Recurring Availability is based on a day of the week, and the hours you set for that day repeat week to week. For example, adding Saturday availability from 10am - 4pm applies to all Saturdays.
If you would like to set your availability to change at a specific date in the future, you will need to use a combination of recurring availability and recurring blocked time:
Editing Recurring Availability
To begin, you will want to first add recurring availability to encompass all of the times and days that you wish to be available both before and after the availability change.
- For example, if you are currently available on Tuesday's and Thursday's but wish to change your availability to Monday's and Wednesday's at a future date, you will need to add recurring availability for Monday - Thursday within your account.
Next, you will need to use the repeating blocked time to block off Monday's and Wednesday's up to the date that you wish for your availability to change.
- For example, if you wish for your availability to update on January 1st, you would create a blocked time event that begins on the next Monday and recurs every Monday until 1/1 and another blocked time event that begins on the next Wednesday and repeats every Wednesday until 1/1.
Then, you would need add recurring blocked time to Tuesdays and Thursdays that begins on the date you want your availability to change and ends far enough in the future that it will cover the time period set under the setting "How many days in the future can appointments be booked?" in your Online Booking Rules.
- For example, if your setting for "How many days in the future can appointments be booked?" is set to 90 days and your availability is set to change on January 1st, you will need to add a repeating blocked time event that begins on the first Tuesday after 1/1 and recurs every Tuesday for at least 90 days. The same will need to be done for every Thursday after 1/1 as well.
Once these steps have been completed, clients booking on your website will only see availability on Tuesday's and Thursday's until 1/1. If they attempt to book an appointment with you after 1/1, they will only see availability on Monday's and Wednesday's.
The last step in this process will require one final update to your Recurring Availability. On the date that your availability is set to change, you can remove the recurring availability for the days that you were available before the change.
- For example, on 1/1 you can adjust your recurring availability and remove the availability for Tuesday's and Thursday's completely. You can also then delete the recurring blocks that you created for Tuesday's and Thursday's as those days will no longer be open for bookings.
This same process can be used for changes to times in each day that you are available. Meaning, if you are currently available from 9am-1pm, but wish to open up availability in the future from 9am-4pm, you would add your recurring availability to that day of the week from 9am-4pm, and then block off 1pm-4pm until the date you wish for your availability to change.
In Summary, to update your availability to change at a future date:
- Update your availability to encompass all of your open availability both before and after the schedule change.
- Block off the times/days that you are not available before the schedule change.
- Block off the times/days that you are not available after the schedule change.
- On the date of the schedule change, remove all of these blocked times and update your availability to reflect your new schedule.