Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours

    Audience: Riding school owners and organisation admins

    Overview

    Booking Hours are the days and times your school offers for online school horse bookings — the "book a horse" flow where the client picks a horse first and no instructor is chosen. When a client asks what's available for a horse, Horsify starts from this weekly schedule, then removes anything already booked, any diary blocks, and any horse that has hit its working-hours limit.

    Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Booking Hours. On your own club site the item sits directly under Organiser, and the Organiser Dashboard (in its Bookings view) also has a Booking Hours quick-access tile.

    Requires: A Riding School subscription and organisation admin access. Read Which hours do you actually need to change? first — it is the most common source of confusion.

    The Booking Hours page showing the weekly hours editor

    Which hours do you actually need to change?

    Horsify has three separate schedules, and they do not overlap. Changing the wrong one is the single most common reason an organiser says "I updated my hours and nothing changed."

    What you want to change Where to change it
    When clients can book a school horse online (no instructor chosen) Booking Hours — this page
    When a particular instructor teaches lessons Organiser → Riding School → Instructors → [name], then the instructor's Availability
    When an arena or facility can be hired Organiser → Riding School → Facilities → [facility] → Availability Settings

    Booking Hours only govern horse-only bookings. They do not change instructor lesson times, and they do not change facility hire times. If a client is booking a lesson with a named instructor, that instructor's own availability decides the slots — this page is not consulted at all. An instructor with no availability set offers no lesson slots, no matter what your booking hours say.

    Tip — new instructors: when you add an instructor, the form offers a tick box, Use the club's booking hours as their availability, which copies your current Booking Hours into that instructor's weekly schedule as a starting point. It's a one-off copy: later changes to Booking Hours do not flow through to the instructor, so edit their availability directly after that.

    Before you start

    Requirement Why
    Riding School subscription Booking Hours is a Riding School feature. On the Instructor plan the menu item is hidden entirely — solo instructors set their times under their own availability instead.
    Organisation admin Admins can save. Organiser Contributors can open the page and edit the form, but the save will be rejected.
    A venue with a timezone Times are interpreted in the timezone of the venue the horse belongs to. Venues with no timezone fall back to Australia/Brisbane.

    What happens before you set any hours

    Until you save this page for the first time, online horse bookings run on a default of 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM, every day of the week — including Sunday.

    When you open the page unconfigured, you'll see a blue banner saying "You haven't set your booking hours yet.", and the form will be pre-filled with Monday–Saturday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Sunday closed.

    That pre-fill is a suggestion, not your current setting. Nothing is saved until you press Save Booking Hours. Until you do, clients can still book from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM on all seven days, Sunday included — regardless of what the form shows. If the suggested hours happen to be right for you, still press Save to make them real.

    Setting your hours

    1. Go to Organiser → Riding School → Booking Hours. If you administer more than one organisation, pick the right one from the Select Organisation dropdown first.
    2. Toggle each day open or closed using the switch beside the day name. A closed day shows Closed in italics and offers no slots at all. Switching a day on gives it a 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM window to start from.
    3. Set the start and end time for each open day using the two time fields, separated by the word to.
    4. Add a second window to a day with Add another time — useful for closing over lunch. For example, 9:00 to 12:00 plus 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM makes the midday hour unbookable. A new window starts where the previous one ended and runs for an hour, so adjust it as needed.
    5. Remove a window with the bin icon beside it. Removing the last window on a day automatically closes that day.
    6. Copy one day to the rest with Copy to all days in the Weekly hours header. This takes your first open day and applies it to every other day, which is the fastest way to build a uniform week before adjusting the exceptions.
    7. Press Save Booking Hours. You'll get a green "Booking hours saved." confirmation.

    Rules the form enforces

    • Every open day needs at least one time window.
    • Each window's end must be after its start — otherwise you'll see "End time must be after start time." beside the row and the save is blocked with the offending day named.
    • Windows must sit within a single day (they cannot cross midnight).

    Important: saving makes the whole week authoritative

    The moment you save any hours at all, the 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM fallback stops applying everywhere — not just on the days you edited.

    That means any day you leave closed is genuinely closed. If you only wanted to change Wednesday and you save with Sunday toggled off, Sunday bookings stop immediately. Check all seven days before your first save.

    To go back to the old always-on behaviour, set every day open from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Saving with all days closed does not restore the default — it closes online horse bookings entirely.

    How booking hours combine with everything else

    A horse-booking slot is offered to a client only if it survives every one of these:

    Layer Effect
    Booking hours Sets the outer window. Nothing outside it is ever bookable.
    Horse availability A horse that is not Active, not ticked Available for Lessons, or not ticked Bookable Online (all on the horse's edit page) offers nothing online.
    Horse workload caps A horse at its Max Hours Per Day or Max Hours Per Week (set on the horse's edit page) drops out, and the client is prompted to pick another horse.
    Existing bookings Lessons, event sessions and competition classes already on the calendar block their time.
    Diary blocks Time you have blocked out with Block out time on the Bookings calendar closes the whole school for that period.
    Time already past Slots earlier today are never shown.

    So widening your booking hours will not, on its own, produce more slots if a horse is capped out or the arena is booked for an event.

    Troubleshooting

    "I changed the hours and the booking page looks the same." You have probably changed the wrong schedule — see the table at the top. Booking Hours affects horse-only bookings; lessons follow the instructor's availability and facility hire follows the facility's own rules.

    "Saving fails with an error and no explanation." You're most likely an Organiser Contributor rather than an admin. The page lets you edit the form, but only organisation admins can save. Ask an admin to make the change, or to upgrade your role.

    "I don't have a Booking Hours menu item." The page is hidden on the Instructor plan. On that plan your teaching times live under your own instructor availability. On the Riding School plan, look under Organiser → Riding School on the main Horsify site, or directly under Organiser on your club site.

    "Sunday is still bookable even though the form showed it closed." You never pressed Save, so the 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM default is still running on all seven days. Press Save Booking Hours.

    "Lessons with an instructor still show no times." Booking Hours don't apply to instructor lessons. Open the instructor's profile and check their availability — an instructor with no availability offers no slots at all.

    "The times look shifted by an hour or two." Hours are interpreted in the timezone of the venue the horse belongs to. Check the timezone on your venue record — and note that if your organisation has venues in different states, one shared schedule produces different local hours at each.

    Related Features

    • Riding School Management — the full Riding School feature set
    • Instructor Management System — per-instructor teaching availability and time off
    • Facilities and Facility Hire — arenas and facilities, and their own availability rules
    • Instructor Tier - Solo Instructor Guide — how the solo-instructor plan differs\n\n---\n\nSource: wiki/features/RIDING_SCHOOL_BOOKING_HOURS.md \nLast synced: 2026-09-07 11:51:15 UTC
    Published: