Set the hours you actually work (and let clients book around them)
Weekends only, evenings after a day job, three long days and four off. Your booking calendar should match your real life, not a default nine to five. Here is how to set opening hours per day, per person, with buffers and notice that protect your time.
Plenty of the people who run a business on Bookatu do not work a standard week. A photographer shoots weddings on weekends and edits midweek. A trainer takes early mornings and evenings around a day job. A weekend market stall, a side business, a studio open three long days and shut for four. The booking page should bend to that, not force you into office hours you do not keep.
Set hours per day, not one blanket rule
Opening hours are set a day at a time. Each day has its own switch and its own start and finish, so you are not stuck applying one rule to the whole week. Want Saturday and Sunday open from eight, and Monday through Friday closed entirely? Turn five days off and set two. The calendar immediately stops offering the days you do not work, and a client looking for a Tuesday simply will not see one.
If a time is not one you would happily say yes to, it should not be on the page. The fix is in your hours, not in declining later.
Each person has their own days
If you have a team, the business hours are the outer edge and each person narrows it from there. The studio might be open six days, while one photographer only works weekends and an assistant only covers weekdays. Set each person's working days and the calendar lines them up for you, so a client booking that photographer is offered weekend slots, and the assistant's weekdays stay separate. Nobody gets booked on a day they do not work.
Give yourself room with buffers and notice
Two small settings save a lot of stress. A buffer adds quiet time after each booking, for packing down, travelling to the next location, or resetting the room, and it means the next client cannot land right on top of the last one. A minimum notice sets how far ahead someone has to book, so you are not pinged for an appointment starting in fifteen minutes while you are still at the previous one. Set both to match how you actually run a day.
The point of all of this is quiet. When your hours match your life, the booking page does the saying-no for you, gently and in advance, and every time it offers is a time you are genuinely glad to take.
