Managing Your Availability
Managing Your Availability
Category: Groomers Reading time: 3 min
Your availability controls when clients can book appointments with you. If your availability is set correctly, your calendar fills with appointments at the right times. If it's wrong or missing, clients either can't book you at all — or get booked into slots you're not actually available for.
This guide covers how to view and update your availability, block time off, and understand how your schedule interacts with the shop's overall booking calendar.
Where to Find Your Availability Settings
- Log in to your specialist portal
- Go to My Profile
- Find the Availability section
- Here you'll see your working days and hours
Depending on your shop's setup, your owner may have pre-configured your availability when they set up your profile. Always verify it matches your actual schedule before your first week.
Setting Your Working Days and Hours
For each day of the week, you can toggle availability on or off and set a start and end time.
To update:
- Toggle the day on if you work that day
- Set your start time (when you arrive and are ready for appointments)
- Set your end time (your last possible appointment start or your closing time — check with your owner on convention)
- Toggle days off that you don't work
- Click Save
Changes take effect on your storefront immediately. If a client was about to book a slot you just removed, that slot disappears from the booking options.
⚠️ Set your hours accurately. If your end time is set to 6:00 PM but you actually stop taking appointments at 4:30 PM to allow for cleanup and a final groom, set 4:30 PM (or ask your owner to set a buffer in the service durations). Clients who book a 90-minute service at 4:45 PM are creating a problem for you and them.
Blocking Time Off
If you have a day off, a holiday, or a personal commitment coming up, you need to block that time so clients can't book into it.
For a full day off:
- Go to My Profile → Availability
- Toggle off the specific day
- Save
For a recurring change (e.g., you're switching from 5 days to 4 days permanently): Update your weekly availability days to reflect the new schedule.
For a one-time block (a single day off within a week you normally work): Toggle that specific day off temporarily, then re-enable it after the day passes.
💡 Plan ahead. Block your time off as early as possible — ideally as soon as you know about it. A client who books a slot before you block it creates a cancellation that could have been avoided. Last-minute blocks still work, but the earlier the better.
How Your Availability Affects the Booking Calendar
Your availability is one of several factors the booking system uses to generate available slots for clients:
Factor | What It Does |
Your working days and hours | Sets the window in which slots can appear |
Existing confirmed bookings | Blocks time already taken by appointments |
Service duration | Prevents slots that would extend past your end time |
Shop hours | Your slots will never extend beyond the shop's closing time |
The result is a set of real, available booking windows that clients see when they visit the storefront and choose you. If all your slots are taken on a given day, no new bookings can be made for that day — which is working correctly.
If You Can't Edit Your Availability
In some shop setups, the owner manages availability on behalf of specialists. If you open your profile and the availability section is view-only (you can see it but can't edit it), your owner controls those settings.
What to do: Contact your shop owner with your requested changes. They can update your availability from the owner dashboard immediately.
Availability vs. Blocking Specific Appointments
Availability controls your overall schedule — the days and hours you work. It doesn't let you block a single hour on a Tuesday afternoon while keeping the rest of the day open.
For fine-grained time blocking (e.g., blocking 2–4 PM for a team meeting), that level of granularity currently requires the owner to manually adjust the schedule from their dashboard. Flag it to them with enough notice and they can handle it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I updated my availability but the storefront still shows old slots.
Try a hard refresh on the storefront page (Ctrl + Shift + R / Cmd + Shift + R). Availability changes are immediate on the backend but your browser may be showing a cached version. If the issue persists after refreshing, contact your owner to confirm the change saved correctly.
Q: A client booked me on a day I marked as unavailable. How?
This can happen if a booking was made before you blocked the day, or if a booking was added manually by your owner. Check with your owner about the booking — they can reschedule or cancel it from their dashboard.
Q: Can I set different hours on different days?
Yes. Each day of the week has its own start and end time. You can set Monday 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM and Wednesday 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM independently.
Q: My owner sets my schedule — do I need to do anything here?
If your owner manages your availability, you don't need to change anything. Just verify the current settings reflect your actual hours and flag any errors to your owner.
Related articles:
Was this article helpful?
Still need help? Browse all categories