Block time — vacation, lunch, training

When a staff member is unavailable — vacation, training, lunch break, doctor’s appointment — block-time tells both the dashboard and the customer-facing booking widget to skip that window.

Creating a block

There are three ways:

1. From Calendar — right-click any empty cell → Block this time. The Block Time modal opens with the staff member and start time pre-filled.
2. From the + quick-action — click + New in the top bar, pick Block time instead of New appointment.
3. From the Staff page — each staff member has a “Blocked times” section listing their existing blocks with an + Add button.

Modal fields

• Staff — pick which staff member is unavailable.
• Date — defaults to the date you triggered the block from.
• Start / End — start time defaults to the slot you clicked; end defaults to start + 1 hour (you can change either).
• Quick presets — Full day / Morning / Afternoon / Next 1h for common patterns.
• Reason — short label shown on the calendar (Lunch, Vacation, Doctor).
• Repeat weekly — when checked, creates the same block every week until Repeat until (date you set).

How blocks render

On the calendar, a block shows as a striped grey band in the staff’s column with the reason text. There’s an × button on the band to delete the block; click it and the block goes away immediately.

Capacity vs blocks

Blocked time prevents bookings during that window:

• Customer-facing widget can’t pick a slot inside a block
• Dashboard New Appointment will warn if you book inside one (uses the same overlap-warning flow as bookings)

If you want soft unavailability (don’t block, just discourage), use the staff member’s working hours instead — those render as shaded grey but don’t prevent operator-driven bookings.

Repeat weekly

When Repeat weekly is checked, Zedule creates one block per week between the start date and the Repeat until date. Cancelling one occurrence cancels just that one; the rest of the series remains.

To stop a series early, delete the future blocks individually — there’s no “delete this and all future” yet (planned).

What’s the difference vs all-day appointments?

Concern	Block time	All-day appointment
Prevents customer bookings	Yes	No
Has a customer attached	No	Yes
Has a service / billing	No	Yes
Repeats weekly	Yes	No
Rendered in the all-day strip	No	Yes
Rendered as a striped grey band	Yes	No

In short: block-time is “this slot is closed”; all-day is “this slot is one customer’s booking that has no specific start time”.