Breaks & lunch

A break carves a piece out of the day and takes it out of bookings. The day stays open, but every slot that would land inside the break disappears — from the public page and from the “earliest free time” search alike. Lunch is the usual case, but the same tool covers a clean-up window after a colour service, a delivery, or Thursday’s training hour.

This article explains where breaks actually live (there are three different places), exactly what the four guards do, and why the branch’s lunch break does not vanish the moment a stylist sets their own hours.

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1. Where a break is set

A break is not a screen of its own. It belongs to one day on one level of working hours. There are three levels, and a break can live on any of them:

Level	Where you edit it	Who it applies to
Location (branch)	Setup → Working hours → Business hours mode → Weekly hours tab	Everyone working at that branch on that day
Resource (person)	Setup → Working hours → Staff schedule mode → a person → Working hours tab	That person only
A specific date	The Date overrides section of the same editor (visible only in Business hours mode)	That date only

The path is the same in all three cases: pick the board in the left rail, open the Setup hub, click Working hours.

There is no “board” level here. The board’s shared hours (the fallback for branches without their own) are not editable from this page — only during the board’s initial setup. So a “one lunch break for the whole business” is in practice set on the location. See Your board’s working hours.

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2. Step by step: a lunch break for a whole branch

1. Open Setup → Working hours.
2. Leave the toggle on Business hours.
3. If you have more than one branch, pick it from the location row at the top.
4. Stay on the Weekly hours tab.
5. In the day row, click a day tile — say Mon. The editor for that one day opens below.
6. Check that the switch next to the day name reads Open. On a closed day there are no breaks — the section disappears.
7. Scroll to the BREAKS caption and press Add a break.
8. A row with two clocks appears. Set the start and end — 13:00 and 14:00, for example.
9. Don’t look for a Save button. It saves itself about half a second after you stop editing.
10. Repeat for the other days, or copy the day (Copy hours in the day’s menu).

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3. Where the new break lands

Add a break doesn’t drop the break at 12:00 at random. It:

1. Finds the longest free stretch of the day — the part of the working window not already taken by another break.
2. Places a 1-hour break in the middle of it. If the stretch is shorter than an hour, the break becomes exactly as long as the stretch.
3. Does nothing at all if no stretch of at least 15 minutes is left.

That’s why the first break in a 09:00–18:00 day comes out at 13:00–14:00, and the second one in the middle of one of the halves.

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4. The break row — control by control

Each break is one row, left to right:

Element	What it does
Striped square	Colour only — the same hatch the break is drawn with on the bar above.
First clock	The start. Type it or use the dropdown. The step is 15 minutes.
The word to	A separator.
Second clock	The end.
60 min	The length in minutes, so you don’t do the subtraction.
Warning triangle	Appears only when something is wrong. Hover for the reason.
✕	Removes the break (tooltip Remove break). No confirmation.

Above the list, on the right, sits a counter like 2/7.

If there is no break yet, instead of a list you get just the dashed Add a break button.

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5. Dragging on the bar

Above the clocks runs the day’s thin bar — the visual preview of the working window. It isn’t only a picture:

• Drag a break’s body to move it without changing its length.
• Drag its left or right edge to stretch it.
• Drag the ends of the work block itself to change the day’s start and end — the breaks travel with it.

Everything snaps to 15-minute steps and can never leave the work block.

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6. The four guards

The editor won’t let you save a nonsensical break. Here are all four rules and the exact text you’ll see.

6.1. At most 7 breaks per day

The counter reads 7/7 and the add button greys out. Its label becomes Up to 7 breaks per day.

6.2. At least 15 minutes

Squeeze a break under 15 minutes and the editor pushes the opposite edge out to keep a quarter of an hour. If the value still ends up invalid, a warning next to the row reads Min 15 min.

6.3. No overlapping

Two breaks in the same day may not overlap. When they do, the row is flagged Overlaps another break.

6.4. Inside working hours only

A break sticking out before opening or after closing is flagged Outside working hours.

Automatic refitting. When you change the day’s From or To, the breaks refit themselves to the new window: they shrink to fit, and any left with under 15 minutes is deleted with no message. If you shorten a day sharply, check the breaks afterwards.

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7. How to read the numbers

Under the day’s clocks sits a label like 8h 0m · 480 min. That is the net time: the open window minus every break inside it. A 09:00–18:00 day with one 13:00–14:00 break gives exactly 8h 0m.

