Automatic public holidays: your booking page now closes by itself on the days you do not open

It is the evening before a bank holiday and a booking comes in for tomorrow at ten. You are not opening, your client has not noticed, and neither has your booking page, because nobody told it that day was a holiday. Now you have to message them, apologise and find another time.

It is the kind of mistake that does not depend on you but on a calendar that has to be filled in every year, by hand, and that you only need to forget once. From this week Calendace does it on its own. Here is what changes, how to switch it on and which decisions are still yours.

How it worked until now

Until now a public holiday was just another absence. You went to Time off, created “Easter Monday”, full day, and picked the professionals it affected. It works, but it has three drawbacks we see in almost every business.

The first is that it has to be done every January, when the calendar comes out, and with a dozen holidays per professional it is easy to miss one. The second is that holidays move: Easter shifts, holidays that fall on a Sunday move to the Monday in many places, and every region has its own. The third is the sneakiest: if someone new joins the team in March, their holidays do not exist, because absences are created per person.

Any of the three ends in the same scene: a booking on a day you do not open.

What changes: one switch

In Settings there is now a new tab, Public holidays. It has a switch and, below it, the list of holidays for the year.

When you switch it on, Calendace takes the country and region from your business address and works out the public holidays of your area: the national ones and the regional ones, including those that change date and those that move to a Monday. The list is recalculated every year on its own, so there is nothing to review in January. And because it closes the whole business, there is nothing to assign to anyone: whoever joins the team next year is covered from day one.

If your address is not complete, you choose the country and region by hand on the same screen. It works for more than two hundred countries, with their regions where they have them.

Local holidays are yours to add

There are one or two days a year that no public calendar knows reliably: your town’s local holidays. Those you add yourself, with a name and a date, and if you tick “repeats every year” you never think about them again.

That is the part that stays manual, on purpose. We would rather you add two dates you are sure of than have the list bring in the wrong town festival for a business two villages away.

Opening on a public holiday

Every holiday in the list has a checkbox. Untick it and slots are offered that day like any other, and Calendace remembers the decision for the following years.

It is more common than it looks. Plenty of hair salons open on a bank holiday Monday because it is a quiet day with clients who are off work. Some barbershops open right through the December holidays. And in seaside towns some people work a summer bank holiday as if it were a Saturday. The rule is yours: the switch closes by default and you decide the exceptions.

What happens to the appointments you already had

Nothing. A public holiday never cancels appointments on its own.

If there are already appointments on a day that is about to close when you switch it on, the screen tells you how many. From there you decide: move them, or untick that holiday and open. The only thing the switch changes is that no new slots are offered that day.

If you decide to move them, Calendace sends the client the change-of-time notice through whichever channels you have active. A message that works:

Hi Emma. We are closed on Monday 25th for the bank holiday, so I have moved your appointment to Tuesday 26th at the same time. You will get the notice with the details now; if it does not suit you, cancel from the link and pick another time.

What your client sees

Here is the other half of the news. Until now a closed day on your booking page looked exactly like an open one: the client tapped it, read “no hours available” and tried the next one. After three or four tries they left.

Now the calendar on your page shows public holidays, and the days when the whole team is away, in red, with a legend underneath. The client sees at a glance which days there is nothing to look for and goes straight to the ones that are open. And if they want that day and no other, they have the waitlist so we can let them know if a slot opens up.

Who has it switched on

If you create your account from now on, it comes switched on. As soon as you complete the business address, the holidays of your area appear on their own.

If you were already using Calendace, it is off. We did not want to change anyone’s calendar without warning, least of all for those who already had their holidays loaded as absences. Switch it on in Settings whenever you like, and that same day you can delete the holiday absences you had created by hand, or leave them: they do not clash.

It is in every plan, the free one included. It is not a paid feature, it is a feature for not getting it wrong.

Five minutes to get it done

1. Go to Settings, Public holidays, and turn on the switch.
2. Check that the country and region are yours. If not, change them.
3. Go through the list for the year and untick the holidays you open on.
4. Add your town’s local holidays with “repeats every year”.
5. If there are appointments on a day that closes, move them or open that day.

The rest of the calendar stays as it was: weekly hours, each professional’s hours and time off are set up just as we explain in split shifts, time off and public holidays. Public holidays simply stop being your job.

You have the full explanation, with screenshots, on the automatic public holidays page. And if you do not have a booking page yet, the free plan includes one, holidays included.