# Set business hours

Set hours on the line itself. Every phone line is a routing record carrying its own provider, permissions, hours, routing and limits, so two numbers can keep different hours in the same workspace. A caller outside them hears a deterministic closed-line message in your business's name, the call ends, and the record carries an after-hours outcome rather than looking like a fault.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **Channels:** phone
- **In the app:** #/calls, #/phone-advanced
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/set-business-hours/

## Hours are a property of the line

There is no separate table of opening times and no workspace-wide schedule. A line — a business number, and equally a person's browser-based line — is one row in the routing table that already answers "whose endpoint is this and what is it for" for every channel. Its hours sit there alongside its provider, whether it may take inbound and place outbound calls, its routing, its recording policy, its capabilities, its limits and its status.

The practical result is that hours are answered per number. A sales line that closes at six and a support line that runs later are two rows with two sets of hours, not one compromise applied to both. It also means that changing hours is a change to one line and cannot accidentally alter another.

## Setting them

1. Open the phone setup for the line you mean and confirm you have the right number in front of you before editing anything.
   - Result: You are editing one routing record. Everything on this screen belongs to that number.
2. Set the hours, and set the line's timezone deliberately rather than assuming it inherits yours.
   - Result: The line's timezone is the clock that matters. It is also the clock a promise made on a call is resolved against when spoken words like "tomorrow eleven" become a dated follow-up.
3. Check the closed-line message reads correctly in your business's name.
   - Result: That is what a caller outside hours actually hears, so it is worth reading aloud once.
4. Ring the number outside the hours you just set.
   - Result: This is the verification, and it takes a minute. You should hear the closed message and the call should end; the call should then appear in the record with an after-hours outcome.

## What a caller hears, and why it names no times

A closed or switched-off line does not simply refuse. Connect returns a refusal brief carrying the closed-line message, the worker synthesises it and plays it on a track of its own, records that the line refused, and hangs up. The call is stored as ended with an outcome that says which reason applied — the line being off, or the call arriving outside hours.

> **Careful** The closed-line message deliberately contains no opening times. Times in a spoken message go stale the moment hours change, on a public holiday, or when a caller in another timezone does the arithmetic wrongly — and a confidently wrong "we open at nine" is worse than no time at all. Say when you are open on the channels where you can keep it current.

This behaviour replaced something considerably worse. A closed line once answered as a bare refusal that the worker handled by tearing down the room: the caller heard the call connect and immediately drop, and no call record existed at all. An answered call with a message and a recorded outcome is both a better experience and an auditable one.

## Hours are not the only reason a call is refused

| Reason | What the caller gets | What the record says |
|---|---|---|
| Outside the line's hours | The spoken closed-line message | Ended, with an after-hours outcome |
| The line is switched off | The same spoken message | Ended, with a line-off outcome |
| No voice worker has checked in recently | The call is refused before a record exists so the attempt can be retried | A not-ready refusal rather than a call |
| Every worker is over its load ceiling | The same | A capacity refusal, and line health reports it |
| The budget cannot cover the call | The spoken closed-line message, not silence | A refusal recorded before the call is answered |

Line health names these and each drains by itself as its cause clears — a worker that has not checked in, a fleet with no capacity, a run of calls that never rang, and sessions the model refused. They escalate into the queue a person works rather than sitting on a screen nobody has open.

## The mistakes worth avoiding

**Using the runtime switch as out-of-hours** — Stopping Connect leaves a live line unhandled. Closing the line makes the caller hear something deliberate and records why.
**Assuming hours cover outbound too** — Hours govern when the line behaves as open. Placing calls is gated separately by the line's outbound permission and by the budget check that runs before an outbound call.
**Setting hours and forgetting the timezone** — The line's timezone is what resolves both the hours and any promised call-back time. A line set to the wrong clock is wrong twice.
**Expecting a very late call-back anyway** — A phone follow-up more than a day late is closed as missed rather than rung. A call-back a day after it was promised is worse than none.

## Questions

### Can two numbers in one workspace keep different hours?

Yes, and that is the normal arrangement. Hours belong to the line's routing record, so each number answers the question for itself.

### Why does the closed message not say when we are open?

Because it is deterministic and hours change. A recorded time drifts out of date silently and is heard as a promise. The message names your business and says the line is closed; the times belong where you can keep them accurate.

### Does an after-hours call create a lead or a follow-up?

A call that was never a conversation does not produce a lead. That word covers both a call nobody picked up and one that never rang; neither is treated as contact having been made.

### Do hours affect WhatsApp or email?

No. Hours are a property of a phone line. Pacing on the written channels is an autonomy and follow-up question rather than an opening-times one.

## Related

- [Business hours and the closed line](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/phone/business-hours/)
- [Switching the line off](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/phone/line-off/)
- [Configuring a phone line](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/phone/line-configuration/)
- [Phone line health](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/phone/phone-health/)
- [Set Connect up before you go away](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/set-up-for-a-holiday/)
- [A caller reached the closed-line message](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/troubleshooting/after-hours-call/)

## What this page is based on

- docs-source/sources/PHONE.md §1 — a line is `channel_routes`, and what it carries
- docs-source/sources/PHONE.md §9 — closed-line refusal, outcomes and attribution
- docs-source/sources/PHONE.md §5 — line health and capacity refusals
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §7 — very late phone follow-ups are closed as missed