Setting Weekly Business Hours
Your location's weekly operating hours tell Speako — and your AI receptionist — when your business is open. The AI uses these hours to determine whether it's currently operating time, and will adjust its behaviour accordingly for bookings and customer enquiries.
Where to find it
Go to AI Receptionists in the sidebar, click your AI receptionist, and then click Set Availability in the Opening Hours section. Alternatively, navigate directly to the Hours page for the relevant AI receptionist.
The Hours section has three categories in the sidebar:
- Operating hours (service businesses) or shifts (restaurants)
- Date-specific hours
- Holidays & closures
Weekly hours are managed under Operating hours (service businesses) or the main availability grid (restaurants).
How weekly hours work
You set a schedule for each day of the week. For each day you can specify:
- Whether the location is open on that day.
- The start and end times of the operating window.
Days can have a single open window (e.g. 9 am – 5 pm) or, in some cases, multiple windows if your location has a break in the middle of the day.
Editing hours for a specific day
- Open the Hours page for your AI receptionist.
- Click on the day you want to edit to open the day editor.
- Toggle the day on or off, and set the time window(s) as needed.
- Save your changes.
How hours affect the AI
The AI receptionist checks your operating hours every time a call comes in:
- During open hours: The AI answers calls normally, takes bookings, and handles enquiries.
- Outside open hours: The AI uses your after-hours greeting and may or may not take bookings, depending on your AI configuration settings.
⚠️ Important: If you haven't configured any weekly hours, or if all days are set to closed, the AI will treat every call as outside hours. Set up hours before going live to avoid confusing callers.
Restaurant shifts vs service business operating hours
The layout you see may differ slightly depending on your business type:
- Restaurants use a shift grid that shows recurring weekly time blocks. Each shift can include booking-specific settings.
- Service businesses use an operating hours view that mirrors the same week-grid interface, but without restaurant-specific shift fields.
In both cases, the underlying concept is the same: set the days and times your location is open.
💡 Tip: If your hours vary by season (e.g. shorter winter hours), use Date-specific hour overrides to temporarily replace the weekly schedule for a given date range. See Date-Specific Hour Overrides for details.
Changes take effect after publishing
Updating operating hours creates a change that needs to be published to your AI receptionist. After saving your hours, publish the agent configuration to ensure the AI starts using the updated schedule.