Opening Hours

Opening Hours

FlowCaptain uses your configured opening hours to determine which time slots are available for appointments. Only times within your opening hours — and not already blocked by existing calendar events — will be offered to callers.

Configuring Your Schedule

In FlowCaptain, go to your calendar detail page and find the Opening Hours section. For each day of the week, you can:

• Toggle open/closed — Switch whether you're available on that day
• Set time ranges — Define when you're available (e.g. 09:00–17:00)
• Add multiple ranges — Click "+ Add time range" to add up to 4 ranges per day (e.g. 08:00–12:00 and 13:00–17:00 for a lunch break)
• Remove ranges — Click × to remove a range

Appointment Duration & Scheduling

In the Settings section of your calendar page, you'll find:

• Default Appointment Duration — How long each booked time slot is (15, 30, 45, 60, 90, or 120 minutes). If you use services, each service has its own duration that overrides this default.
• Slot Increment — The spacing between available time slots (15, 30, or 60 minutes). Controls how "fine-grained" the availability grid is.
• Buffer Time — Break time added after each appointment (0–60 minutes). Use this to give yourself time between back-to-back bookings.
• Minimum Lead Time — How far in advance an appointment must be booked (from immediate up to 4 weeks). Prevents last-minute bookings if you need preparation time.

How It Works

When a caller asks for availability (e.g. "Do you have anything on Monday?"), FlowCaptain:

1. Checks your opening hours for that day
2. Queries Google Calendar for existing events (busy times)
3. Calculates available slots based on your schedule minus busy times, applying buffer time and minimum lead time
4. Returns up to 5 available time slots

Country & Public Holidays

In the Settings section, you configure your country and state (or canton for Switzerland). This determines two things:

• Public holidays — FlowCaptain knows which days are holidays in your region. On holidays, the API tells callers the business is closed and names the holiday. Different states have different holidays — make sure yours is set correctly.
• Timezone — Your country setting determines the timezone for all bookings (e.g. Germany → Europe/Berlin). This is not affected by your Google Calendar timezone setting.

Tips

• Use multiple time ranges to block out lunch breaks or other recurring unavailable periods
• If you offer services with different durations, configure them in the Services section — their duration overrides the default
• Alternative time suggestions are spaced apart by your slot increment for better distribution
• Changes take effect immediately — no restart needed