Business hours and special hours

Updated August 24, 2026

Every location carries two schedules. Business hours is the weekly pattern that applies most of the time. Special hours are the date-by-date overrides for holidays, seasonal closures and one-off events. Both live on the location form, both feed the Optimization score, and both can be pushed out to your connected Google listing and to the local directories.

Before you start

Editing a location’s hours requires Locations: full access covering that location.

Applying hours to several locations at once uses Bulk edit, which needs the same permission for every location you select.

Pushing hours to a Google listing requires that location to have a connected Google profile. See Google Business Profile.

Where to find it

Locations → Manage locations (https://app.pluspoint.io/locations/manage) → select the location → the Business hours and Special hours sections of the form.

Setting weekly business hours

Open the location and scroll to Business hours.
Switch on Enable business hours. With this off, no hours are shown anywhere and none are published.
Switch on the days you open.
Set the start and end time on each open day.
Select Save.

Option	Detail
Time increments	15 minutes, across the full day — 00:00 to 23:45
All-day option	24 hours, the first entry in either time dropdown
Default range for a newly opened day	09:00 — 18:00
Ranges per day	Unlimited on the location form

Adding a split shift

For a location that closes over lunch or between sittings, give the day more than one range.

Select + on the day row to add a second time range.
Set its start and end time — for example 09:00 — 13:00 and 15:00 — 19:00.
Repeat for a third range if you need one. Remove an extra range with its trash icon.

Ranges that overlap are merged into one when you save, without warning. If a day comes back looking simpler than you left it, that is why — check the ranges really are separate.

Opening 24 hours

Choose 24 hours in either the start or the end dropdown.

Closing a location entirely

To mark a location as not trading at all, set Status to Closed in General info rather than switching off every day. Switching off every day clears the working hours — and clearing the working hours also clears that location’s Special hours.

Setting special hours

Special hours override the weekly pattern for a specific date. Use them for public holidays, stocktakes, refurbishments and late openings.

Open the location and scroll to Special hours.
Select Add new date.
Set the date in the date picker.
Leave the toggle on Closed for a closure, or switch it to Open and set the times.
Add as many dates as you need with Add new date; remove one with its trash icon.
Select Save.

Note Special hours are forward-looking. Dates in the past are dropped when you save, without a warning.

A row set to Closed that still carries times blocks the save — remove the row and re-add it as a closure.

Applying hours to many locations

Bulk edit rolls one schedule out across a whole portfolio in a single pass.

On Manage locations, select Bulk edit.
In Locations, pick every location the change applies to.
In Select property, choose Business hours or Special hours. One bulk operation edits one property, so a change to both is two passes.
Fill in the editor.
Switch on Sync changes with external profiles if you want the new hours pushed to connected Google listings as well.
Select Apply to N location(s).

The two properties behave differently, and the difference matters:

Property	Behaviour
Business hours	Replaces the whole weekly schedule on every selected location. When at least one day is on, Enable business hours is switched on for you
Special hours	Merged, not replaced. Dates you supply overwrite the same date on each location; existing future dates that are not in your list are kept. Past dates are dropped as usual

That merge rule makes Special hours safe for holiday rollouts: adding 25 December to fifty locations does not wipe the individual closures those locations already had.

How hours reach Google and the directories

Route	What it does
Saving the location form	Writes the hours to Pluspoint. It does not immediately push them to Google
Bulk edit with Sync changes with external profiles on	Queues a push of both business hours and special hours to every selected location that has a connected Google profile
Manage Profile on the location’s Google row	Edits the special hours held on the Google listing itself, rather than on the Pluspoint location
Local Directories	Changes are re-published about once an hour, but downstream directories can take several days to show the new hours

Set hours on the location form as your default — that is the record the directories and the sync read from. Reach for Manage Profile only when you deliberately want the Google listing to differ.

Note Special hours cannot be set by CSV — there is no special hours column in the import template. Weekly business hours can: use the Show Hours column plus the Mon to Sun columns. See Bulk editing and CSV import.

How hours affect the Optimization score

Hours are one of the bigger contributors to the Optimization score. Business hours only count while Enable business hours is on, and the more days carry a schedule, the more they add. Special hours contribute as long as at least one date is today or in the future — past dates never count.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Special hours you saved last year are gone	Past dates are dropped on save	Re-add them for the upcoming date; special hours only hold today and future dates
Special hours disappeared after you edited business hours	Switching off every day clears the working hours, which also clears special hours	Re-enable at least one open day, then re-add the special dates
Two time ranges on one day merged into one	The ranges overlapped, and overlapping ranges are merged on save	Make the ranges genuinely separate, with a gap between them
A save fails complaining about start and end times	A special hours row is set to Open without both times, or its end time is not after its start	Set both times, or switch the row back to Closed
A bulk Special hours edit did not remove a date	Bulk special hours are merged, never replaced	Remove that date on the individual locations, or in a further pass
A bulk Business hours edit wiped a location’s unusual schedule	Bulk business hours replace the whole week	Re-set that location individually; exclude one-off schedules from the bulk selection next time
Google still shows the old hours	Saving the location form does not push to Google	Re-apply the hours through Bulk edit with Sync changes with external profiles on, or edit the listing through Manage Profile
Directories still show the old hours after the Google listing updated	Downstream directories lag the re-publish	Allow several days for external sites to pick the change up