Business Hours and Holidays

Your operating hours tell careCycle when your agency is open. Outbound campaigns use them to decide when to dial, your Receptionist uses them to switch between business-hours and after-hours behavior, and appointment booking uses them to decide which slots can be offered.

You configure everything at Settings > Organization > Operating Hours, which has three tabs: Regular Hours, Special Hours, and Holidays, plus a Business Timezone picker at the top. All of your operating hours are interpreted in that timezone.

Regular Hours

Your standard weekly schedule. Add one or more schedules, each covering selected days (with Weekdays (Mon-Fri) and Weekends (Sat-Sun) presets) and a start and end time. Multiple schedules let you keep different hours on different days, for example 9 to 5 on weekdays and 10 to 2 on Saturdays. Days with no schedule are treated as closed.

Special Hours

Special hours are named, temporary changes to your regular schedule, for things like a company training day or a shortened summer Friday. Each entry has a name, an open window, and one of three types:

• One-time Special Day: a single specific date.
• Date Range: a start and end date, for example a company retreat week.
• Recurring Event: repeats weekly (pick a day of the week) or monthly (pick a day of the month).

Special hours override your regular hours on the days they match, but they do not override holidays.

Holidays

Holidays live in Holiday Groups, so you can manage related sets together, for example a federal holidays group and a separate company holidays group. Each holiday in a group is one of two types:

• Fixed Date: the same date every year, like December 25.
• Floating Date: a rule like "the third Monday of January," for holidays that move each year.

Both types recur automatically every year, so you set them up once.

By default a holiday closes your agency for the whole day. Flip on Modified Hours instead to stay open for part of the day, for example closing at noon on Christmas Eve.

New organizations come with a federal holidays group already loaded, so you do not have to build the standard calendar yourself. Review it, adjust any holidays your agency treats differently, and note that a holiday group only takes effect while it is enabled for your organization.

Which Schedule Wins

When more than one schedule applies to the same day, careCycle resolves them in a fixed order:

1. Holidays win over everything. A closed holiday closes the day even if special or regular hours say otherwise.
2. Special hours override regular hours on the days they match.
3. Regular hours apply on any ordinary day.

What Happens Outside Your Hours

• Outbound campaign calls are deferred. A call that comes due while you are closed is automatically pushed to your next open time, so nothing is lost when a holiday lands mid-campaign.
• Closed holidays are always respected. Even campaigns configured to dial outside business hours (for example speed-to-lead campaigns that run evenings and weekends) will not dial on a closed holiday.
• TCPA quiet hours apply on top, always. Separately from your operating hours, careCycle never places outbound calls or sends campaign SMS outside 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM in the customer's local timezone. This is a legal compliance floor and cannot be turned off. See TCPA Compliance.

What Else Uses Your Operating Hours

• Your Receptionist: Assistant Behaviors can differ between business hours and after hours, and your hours are what flip that switch. A scenario can transfer live during the day and log an inquiry overnight.
• Appointment booking: offered slots must fall inside your operating hours, further narrowed by any per-appointment-type booking hours.
• Live transfers: inbound availability checks treat you as unavailable after hours, so callers route to the after-hours path instead of ringing an empty office.

Recommendations

• Campaigns that warm-transfer to your team should run only during business hours, so there is always someone to receive the call.
• Appointment and inquiry campaigns can run around the clock: the AI employee books and logs on your behalf, and your team follows up when you reopen.