Your business hours are when you're open for work. Mucka uses them wherever a time has to be picked: your AI receptionist only offers callers times inside them, a job you book without naming a time goes in at the start of your day, and they decide when Mucka will and won't message you or your team.
They live in Settings → Business → Details. The Opening hours row shows your week back to you in a line — tap it to change it.
Set them day by day
Inside there's a line for each day of the week:
- Tick the day if you work it, and set the time you start and the time you finish.
- Leave it unticked if you don't, and it shows as Closed.
Every day is separate, so a Saturday morning nine till one is a real setting, not a rough approximation. Same for a half-day Friday, or a late night once a week. Underneath, Mucka shows your week back to you in plain words, so you can check it reads the way you'd say it. Hit Save when it does.
Or just ask Mucka
You don't have to come here at all. Tell Mucka what's changed:
"We do Saturday mornings now, nine till one."
"We're shut Wednesdays."
"We start at half seven from now on."
Mucka changes the day you named and leaves the rest of your week exactly as it was — saying "we do Saturdays now" never quietly closes your Monday. Then it reads the whole week back so you can check it in one go.
If you mean the opposite — "we only work Tuesdays and Thursdays" — say it that way and Mucka closes everything you didn't name.
Only the business owner can change the hours, and it doesn't work over the phone line: it's the setting a stranger on the phone feels the effect of, so it isn't one to change on the least-checkable surface.
The odd Saturday, or a day you're keeping free
Your hours are your normal week. Some things aren't weekly:
- "I'm working this Saturday." You don't do weekends as a rule, but this one suits. Adding Saturday to your week would have your booking page and your receptionist offering every Saturday, so open just that one instead.
- "Keep Thursday free." You normally work Thursdays, but you're holding this one in case the boiler install comes in, and you don't want a customer booking a tap washer into it.
Open the day on the Schedule: the Day view on a computer, or the Diary's Today view on your phone (step to the day with the arrows beside the date). The line at the top of the day says whether customers can book it, with the one button that fits:
- On a day you're shut: Open for bookings, with the times. That day goes on your booking page and your receptionist can offer it, and Mucka treats it as a working day, so your morning briefing comes too.
- On a day you're open: Keep free. Your booking page and your receptionist won't offer it to anybody. It's still a working day for you and the team, and you can still book into it yourself, by hand or by asking Mucka.
Or just tell Mucka: "I'm working Saturday, nine till one", "keep next Thursday free", "put Saturday back to normal".
It changes that date and nothing else. Your week stays exactly as it was, and the Saturday after is shut again. Everything you've set is listed under Settings → Work → Diary → One-off days, with Back to normal beside each. Only the business owner can set them.
One thing it doesn't change: what you charge. If your price list has a Saturday rate, opening a Saturday for bookings doesn't stop you charging it.
If you turn out when you're closed
Plenty of firms are shut at six and still go out to a burst pipe at ten. Under Opening hours there's a second row, Emergency cover, for exactly that.
Switch it on and pick one of two:
- Any time you're closed — evenings, weekends, bank holidays, the lot.
- Set hours — your own windows, day by day. These can run overnight: five in the evening to eight the next morning is one window, not an empty one.
It's off until you turn it on, and that's deliberate. A business that hasn't said anything isn't a business that covers, and we're not going to have your receptionist offering somebody a call-out at three in the morning that you never agreed to.
What changes on the phone
Without it, somebody ringing at nine on a Saturday night is told the team are next in on Monday. If they've got water coming through a ceiling, they ring the next plumber.
With it on, your receptionist offers to get somebody out. What it will never do is promise. It won't say you're on your way, it won't name a time and it won't name a person — it says somebody will come straight back to them to confirm, and then it's your call. That's the whole difference between a lead and a promise you didn't make.
It also knows about your cover during the day, not just after you shut. So somebody ringing at two in the afternoon to ask whether you do nights gets a proper answer instead of a shrug.
