Business Hours and After-Hours Routing

Your phone should behave differently at 10 a.m. than it does at 10 p.m. CallerFriendly lets you set the hours your team is on, where calls go in between, and what callers hear so they always feel taken care of.

Setting your business hours

1. Open Settings → Business Hours.
2. Pick your time zone. This matters — the schedule runs in your local time, not the caller's.
3. For each day of the week, set an Open and Close time. Closed days stay marked Closed.
4. Save.

You can have more than one window per day. Common splits:

• Lunch break: Mon–Fri 9:00–12:00 and 13:00–17:00.
• Split shift: Mon–Fri 10:00–14:00 and 17:00–21:00.

Holidays

You probably do not work on every weekday. Open Settings → Holidays to add closed days. A few options:

• Pick from common holidays. Federal and provincial holidays are pre-loaded — tick the ones you observe.
• Add a one-off closed day. Birthday closure, family event, surprise long weekend — type the date and you are done.
• Add a recurring annual closure. Same day every year.

On a holiday, the after-hours rule below kicks in for the whole day.

What happens during business hours

The phone rings whichever ring group or queue you picked for the number. The greeting your callers hear is the one you set for that number.

What happens after hours

Inside Settings → Business Hours, the After-Hours Routing section is where you decide what callers get when no one is on shift.

Common choices:

• Voicemail with a custom greeting. "Thanks for calling [Your Business]. We are closed until 9 a.m. — leave a message and we will call back first thing."
• Ring a single on-call phone. Useful if one teammate carries the after-hours line.
• Ring a different queue. Some businesses run a small after-hours team that takes overflow.
• Send a text reply and hang up. "Thanks for reaching out! We are closed — we will respond first thing tomorrow."

You can mix these — voicemail by default, but ring the on-call manager if the caller presses 1.

Different rules for different numbers

If you run a sales line and a support line, you probably want different schedules and different after-hours rules. Open each number in Phone Numbers and set its own schedule — or attach a shared schedule by name.

Time-zone tip

The schedule respects your business time zone, no matter where the caller is. So a customer in another state calling at 8 p.m. their time still gets your "open" greeting if it is 5 p.m. on your side.

Preview before you save

Click Preview in the Business Hours screen and pick a date and time. You will see exactly what would happen — open, after hours, holiday — without having to call from another phone.

Common questions

A call came in five minutes before closing — will it cut off at closing? No. A call that started during open hours runs as long as it needs to. The schedule decides what happens to new calls only.

Can I set hours for a specific team member? Yes, but at the team-member level, not the number level. In Team → Schedules, you can mark a teammate Off for certain hours so they are skipped during the ring group, even if the line is technically open.

My after-hours voicemail greeting plays during business hours. Either the schedule is set in the wrong time zone, or the number is pointed at the wrong after-hours rule. Check both in Phone Numbers and Settings → Business Hours.