrong one and you either close more than you meant to, or close nothing at all.

Nothing in this list repeats annually. Bank holidays, the week between Christmas and New Year, and seasonal cover all have to be entered again each year.

Block lunch and other recurring breaks

A break removes time exactly as a booking would, so the slot disappears from the customer's list. Press Add a break, pick the weekdays, set the times, and give it a label. A new break starts as Lunch, 13:00–14:00, Monday to Friday.

• 1The weekdays it repeats on — highlighted days are blocked. Pick at least one, or the break is thrown away on save.
• 2Start and end time — the block sits inside the working hours above it. An end time at or before the start is discarded on save.
• 3What it is — the caption on the hatched block drawn across the diary. Customers never see it, so write it for your team.
• 4Add a break — adds another row. One person can hold eight breaks at most; a ninth is dropped silently when you press Save changes.

A break that only runs for a few weeks

The Hours & time off tab only builds breaks that repeat forever. For a one-off or a temporary one — a meeting this afternoon, a training course every Wednesday through October — build it from the Diary instead. Switch to Day view (or pick one person in the staff filter), hover a gap in the person’s column, press +, and choose Break under What goes in this slot?

• 1What’s it for? — the label drawn on the hatched block in the diary, and the same label the break carries on the Hours & time off tab. Lunch, Admin, Training, Meeting and Cleaning fill it in one click.
• 2From and Until — the start is taken from the gap you clicked and the end starts an hour later. The length shows alongside; an end before the start cannot be saved.
• 3How often — Just this once, the default, blocks this date only. Every week repeats it on the weekdays you pick, from now on, until you remove it. Date range is the only place in Booked where a break can be limited to a window of dates.
• 4First day, Last day and Only on these days — the day buttons narrow the range to certain weekdays. The weekday you clicked starts highlighted; switch all seven off and every day in the range is blocked.
• 5The summary line — says in words exactly what will be blocked before you press Block this time.

Either way the break joins that person’s list, counts towards the limit of eight, and shows in the diary as a hatched block. It appears on their Hours & time off tab too, but that tab shows only its weekdays and times, not its dates. A one-off break stays on the list after its date has passed and still counts towards the eight, so clear old ones out now and then. To remove a break, click its block in the diary and choose Just that date or Every time it happens. A break belongs to one person, which is why you need Day view or a single person picked: Booked has to know whose time you are blocking.

Book annual leave and other time off

Holidays go in Time off and special days, the last card on the same Hours & time off tab. Each entry is a date range, and a range covering a single date is how you close one day.

1. Open the person and go to Hours & time offStaff, open their row, then the Hours & time off tab.
2. Press Add time offA new row appears for today’s date, set to Off.
3. Set the from and to datesThe last day of leave is included, so a fortnight off runs 14 Sep → 25 Sep, not 14 Sep → 26 Sep.
4. Leave it on Off, or switch to Different hoursOff closes every date in the range. Different hours gives that period its own weekly pattern instead.
5. Press Save changesNothing on any tab is written until you do. Switching tabs saves nothing, and Cancel or the back arrow discards the lot. Saving takes you back to the Staff list.

• 1The dates — From and To, inclusive, or a length in one click, counted from the From date. A fortnight off runs 14 Sep to 25 Sep, not to 26 Sep; 2 weeks from a Monday gives 14 days, to the Sunday.
• 2Off or Different hours — Off takes the person out of every slot on those dates, at every branch they work at. Different hours keeps them bookable, on the hours in the grid below.
• 3Why, for the team — an optional note: holiday, training, sick. It is for you: customers never see it, and it does not appear in emails.
• 4The different-hours grid — a Monday–Sunday pattern that applies only inside the range. It replaces the normal working hours rather than adding to them, and a day left off is closed — so re-enter every day you want open.
• 5Save changes — the same button appears at the top (Save) and the foot. Everything on the first four tabs is written in this one press; the Login tab has its own buttons.

One rule causes more confusion than any other here: only one special period applies to a given date. Where two ranges overlap, the one with the earlier start date wins and the other is ignored without a word. If you book leave for 14–25 September and later add reduced hours for 21 September to 2 October, the second entry does nothing at all for the overlapping week. Keep ranges apart, or edit the existing one.

Half days and one-off days

There is no half-day option. For a morning off, add time off set to Different hours covering that date and shorten the hours on the affected weekday — a Wednesday of 09:00–13:00, for instance. The grid is per weekday, not per date, so every Wednesday inside the range picks up the Wednesday row — there is no way to treat one date differently from the others. Keep the range tight if you only mean one day.

For a single date, the Diary is quicker. In Day view, each staff column header carries a Day off button. Press it and that date closes for that person, the column is shaded, and the closure appears on their Hours & time off tab. When that date is already closed for them, the button reads Working, and pressing it reopens the day.

What customers see when the only qualified person is away

Booked never announces an absence. When the last person who can perform a service at a branch is off, the times stop appearing — the customer's date shows "No times available on this day. Please try another date." Nothing in the admin warns you that a service has gone dark; the Staff list only shows the person’s time-off note in place of their hours on the day itself.

• Time off follows the person, not the branch. Leave taken by your only travel-health pharmacist closes travel health at every branch they work at, while other services at those branches carry on as normal.
• The same goes for their appointments: someone booked at 10:00 at the High Street shop is unavailable at 10:00 at Bramhall too.
• If your booking form uses the Dropdown date picker, empty days are not greyed out — a customer has to click each date to discover there is nothing. During a long absence, switching Booking form › Layout › Date picker to Calendar grid, Week or Next free saves them the hunt.
• For a sudden absence, switching off Active and bookable under Status on their Profile tab removes them from availability immediately. A customer who already had the page open may still see their old times, but the booking is refused at the last step with "Sorry, that time was just taken. Please pick another slot."

Planning cover across a team

Before you approve leave, check who is left. Open the Diary in Day view and set the location filter to the branch: you get one column per person who works there, with days off and time off shaded and breaks drawn as labelled strips. Step through the dates in question and you can see the cover thin out.

Two habits keep a rota honest. First, working hours are one weekly pattern that applies at every branch a person works at, so cover arranged by editing someone's hours changes them everywhere. Use Different hours time off for the fortnight instead, and their normal pattern returns on its own. Second, when a customer picks Any available, Booked assigns whoever is free first in alphabetical order by first name — so one person absorbs the load while cover is thin. The Busiest staff card on Insights ranks your eight busiest people over whatever period you pick, so you can see the split.

Finally, avoid two people editing the same record at once. Saving an employee replaces their whole record — hours, breaks, time off and both assignment lists — so a colleague working from older data overwrites your change without warning.