Your emergency alerts were never held back
Worth saying plainly, because people ask: an emergency taken on the phone sends you a WhatsApp straight away, whatever time it is. That has always been true and it still is. Your hours hold back briefings and reminders — they have never held back anything urgent.
If you used to put this in your receptionist's notes
Until now there was nowhere to set this, so a lot of owners typed "emergency call-out service available" into the receptionist's free-text notes box. That box is where you tell your receptionist things structure can't carry, and it was doing its best — but a note is advice, and "the team are next in Monday" was an instruction, so the instruction won.
If you've got something like that in your notes, set the cover properly here. You can leave the note where it is; it just isn't the thing doing the work any more.
What your receptionist does with them
Your AI receptionist will never offer a caller a time outside these hours. If you're open nine till one on a Saturday, it offers Saturday mornings and stops at one, and it won't put anybody in at two.
That's worth knowing if you've set up time slots on the Receptionist page. A slot that falls outside a particular day's hours simply isn't offered on that day. A "2 to 5" slot is offered Monday to Friday and skipped on a Saturday that shuts at one, which is what you'd want: nobody gets promised an afternoon you aren't working. A slot that runs past closing is cut to fit instead: an 8:30 to 4:30 slot on that same Saturday is offered, and shown to the customer on your booking page and on the phone, as 9 till 1.
The receptionist page shows your hours and a link back here, so you can see what it's working from without hunting for it.
When you book a job without saying a time
Tell Mucka "get him in Tuesday" and it has a day but no hour, so it takes one off your working day: the time you start, or the first gap after whatever is already in the diary. It says which — "I've put him in at half eight, that alright?" — and you can move it there and then.
That matters because your customer gets told the time too. Their confirmation text waits a few minutes on a booking like this, so if you change your mind in the same breath, they hear the new time and never the old one.
If you haven't set your hours, Mucka says so rather than pretending half eight was your idea, and you can give it the real ones in the same sentence.
What Mucka does with them
Briefings, reminders and chases only go out inside these hours — for you and for everyone on your team. If you're open nine till one on a Saturday, nobody gets a morning briefing at half seven and nobody gets an end-of-day summary at five.
There's an hour of leeway either side, on purpose. A morning briefing is meant to land before you start and an end-of-day summary just after you finish, so on a day you work half eight to half four they can arrive from half seven and up to half five. An hour is the leeway, not the whole evening.
Bank holidays count as closed, even though they fall on a day you'd normally work. Nobody gets a briefing on Boxing Day.
None of this needs switching on. Setting your hours is the instruction — you shouldn't have to tell us twice.
Two things it deliberately doesn't touch:
- Urgent things still come through. A customer with an emergency doesn't care what your settings screen says.
- Things that just happened still come through. A job assigned to an engineer on a Saturday, a payment landing, a customer accepting a quote — somebody chose to do that just now, and it's news whenever it arrives.
If you've never set your hours, none of this applies and Mucka messages as it always did. It won't go quiet on the strength of a default you didn't choose.
This isn't the same as an engineer's working hours
Two different things, easily confused:
- Business hours (this page) are when the business is open. They decide what a caller can be offered.
- Working hours are when a person is on the clock. They sit on the engineer's own settings and decide when Mucka watches their location and sends leave-now nudges.
An engineer can be on the clock at seven in the morning while the phone line doesn't open until eight. Both are right.
If you've never set them
Until somebody sets them, Mucka assumes Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm — the same assumption it has always made. It'll say so rather than pretending you chose it.
The Opening hours row shows that week with Unsaved beside it, because nothing is stored yet. If Monday to Friday, 8 till 5 is genuinely when you work, open the row and press Save without changing anything — that's you choosing it, and the Unsaved goes. Setting them properly takes a minute and stops the receptionist offering a Saturday you never work, or turning down one you do — and it means a job you book without a time lands when you actually start, not when we guessed you might.