Cannot choose "custom hours" in Microsoft Bookings

Question

custom hours in Bookings not allowing. when selected, just goes back to the other options. Cannot see any Business hours on the Business information dropdown selection.

Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi @Stacey Seldon,

Good day and thank you for explaining your concern in such detail.

When Custom hours revert to other options and Business hours do not appear under Business information, it typically indicates that valid business hours have not been defined at the business level in Microsoft Bookings.

In Microsoft Bookings, Custom hours become available only when the service is properly configured and when the staff members assigned to the service support custom availability.

First, please set up your Business hours by opening Microsoft Bookings and navigating to Business information, where you should configure the working days along with the start and end times, then select Save. Once the Business hours are saved successfully, the Custom hours option will remain available and will no longer revert automatically, as this dependency is part of how Microsoft Bookings manages availability across services and staff schedules.

Then you can try the following steps to configure your booking service and make the custom hours option available:

1. Edit the service

• Go to Services and select the affected service, then open Availability options or create a new service in Microsoft Bookings.
• From the left‑hand menu, select Services.

• Next, choose Add new service.

• Fill in the necessary information and assign staff members.

2. Add a specific date range (if applicable)

If needed, configure a specific date range for the service to control when the availability rules apply.

3. Select the appropriate availability mode

Within the selected date range, you should be able to choose one of the following availability options:

• Bookable when staff are free
• Not bookable
• Custom hours

If Custom hours is unavailable or grayed out, it indicates that a prerequisite configuration is preventing it from being selected.

4. Review staff availability settings

For each staff member assigned to the service:

• Go to Staff and select the staff member
• Open Edit staff
• Ensure Use business hours is enabled

Microsoft Bookings requires staff availability to be defined before a service can override it with custom hours.

• Save

If staff availability is not set correctly, custom hours will not activate.

If the booking page time zone differs from the public booking page time zone, custom availability ranges or available time slots may not display correctly.

• Go to Booking page > Region and time zone
• Confirm that the time zone matches the one shown on your public booking link

Additionally, some users have found it helpful to temporarily set the business hours to the minimum and maximum available range and then reconfigure the desired hours afterward. You may want to try this as a workaround.

 

I hope this information is helpful. Should you have any further questions or need additional assistance, feel free to reach out.    

Thank you again for your understanding and cooperation. 

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