Setting hours for a shift-based team in Singapore

Most Singapore service businesses keep longer hours than any one person works. A salon in a heartland mall might open from ten in the morning to nine at night, seven days a week, while each stylist works five days on an early or late shift. A spa in a hotel arcade may run two therapists in the morning and three in the evening. If the booking page only knows the opening hours, it will happily offer a 9pm facial when the only therapist on that evening finished at six.

The fix is to treat opening hours and working hours as two different layers. Opening hours are the outer frame: the earliest and latest any booking can happen. Each person's working week sits inside that frame and decides which of those hours they can actually be booked for.

Start with the business's opening hours

Set the shop's hours first, day by day. Be honest about the last bookable start time rather than the time the shutters come down. If you close at nine but a cut and blow-dry takes an hour, the last sensible start for that service is eight, and the service's length handles that for you once the hours are right.

Public holidays and the odd early close are separate from this weekly pattern. Keep the weekly hours for an ordinary week and deal with exceptions as single dates, so you never have to remember to undo a change.

Give each person their own calendar and week

In BookAndGo each person who takes bookings has their own calendar, and each calendar carries its own working days and hours. Those hours always sit inside the business's hours, so a stylist's late shift cannot accidentally run past closing time, and a therapist marked off on Tuesdays simply has no Tuesday times on the booking page.

For a team on fixed shifts this is set once. Mei works Wednesday to Sunday, eleven to eight. Raj works Monday to Friday, ten to six. Siti covers weekends and two late evenings. Enter each pattern against their calendar and the booking page combines them, so on a Saturday clients see the times Mei and Siti are in, and on a Monday only Raj's.

Rotating rosters need a little more care

Some teams rotate: early shift one week, late the next. There are two practical ways to handle that.

• Set the working week to the wider pattern and close the hours that do not apply as part-day exceptions on the specific dates. This suits rosters that change only a few days a month.
• Update each person's hours at the start of each roster period. If you publish the roster a fortnight ahead, make the change the same day you publish it, and the booking page follows.

Whichever you choose, the rule is the same: change the calendar when the roster is decided, not on the morning of the shift. Clients book days ahead, and a calendar that lags the roster produces bookings nobody can take.

Breaks and handovers

A ten-hour shift includes a meal break, and in a busy salon a break that is not on the calendar tends not to happen. Close a short window in the middle of each long shift so it cannot be booked. If two people hand over at four, consider leaving the half hour around the handover lightly booked so the evening person is not starting with a client already waiting.

Part-timers and freelancers

Part-time staff and freelance therapists often work irregular days. Give them a calendar like everyone else, with a working week that matches their usual days, and add or remove individual dates as they confirm availability. Because their calendar only shows the hours you have set, there is no risk of a client booking them on a day they never agreed to work.

What clients see

Clients never see the roster. They pick a service and, if you allow it, a person, and the page shows the times that person is in and free. When they leave the choice open, the page shows every time at least one suitable person is free. Either way, the times on offer are the ones your team can actually honour.

A quick check before you go live

Before you share the booking page, open it as a client would and step through a week. Look at an early weekday, a late evening and a Sunday. Each should show exactly the people you expect and no one else. If a time appears that nobody is rostered for, the business's hours are probably fine and one person's working week needs trimming.

Getting this right once saves a great deal of daily friction. The front desk stops apologising for times that should never have been offered, and each person's day starts with bookings that fit the shift they actually work.