If customers can't see the times you expect, this is where the answer usually is. The most common cause is a misunderstanding worth clearing up straight away.
Opening hours don't control service bookings
This surprises nearly everyone.
Your shifts decide when services can be booked. Not your opening hours. Someone with no shift on Tuesday is unbookable on Tuesday, however wide your opening hours are — and someone whose shift runs to 11pm is bookable until 11pm even if the business "closes" at 5.
Opening hours do three other jobs:
- They're the hours shown to customers on your public page.
- They're the default offered when you set up a team member's shifts.
- They do control anything under Bookable Types — courts, lounges, studios — because those aren't tied to a person. An individual one can be given its own schedule when it differs.
BookUp says this on the screen itself:
So if a customer can't book a service, changing your opening hours will not fix it. Go to shifts.
What actually decides a service slot
| Layer | Scope | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Shift pattern | Person | Is this team member normally working? |
| Single shift | Person, one date | Is this specific day different? |
| Holiday | Person | Is this team member off? |
| Closure | Business, optionally per location | Is the business closed? |
On top of those: existing bookings and their buffers, your minimum-notice and how-far-ahead settings, and — where a service has Requirements — whether the room, equipment or court it needs is free too.
The rota
Team → Shifts shows everyone's week, with hours totalled per person.
Click any day to act on it. On a day with no shift you get:
On a day that already has one, you also get Edit single shift and View bookings:
Those three options are the whole thing in a nutshell: change one day, change the usual pattern, or book time off.
Shift patterns
A pattern is someone's normal working week — which days they work, start and end times, and optional breaks.
Two settings in the box on the left do more than you'd think.
Shift pattern type
Patterns don't have to repeat weekly:
Choose "Every 2 weeks" and you get two weeks to fill in, alternating — the header changes to Week 1 of 2, Week 2 of 2. This is how you handle alternate Saturdays or a four-on-four-off rota. Fill in both weeks: if you leave them identical you've just made a normal weekly pattern the long way round.
Start date
The start date is when the new pattern takes effect, and for a rotating pattern it's also the anchor that decides which week is "week 1". Change the start date and the whole rotation shifts with it.
Because changes apply from that date forward, you can build next month's rota now without disturbing this month.
Changing one day
Use Add single shift for a one-off — a late start, an extra Sunday, a half day. It applies to that date only and leaves the pattern alone.
A single shift beats the pattern, and it can add a day someone doesn't normally work. So covering one Sunday doesn't mean restructuring anyone's rota.
Rule of thumb: single shift for a one-off, pattern for anything that repeats.
Holidays and closures
Holidays are one person off. Add one from the same day menu, or under Team. Booked holidays show on the rota in place of that day's shift, marked as Holiday, so a glance at the week tells you who's away.
Closures are the business shut — bank holidays, a refit, a staff day. They can apply to the whole business or only to specific locations, so closing one branch leaves the other open.
Both can be a full day or part of one. A full day removes the day entirely; a partial one removes only those hours.
When bookings already exist
Changing a rota can strand bookings made under the old schedule. BookUp checks before saving and tells you:
Auto cancel cancels the affected bookings for you. Resolve later keeps them and marks them conflicted, so you can deal with them in your own time.
Anything you defer waits under Bookings → Conflicted:
Check that list after any significant rota change. A conflicted booking is still in the customer's diary — it doesn't resolve itself.
Why a customer can't see a time
Roughly in order of likelihood:
- Nobody is working then. No shift covers that time — or, with a rotating pattern, you're looking at the wrong week.
- A holiday or closure covers it. A full day removes it entirely.
- It's already booked, or a nearby booking's buffer overlaps it. Buffers pad each booking, so the real gap is smaller than it looks.
- It's inside your minimum notice, or beyond how far ahead you take bookings. Both are in Service Settings — Catalogue → Services, then the cog at the top of the page.
- Something it requires is busy. If the service has Requirements — a room, a set of beds, a court — the person and that thing must both be free.
- The team member isn't assigned to that location.
- Online bookings are switched off — see "Accept bookings from clients" in Service Settings (Catalogue → Services, then the cog).
Not on this list: your opening hours. They don't affect service availability.
To check what customers actually see, open your public booking page rather than the Planner — the Planner shows your internal view, which includes times customers can't book.
Getting it right
- Give every bookable team member a pattern. No pattern means no availability at all — the single most common cause of an empty booking page.
- Set opening hours too, but for the right reasons: they're what customers see, and they drive resource bookings.
- Single shift for one-offs, pattern for anything repeating.
- Fill in every week of a rotating pattern.
- After a rota change, check Bookings → Conflicted.
- Sanity-check by opening your public booking page and trying to book yourself.