How to set holiday booking availability with date overrides

To set holiday booking availability, leave your regular weekly hours alone and add a date override for the days you're away. Then check which booking links it affects, review meetings already booked, and test your first day back. That way one day off doesn't change every week after it.

Here's the mistake to avoid. You close Friday for a holiday by editing your weekly hours, and every future Friday disappears from your booking page. A one-day problem just became a permanent one.

Weekly hours vs. date overrides

Your weekly hours describe an ordinary week. A date override is an exception for specific dates, like a full day off or a short afternoon. Decide which one you're changing before you touch anything.

Use weekly hours for changes that should repeat, such as no longer working Fridays. Use a date override for anything temporary: a holiday, a conference, or a half day before a long weekend.

Write down the dates and hours you need

Say a consultant in India normally takes bookings Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 (Asia/Kolkata). They're taking personal leave from Monday 12 October to Friday 16 October 2026. They want a half day on Friday 9 October and normal hours again from Monday 19 October. These are example leave dates, not a public holiday.

Add the overrides as soon as you know the dates. Clients often book weeks ahead, so a holiday you add the week before may already have bookings in it.

Check the date range carefully. Does the last date you pick count as closed? Are you closing whole local days, or entering start and end times? Test both ends of the range instead of guessing how the date picker works.

For the half day, make sure the meeting and any buffers fit before noon. Open until noon doesn't mean a 60-minute meeting can start at 11:45.

How to set holiday booking availability in Caletus

Caletus lets you block holidays while keeping your standard weekly hours. You can add date overrides and custom unavailable dates from your availability settings.^[1][2]

1. 1Copy down your current weekly hours so you can compare them later.
2. 2Open your availability settings and add a date override for each day you're away, or a date range if you see that option.
3. 3Set custom hours for any half days.
4. 4Save, then reopen the same dates to check the override stuck.
5. 5Leave your weekly schedule as it is.

If you can't set the whole range in one go, add the dates one at a time or ask support. Don't replace your weekly schedule as a shortcut.

Check who and what the override covers

Work out whether the override belongs to one host, a shared availability schedule, a single meeting type or the whole team. Note which booking links rely on it. A personal change may not close the whole workspace, and a team-wide holiday may not reach a meeting type with its own hours.

For team meetings, the format matters. In a round robin, one host's holiday may leave a colleague free to take the booking. A collective meeting that needs that host has no time at all. Decide if you're closing one person's schedule or the whole service, and read what happens when a round robin host is unavailable for pooled meetings.

For a holiday the whole team takes, such as New Year's Day, make one person responsible. They list every booking link that needs closing, add the overrides and check each link afterward. That beats everyone on the team assuming someone else did it.

Check holiday events in Google Calendar and Outlook

A holiday on your Google or Outlook calendar needs its own check. Google stores whether an event blocks time separately from whether it's visible, so seeing a holiday name doesn't mean the time is busy. Outlook events also have several statuses, such as free, busy and out of office.^[3][4]

The guide on how to prevent double booking across Google Calendar and Outlook explains how busy status affects your booking page.

For leave, pick one approach your team agrees on: a scheduler override, a busy calendar block, or both. Then test it. Avoid overlapping exceptions that nobody owns, and keep private reasons for leave off your public booking page.

If your calendar has its own out-of-office reply, review that separately. Turning on an auto-reply and closing your booking page are two different actions.

What to do about meetings already booked

Closing your booking page doesn't tell clients their existing appointments have changed. Find the confirmed bookings during your leave and decide which to keep, reschedule or cancel.

Contact those clients before you go. After each change, check the new date, host, join details and the client's notification. These reschedule meeting email templates can help with the wording. For paid appointments, follow your published change and refund policy, and don't expect a date override to handle payments for you.

If it makes sense, ask a colleague to handle urgent booking questions while you're away. Having access to a booking doesn't make them the video meeting host, so check any handoff where they'd need to run the call.

Test your holiday closure and your first day back

1. 1Open each affected booking link as a visitor and note the time zone shown.
2. 2Check the first closed date, a date in the middle and the last closed date. The whole local day should be closed.
3. 3Check the half day, and test a start time close to noon.
4. 4Check a date before your leave and your first normal working day after it.
5. 5Check a second meeting type and, on a team, a colleague's page that shouldn't be affected.
6. 6Confirm that any changes to existing bookings were sent to clients separately.

If your first day back is still empty, check other rules before you remove the holiday override. A busy calendar, minimum notice, a full daily limit or another override could be the cause. The guide to why a booking page shows no available times walks through each one.

Send a short, clear holiday notice

A short note works best. Swap in your own dates and booking link:

This is a note to send yourself, separate from any automatic Caletus email. Check which emails your setup actually sends and who gets them. Don't suggest existing appointments were canceled when only new bookings are closed.

When you're back, look at your booking page once more and remove any overrides you no longer need. Leave your weekly hours alone. A quick check now stops a one-week holiday from turning into a permanent gap. Set a reminder for your first morning back so you don't forget.

• date-specific availability overrides
• holiday booking closures
• temporary booking hours
• out-of-office appointment scheduling