Audience: Riding school owners and organisation admins
Overview
Booking Hours are the days and times your school is open for online bookings where the client doesn't name a coach. That covers two flows: school horse bookings (the "book a horse" flow, where the client picks a horse first) and lessons booked without choosing an instructor, if your school has that option turned on. Horsify starts from this weekly schedule, then removes anything already booked, any diary blocks, and any horse that has hit its working-hours limit.
A lesson booked with a named instructor ignores this page entirely and follows that instructor's own availability.
Go to: Riding School → Instructors in the organiser menu down the left of the page, then the Booking Hours tab in the bar along the top. The section carries your riding school's own title if you've set one.
Requires: A Riding School subscription, and admin access or the Instructors area at Manage. Read Which hours do you actually need to change? first, because it is the most common source of confusion.
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 clients can book a lesson without choosing a coach | Booking Hours (this page). The coach is then allocated from whoever is rostered on and free. |
| When a particular instructor teaches lessons | Riding School → Instructors → [name], then the instructor's Weekly hours tab |
| When an arena or facility can be hired | Riding School → Facilities → [facility] → Availability Settings |
Booking Hours only govern bookings where no coach is named. They do not change the times of a lesson booked with a named instructor, and they do not change facility hire times. When a client picks an instructor, that instructor's own availability decides the slots and this page is not consulted at all, and an instructor with no availability set offers no lesson slots, no matter what your booking hours say.
Tip for 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. |
| Admin, or Instructors: Manage | Admins and staff with the Instructors area at Manage can save. Staff with Instructors at View can see the hours but the save will be rejected. See Staff Access. |
| 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
- Go to Riding School → Instructors in the organiser menu and open the Booking Hours tab along the top. If you manage more than one organisation, choose the right one under Switch in the organiser menu first.
- 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.
- Set the start and end time for each open day using the two time fields, separated by the word to.
-
Add a second window to a day with Add another time, useful for closing over lunch. For example,
9:00 to 12:00plus1:00 PM to 5:00 PMmakes the midday hour unbookable. A new window starts where the previous one ended and runs for an hour, so adjust it as needed. - Remove a window with the bin icon beside it. Removing the last window on a day automatically closes that day.
- 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.
- 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 default, switch every day off and save. Saving with no open days clears your booking hours, so the 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM default applies again on all seven days and the "You haven't set your booking hours yet." banner returns. There is no way to close online horse bookings for the whole week from this page; use Block out time on the Bookings calendar, or untick Bookable Online on your horses.
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. |
| A coach being free (coach-not-named lessons only) | Opening hours say the school is open, not that someone is there to teach. A lesson slot is offered only while at least one online-bookable instructor is rostered on and not already busy. If none is, no times are offered at all. |
| Coach qualifications (optional) | With Only offer a time when a coach who teaches that lesson is working ticked (Settings → Riding School), only coaches whose Lesson types & rates list includes that lesson type count. A lesson type no coach has been given yet still offers every rostered coach, so nothing silently disappears from sale. |
| 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. |
| Booking notice (coach-not-named lessons) | Times inside your How far ahead riders must book setting (Settings → Riding School) are not offered. |
| 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 Failed to save the booking hours. and no reason." You probably have the Instructors area at View rather than Manage. Ask an admin to make the change, or to set Instructors to Manage on your access (Staff roster → Staff → Access).
"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, open Riding School → Instructors in the organiser menu: Booking Hours is the second tab along the top.
"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 a lesson booked with a named instructor. Open the instructor's profile and check their availability: an instructor with no availability offers no slots at all.
"Lessons booked without choosing a coach show no times, but the school is open." Opening hours alone aren't enough: somebody has to be rostered on. Check that at least one instructor is marked bookable online and has availability in that period. If you've ticked Only offer a time when a coach who teaches that lesson is working, also check that a coach on duty has that lesson type in their Lesson types & rates list. If your school teaches at more than one venue, a coach's weekly hours only count at the venue they name; hours entered without a venue are offered nowhere (rostered shifts still count).
"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: 2026-10-21 13:18:08 UTC