Staff Hours, Time Off and Holidays

Customers can only book a time when someone is free to take it. Core Bookings works that out from each staff member’s weekly hours, then removes date-specific changes, time off, existing bookings and anything busy in a connected calendar. Get the hours right once and every service that person hosts follows them.

Staff are existing WordPress users. Each one has a single schedule that all their services share, in their own timezone.

Add a Staff Member

1. Go to Bookings → Staff and click Add staff.
2. Pick the account in WordPress user. The list shows up to 50 users, so use Find a WordPress user and Search users on a larger site.
3. Choose the Timezone their schedule follows. You can search by city, region or UTC offset.
4. Set the weekly hours (below) and click Save availability.

Two checkboxes at the bottom of the profile matter for managers:

• Available for bookings: untick it to pause a person without deleting anything. Paused staff show a paused badge and aren’t offered to customers.
• Allow this staff member to manage their own availability: lets that person edit their own hours, date-specific hours, time off and holiday imports. Without it, only managers can change the schedule.

Set Weekly Hours

Under Weekly availability, tick Available for each working day and enter a start and end time. A day left unticked stays closed.

• Click Add shift for a split day, such as 09:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 18:00. Use Remove shift to drop one.
• Up to ten shifts per day. Shifts can’t overlap, and each must start and end on the same day.
• Times are in the staff member’s timezone. Customers see them converted to the timezone picked on the booking form, which starts at their device’s timezone.

Date-Specific Hours and Time Off

Weekly hours cover the normal week. These two sections handle the exceptions:

Section	What it does
Date-specific hours	Replaces the weekly hours on one date. Click Add date-specific hours, then add another row with the same date for a second shift.
Time off	Closes whole days. Click Add date range and fill From and To. Both days are included, so a single day uses the same date twice.

Time off always wins. If a date has both date-specific hours and time off, it’s closed.

Preview Before You Save

Changing hours never moves or cancels an existing appointment. To see what a change would touch, click Preview changes instead of saving. The Change preview checks up to 200 upcoming reservations and lists any that would fall outside the new hours.

• Reason for change (optional) is saved with the edit and shows in Revision history below the form.
• If someone else saved the same profile while you were editing, your save is refused and your unsaved draft is shown, so nobody overwrites anyone by accident.

Import Public Holidays

Typing every bank holiday by hand is slow and easy to get wrong. Core Bookings has no holiday list built in, but it can read one from any iCalendar source, such as a national holiday calendar from a provider you trust.

1. In a staff profile, click Import public holidays from a calendar…
2. Paste a Calendar address (https:// or webcal://), or use Or upload an .ics file (up to 1 MB).
3. Choose the From and To dates (up to three years) and the Staff. Managers can pick All staff; staff can import only for themselves.
4. Click Preview holidays. Nothing is saved yet.
5. Review each row. The Effect column says Will close, notes dates that are already closed, and warns when appointments stay booked and need rescheduling. Untick any date you want to keep open.
6. Tick Also close dates that have date-specific hours if those should close too, then click Close the chosen dates.

Each date closes in each staff member’s own timezone, and the import is recorded in revision history. A preview expires after 30 minutes, and a profile edited after its preview is skipped and reported so you can preview again.

Good to Know

• Holiday imports read all-day events only. Timed events, and repeat rules that aren’t yearly, are skipped and counted in the preview.
• One import closes at most 366 dates.
• Appointments already booked on a closed date stay booked. Reschedule or cancel them in Appointments.
• Busy time in a connected calendar also blocks times. See Connect Google Calendar, Google Meet and Zoom.
• Staff with their own availability can also edit hours from their phone in the staff portal.