Business hours
This page is applicable for Bookings 2.0 version only. To view the equivalent Bookings 1.0 version, please check this page.In a nutshell
Business hours define the default days and hours when your organization is available for bookings, with flexibility to handle exceptions like holidays or extended hours.
Business hours define the default days and hours when your organization is available for bookings, with flexibility to handle exceptions like holidays or extended hours.
1. Overview
Business hours define when your organization is available to accept appointments. They set the default availability for your organization. They also ensure that bookings are accepted only during intended working periods. In Zoho Bookings, business hours represent the organization-level availability that applies across your account. They act as the default hours for user and event type availability and help maintain consistent scheduling across your organization.
Business hours are managed using two components:
Business hours are managed using two components:
- Available times: These define the regular working days and hours of your organization, such as Monday to Friday from 9 AM to 6 PM. Appointments can be booked only during these hours.
- Date overrides: These allow you to make temporary exceptions to the regular working hours by adding extra availability or blocking time for specific dates or date ranges, such as holidays, extended hours, or special business needs.
Example: If your organization works Monday to Friday from 9 AM to 6 PM, you can set these as your business hours so all users are available during this time. If you later need to open bookings on a Saturday or block a public holiday, you can use date overrides without changing the regular working hours.
2. Steps to define business hours
- Click the Admin Center icon
in the top-right corner of the Bookings menu bar.
- Select Business Hours under Organization. You can set available times and date overrides on this page.
- Click Customize under Available times, and select the open hours for each day of the week. To make a day unavailable, uncheck that particular day's checkbox.
Info: Apply to All option applies the time set in one day to all the other selected days. You can also add a break time/lunchtime by selecting the + icon beside the required days and editing the available hours. For example, 9am - 1pm and 2pm - 6pm. - Click Save. The business hours will be added.
To add exceptions to the business hours, click Date Overrides to add additional available and unavailable hours.
3. Date Overrides
Date overrides let you temporarily add or block availability for specific dates without modifying your regular business hours. This helps you manage holidays, extended hours, or special business requirements.
Steps to add date overrides
- Click Add under the Date Overrides section. A pop-up window will appear.
- Choose Additional availability or Unavailability.
- Choose one of the following options from the dropdown in the top-right corner of the pop-up.
a. Specific dates – Select this option to override the business hours for individual dates. Enable the All day checkbox to apply the override for the entire day.
b. Date range – Select this option to override the business hours for a continuous range of dates.
c. Custom range - Select this option to override the business hours for a continuous range of dates by defining one or more chunks of hours for each day. Enable the All day checkbox to apply the override for the entire day. - Enter a reason for the override and click Apply.
3.1 Manage date overrides
- View date override: This section displays all date overrides added to the business hours. You can view both additional availability and unavailability, along with the specific dates and time ranges to which they apply.
- Edit date override: You can edit an existing date override using the edit option
shown next to it. Any updates made will be applied to the business hours and will automatically reflect across all users and even types that follow these business hours.
- Delete date override: You can delete an existing date override using the delete option
shown next to it. Once deleted, the override will be removed from the business hours and no longer apply to any users or even types.
4. Daylight savings limitation
Zoho Bookings has certain limitations handling date and time, which could affect booking appointments globally during the daylight savings period that happens in the Pacific Timezone.
- It is not possible to capture the Date-time value during the following duration, so there is a possibility that bookings cannot be made.
- On the DST start date of Daylight saving time, which happens between 2 am - 3 am.
- Similarly, on the DST end date of Daylight saving time, which happens between 1 am - 2 am.
- This behavior is universal across Zoho Bookings. Please be informed about the equivalent daylight savings change time for your time zone. We're working on this limitation and will get this fixed soon.
Year | DST Start Date | DST End Date |
2022 | March 13 | November 6 |
2023 | March 12 | November 5 |
2024 | March 10 | November 3 |
2025 | March 9 | November 2 |