MS Bookings-Recurring Availabilty

Question

When using MS Bookings, is there any way to set up staff availability by using recurring MONTHLY appointments rather than recurring weekly appointments?

Answer 1

Hi @Stacey Barnes,

Thank you for posting your question.

Based on the current Microsoft Bookings documentation I reviewed, there is no built-in option to configure staff availability with a recurring monthly pattern. For staff availability, the article describes using either Use business hours or custom availability, and the examples are based on day-of-week availability rather than monthly recurrence.

For service availability, Microsoft documents three supported options: Bookable when staff are free, Not bookable, and Custom hours. The key point is that Custom hours are described as a specific weekly schedule, not a monthly recurring schedule.

Therefore, if your goal is to have availability that repeats monthly rather than weekly, current Microsoft Bookings documentation does not describe that as a supported feature.

As a workaround, you can consider one of these approaches:

1/ Use Set availability for a different date range for exception periods

• You can enter a start date and end date for a period and apply a different availability setting for that range.
• This can be useful if one month or a specific period needs different availability than the normal weekly setup.

2/ Use Not bookable for periods when a service should not be offered

• If the requirement is to stop bookings during certain periods, by using a different date range and setting that period to Not bookable.
• Kindly follow the article for more details: Block availability during certain dates

Please note that these workarounds are mainly manual exceptions, not a true monthly recurring availability solution. Set availability for a different date range works for a specific start and end period, so it can help with one-time monthly or special-period changes, but it is not documented as a recurring monthly rule. Likewise, Not bookable can block bookings for that defined period, but it also does not create an automatic monthly recurrence, and the service can still be booked manually from the calendar if needed.

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If this monthly recurring behavior would be valuable for your scenario, you may also want to submit feedback for future product development. Feedback submitted through Microsoft’s feedback channels | Bookings is a good way to let the product team know there is demand for this type of scheduling option. This is especially helpful when the current behavior appears to be by design rather than a documented configuration issue.

Thank you for your understanding. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out.

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Answer 2

Microsoft Bookings supports three main patterns for service availability:

1. Bookable when staff are free (driven by staff availability)
2. Not bookable
3. Custom hours with a weekly schedule

Custom hours are defined on a weekly basis, and additional date ranges can be added to override the general (weekly) availability for specific periods such as holidays or special events. The configuration model in the provided documentation is weekly plus date-range overrides; it does not describe a way to define recurring monthly availability patterns (for example, “first Monday of every month”) as a built-in option.

Therefore, recurring availability in Bookings is based on weekly schedules, optionally adjusted by specific date ranges, not recurring monthly rules.

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References:

• Configure service availability in Microsoft Bookings
• Adding staff availability in Microsoft Bookings
• Microsoft Bookings
• Shared Bookings Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
• Manage the Bookings app in Microsoft Teams