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 on the Calendar and what customers see when the only qualified person is away.

Breaks and time off are different things

Both live on the same tab — Business › Employees › the person › Times — 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.

• 1The weekdays it repeats on — highlighted days are blocked, and a new break arrives set to Mon–Fri 13:00–14:00. A break with no weekday highlighted is thrown away on save, without a message.
• 2Start and end time — the block sits inside the working hours above it. An end time at or before the start is also discarded on save.
• 3Label — trimmed to 40 characters and used only as the caption on the strip drawn across your admin Calendar. 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 employee.

A break that only runs for a few weeks

The Times tab only builds breaks that repeat forever. For a temporary one — a training course every Wednesday through October, a delivery run while a colleague is away — build it from the Calendar instead. Hover the gap between two blocks in Day or Week view, press +, and choose Break from Add to this slot.

• 1What's it for? — the same label as on the Times tab. It arrives pre-filled with "Lunch".
• 2Starts and Ends (max time) — the start is taken from the gap you clicked and the end defaults to an hour later. If the end is not after the start you will see "The end time must be after the start."
• 3When — Repeat weekly behaves like a Times-tab break and runs indefinitely. Specific dates is the only place in Booked where a break can be limited to a date window.
• 4From date, To date and Only on (optional) — the day buttons narrow the range to certain weekdays. Leave all seven off and every date in the range is blocked.

Either way the break joins that person's existing list, counts towards the limit of eight, and appears afterwards on their Times tab. One thing to watch: Break only appears on the + menu when Booked knows whose time you are blocking — a named column in Day view, or the All employees filter narrowed to one person. In Week view with every employee showing, you are offered only Appointment.

Book annual leave and other time off

Holidays go in Time off & special days, further down the same Times 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 TimesBusiness › Employees, click their row, then the Times tab.
2. Press + Add special dayA new row appears set to today → today and Off (time 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 (time off), or switch to Custom hoursOff closes every date in the range. Custom hours gives that period its own weekly pattern instead.
5. Press Save employeeNothing on any tab is written until you do. Switching tabs saves nothing, and Cancel or the back arrow discards the lot.

• 1The date range — from and to, inclusive. A range whose end date falls before its start is saved without complaint but never matches a date, so it quietly does nothing.
• 2Off (time off) or Custom hours — Off takes the person out of every slot on those dates, at every branch they work at. Custom hours keeps them bookable, on the hours in the grid below.
• 3Note (optional) — free text up to 255 characters. It is for you: customers never see it, and it does not appear in emails.
• 4The custom-hours grid — a Monday–Sunday pattern that applies only inside the range. It replaces the normal working hours rather than adding to them, and starts with every day switched off — so re-enter every day you want open. Left untouched, it closes the whole range.
• 5Save employee — the same buttons appear at the top and bottom of the editor. Everything on all five tabs is written in this one press.

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 a special day in Custom hours mode 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 Calendar 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 Times tab noted "Day off". 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." and nothing in the admin flags it.

• 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 or Next free saves them the hunt.
• For a sudden absence, setting the person's Status to Inactive on their General 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 Calendar 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 a Custom hours special day 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. Analytics › Staff ranks your busiest eight over any date range, 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.