In the summary strip at the top, the third figure is Breaks — the total number of breaks across the whole week, not in the day you have open. If you expect 5 and see 12, someone has been adding breaks on the other days too.

A day whose breaks outlast its working window reads as 0 minutes (never a negative number), and the offending breaks themselves get the warning triangle.

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8. Whose break is it: levels are combined

This is the behaviour that surprises people most.

For the day’s start and end, the most specific level that says anything wins: resource → location → board. The winning level supplies both ends; the lower ones no longer take part.

Breaks are the exception. They are not replaced, they are combined. The result is the union of the breaks of every level that said “open” for that date. The union is then clipped to the winning window.

Examples:

The location says	The stylist says	Result for that stylist
10:00–18:00, break 13:00–14:00	nothing for that day	10:00–18:00, break 13:00–14:00
10:00–18:00, break 13:00–14:00	10:00–16:00 (no breaks)	10:00–16:00, break 13:00–14:00
10:00–18:00, break 13:00–14:00	10:00–16:00, break 15:00–15:30	10:00–16:00, two breaks: 13:00–14:00 and 15:00–15:30
closed	10:00–16:00	Closed — an explicit “closed” at any level wins
nothing for that day	10:00–16:00, break 12:00–13:00	10:00–16:00, break 12:00–13:00 (the location contributes nothing)

The point is protection: the branch’s lunch pause doesn’t disappear just because one stylist set their own hours and didn’t retype it. Otherwise a client could book straight through lunch.

The reverse is equally true: a personal break is personal. If only Elena is out 15:00–15:30, the slot stays free with every other stylist of the same resource kind.

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9. Special days inherit the breaks

If you give someone a Special day with Custom hours for this day (see A staff member’s schedule), the new hours replace the start and end for that date only — but the breaks from the regular levels are kept and clipped to the new window. A special day has no break fields of its own.

Time off is a different thing: it removes the person for the whole day rather than carving an hour out of it.

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10. What a break does NOT do

• It doesn’t cancel existing bookings. Put a break over a busy hour and the booking stays in the schedule. Check the day and move the client by hand.
• It doesn’t stop an admin. You can still enter a booking inside a break. The grid cell is hatched (Outside working hours) and the panel says {name} isn’t available then (day off, break or outside working hours). The booking will still be created. Only the public site is strict.
• It isn’t shown to clients as “lunch”. The client simply sees fewer times. There is no “closed for lunch” caption.
• It doesn’t let a service jump over it. A service that overlaps the break by even a minute disappears from that slot. A 60-minute service with a 13:00–14:00 break has no 12:30 slot — it would end at 13:30.
• It doesn’t touch classes already on the timetable. The session stays; the break affects how one-to-one slots are computed.

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11. When a break is the wrong tool

You want	The right tool
One person is away for a week	Staff schedule → Time off
The salon is closed on 24 December	Working hours → Holidays
The salon only works 10:00–15:00 on 31 December	Holidays → Reduced hours
We never work on Sundays	On the Sun tile, switch Open off
We open later on one specific date	The Date overrides section
I need 10 minutes between clients	Not a break — the service’s duration; see Create a service

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Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	What to do
No BREAKS section	The day is set to closed	Switch Open on
Add a break does nothing	No free stretch of at least 15 minutes	Remove or shrink another break
The button is grey and reads Up to 7 breaks per day	You’ve hit the cap	Delete a break you don’t need
The break vanished after I changed the hours	Automatic refitting shrank it below 15 minutes	Add it again inside the new window
Every break disappeared for one day	You switched the day off — a closed day drops its breaks	Open the day and set them again
I set a stylist’s break and it appeared for everyone	You were on the location level, not in Staff schedule	Check which mode you’re in
I removed the stylist’s break and it’s still there	It comes from the location — levels are combined	Remove it from the location’s weekly hours
Clients are still booking during lunch	The change hasn’t reached the public page yet	Wait up to a minute and reload
Change wasn’t saved — try again.	The request was rejected and the screen reverts to server truth	Check the hours and redo the change

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What’s next

• Your board’s working hours — the frame breaks live in.
• A staff member’s schedule — personal hours, special days and time off.
• Hours by location — why the break belongs to the branch, not the board.
• How availability works — where breaks enter the maths.