Availability & Scheduling

Clients can only book a provider when that provider has availability — the days, times, and locations they're open to see clients. Availability is the engine behind your calendar: it decides which slots appear on your booking pages and in the client app, and no one can be booked until it's set. On this page you'll set each provider's weekly working hours, tie those hours to the right location, and tune the booking rules — how far ahead clients can book, how much notice you need, and how long each slot runs — so the slots clients see match how your clinic actually runs.

There are two places you'll work: Staff → the provider → Availability, where you set each person's weekly hours, and your services (under Memberships & Services), where you set the booking window, notice, and slot length that apply when clients schedule that service. Clinic-wide defaults live in Settings → Scheduling.

How availability drives what clients can book

Before you set anything, it helps to know how the pieces fit together, because a slot only appears to a client when every rule below agrees:

• A provider's weekly hours define the outer window — the recurring days and times that person works, at a given location. No hours means no bookable slots, full stop.
• The service's slot rules — its length and start-time cadence — carve that window into individual bookable slots (for example, 30-minute slots starting on the hour).
• The booking window and minimum notice trim the far and near ends — clients can't book further out than the window allows, or closer in than your notice requires.
• Buffers and existing appointments remove time that's already taken or reserved for prep.

What's left after all of that is exactly what a client sees as bookable. So if a provider "isn't showing any times," the cause is almost always missing hours, hours set at the wrong location, or a service with no slot length — all of which you set below.

Set a provider's weekly working hours

A provider's working hours are recurring weekly blocks — a day of the week plus a start and end time — that repeat every week until you change them. This is the first thing to set for anyone who takes appointments.

1. In the Provider web portal, open Staff, choose the provider, and select the Availability tab. You'll see their current weekly blocks (if any) laid out by day, with a running total of weekly hours at the top.

2. Click Add Weekly Time Slot to open the editor. Choose the Day (Monday through Sunday), then set the Start Time and End Time for that day — for example, Monday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The block you create repeats on that weekday every week.

3. Pick the Location this block belongs to (covered in the next section — this field matters more than it looks). When you're adding hours you can select more than one location at once, so the same block applies at each place the provider works.

4. If the provider keeps the same hours on other days, use Also apply to to copy this block to those days in one step, rather than re-entering it. Click Save, and the new hours appear on the provider's weekly grid and immediately open matching slots on your booking surfaces.

5. Repeat for split shifts or different hours on different days — a provider can have several blocks per day (for example, 9:00 AM–12:00 PM and 1:00 PM–5:00 PM to carve out lunch).

Time off and one-off changes

Weekly blocks are for the regular week. For a vacation, a one-time change, or "every other Friday," use the recurring availability rules on the same tab (which have a start/end date and an "every N weeks" repeat) or mark the time Unavailable — these override the weekly blocks for the dates they cover without disturbing the standing schedule.

Tie hours to a location (or all locations)

If your clinic has more than one location, every block of hours belongs to a place — that's how the platform knows to offer a client the Downtown provider at Downtown, not across town. A location here is one of the physical (or virtual) sites you set up during clinic setup.

When you edit an existing block, the Location dropdown includes an All locations option, and a recurring rule left on All locations applies at every site the provider is assigned to.

Choose the location deliberately — "All locations" is not a safe default

When you set hours without picking a specific location (leaving the block on All locations), those hours apply to every location, and the provider becomes bookable at sites they may never actually work. This is the most common scheduling mistake at multi-location clinics. Unless the provider genuinely covers all sites at those times, pick the specific location for each block. Leave it on All locations only when you truly mean "anywhere I work." Single-location clinics can ignore this — there's only one place to book.

Set the booking window, minimum notice, and buffers

These rules decide when clients can grab an open slot. You set them on the service (or membership) clients book, under Booking & Cancellation Policy — open Memberships & Services, choose the service, and scroll to that section.

• Booking window — how far in advance clients can schedule. This is the Maximum Booking Time field, set in days in advance; a client can book any open slot from now up to that many days out. Set it to 0 for unlimited (clients can book as far ahead as your calendar goes). A tighter window (say, 30 days) keeps the far future flexible; a wider one lets loyal clients lock in standing times.
• Minimum notice — how much lead time you require before an appointment starts. This is the Minimum Booking Time field, set in hours before the appointment. For example, 24 means a client can't book anything starting in the next 24 hours, protecting your team from last-minute surprises. Set it to 0 to allow same-moment booking.
• Buffers — padding automatically held before and/or after an appointment so back-to-back bookings don't collide, giving your team time to prep the room or write notes. A buffer shrinks the bookable window around each existing appointment without you blocking time by hand.

Every service needs a slot length

A service with no slot length (duration) set produces no bookable slots, even when the provider's hours and location are perfect. Open the service, set its duration and start-time cadence (whether slots start on the hour, on the half hour, or every 30 minutes), and save — the cadence is what turns a block of hours into the individual times clients tap to book.

Set clinic-wide scheduling defaults

For settings that apply across your whole clinic rather than one person or service, open Settings → Scheduling. This is where an admin sets the house defaults — the standard slot cadence, calendar behavior, and other scheduling preferences — so new staff and services start from sensible values instead of a blank slate.

Have Atlas set a provider's hours for you

You don't have to open the Availability tab for every schedule change. Tell Atlas — your AI assistant — the hours in plain language and it will set them for you.

"Set Dr. Rivera's hours to Monday through Thursday, 9 AM to 5 PM, at the Downtown location."

Atlas creates the matching weekly blocks so the provider becomes bookable at those times — because setting hours is exactly what turns a provider from "not bookable" into "on the calendar."

Ask Atlas — what it needs from you

To set a provider's working hours, have these ready:

• The provider's name — who the hours are for.
• The day(s) of the week — one day or a range (e.g. "Monday through Friday").
• A start time and an end time — the daily window (e.g. "9 AM to 5 PM").
• The location (optional) — which site these hours are at. If you don't say, the hours apply to all of that provider's locations, so name the location when it matters (see the location tip above).

Remember: setting hours is what makes a provider bookable. Until a provider has hours, no slots appear for them anywhere — so this is usually the first thing to ask Atlas to do for a new team member.

Next steps

• Make sure clients have something to book → confirm each service has a duration, price, and assigned providers in Memberships & Services.
• Add the rest of your team → give each provider their own weekly hours and locations in Staff & Permissions.
• See it from the client's side → open your booking page and confirm the right slots appear at the right location before you invite clients.