Help Center

Blackout periods

For the afternoon you're closed for a staff meeting, or the day you're shut for a holiday. Blackout periods block booking for a specific window without touching your normal business hours.

Where they live

AI Agent → Booking — the Blackout Periods card, with a week grid and a list of everything currently blocked underneath.

Two ways to add one

Drag on the grid — click at the start time and drag down to the end, then give it a label in the popover that appears and confirm. Selection snaps to 15-minute increments, so you can't end up with something starting at 2:07.

On a phone, dragging isn't reliable, so tap once to set the start and again to set the end. Same result, same save.

Use the "Add blackout period" button for anything the grid is awkward for — a date a few weeks out, or a multi-day closure:

1Click Add blackout period, top-right of the card.
2Leave All day off to pick an exact start and end date and time — this can span several days.
3Or turn All day on and pick a start and end date. Use the same date twice for a single day off.
4Add a label so you know what it was later, and save.

All-day means your whole day, in your timezone

An all-day blackout covers midnight to midnight in your business's timezone, not the timezone of whichever device you happened to enter it from. Entering "Christmas Day" while travelling gives you the same result as entering it at the shop.

What a blackout period does

Any slot that overlaps a blackout period — even partially — is not offered. A 60-minute service can't be booked at 1:30 if you're blacked out from 2:00, because it would run into it.

It's a plain overlap check applied alongside your business hours, availability rules and existing bookings. Nothing about it is a judgement call, so it behaves identically on every call.

What it doesn't do

It doesn't stop your agent answering. Calls during a blackout are still picked up, handled and logged as normal — the caller just can't book into that window.
It doesn't cancel existing appointments. Adding a period over a slot that's already booked blocks new bookings, but leaves the existing one alone. Cancel or move that one yourself from Appointments.
It doesn't repeat. Each period is a specific dated window. There's no "every Thursday 2–4pm" rule yet — a recurring pattern that's genuinely part of your week belongs in your business hours instead.

Editing and removing

Existing periods are listed under the grid with their date range, time range and label. Delete one from that list and it takes effect immediately.

There's no way to resize a period by dragging its edges on the grid — to change a window, delete it and add the new one.

Blackout periods vs. business hours

If you're editing your business hours to cover a one-off closure, use a blackout period instead. Hours are your normal weekly pattern and should stay true; blackouts are the exceptions, and they expire on their own with nothing to remember to undo.