Business Schedule & Working Hours | FieldCamp

The Business Schedule defines the weekly working hours your AI Dispatcher engine uses as its company-wide baseline. It is where you say "we are open Monday through Friday, 7 AM to 6 PM, Saturday until 1 PM, closed on Sunday" and where you add date-specific exceptions like holidays or special hours.

This guide walks through the company-level schedule. Individual technicians have their own working hours on the Team Settings page, and a service area can carry its own schedule that overrides the company default. For per-technician setup, see Setting Up Your Team.

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What the Business Schedule Controls

The Business Schedule provides the company-wide working-hours baseline. When AI Dispatcher checks whether a given date and time is valid for a job, it walks a priority stack and the company schedule is the fallback layer.

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Where to Find the Business Schedule

The Business Schedule lives under the main Settings sidebar, inside the Company section. It is not nested inside AI Dispatcher Settings. For a tour of every setting, see FieldCamp Settings: Every Setting Explained.

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Configuring Weekly Working Hours

Each day of the week has a toggle and a list of time slots. A typical configuration looks like this:

You can:

• Toggle a day on or off using the switch in the day header.
• Add multiple time slots on a day (for example, a morning block and an afternoon block split by a lunch closure).
• Copy time slots from one day to selected other days using the copy button in the day header.
• Configure overnight shifts where the end time is earlier than the start time (e.g., 8:00 PM to 6:00 AM). If you set an overnight slot but the following day is off, the UI shows a warning so you can add a morning slot on the next day to cover the spillover hours.

The save button is disabled while there are validation errors (for example, an end time before a start time, or overlapping slots) or while an unresolved overnight-shift warning is open.

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Date-Specific Hours (Holidays and Exceptions)

Holidays, half-days, and one-off closures are managed in the Date-specific hours panel alongside the weekly schedule.

For each entry you pick one or more dates and set:

• Available or Unavailable for the chosen dates.
• One or more time slots (for partial-day availability).
• An optional reason or note (the placeholder suggests examples like "Holiday - Holi" or "Office closed").

Use this panel to:

• Mark public holidays as Unavailable.
• Add extended seasonal hours by marking dates as Available with custom time slots.
• Temporarily close for weather or maintenance by marking the affected dates as Unavailable.

Date-specific entries take priority over the weekly schedule for the dates they cover.

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How the Business Schedule Fits into Dispatch Decisions

When AI Dispatcher validates a preferred time window for a job, it walks a fixed priority stack. The first matching layer wins.

1. Service area date overrides (if the job's address matches a service area with blocked dates).
2. Service area weekly schedule (if the job's service area carries a schedule).
3. Technician date-specific hours.
4. Technician weekly schedule.
5. Company date-specific hours.
6. Company weekly schedule.

The Business Schedule you configure here sits at the bottom of that stack. It defines the default operating window the system falls back to when no narrower schedule applies. Learn more in How AI Dispatcher Works Under the Hood and see how the validator surfaces issues in Handling Schedule Conflicts and Overlaps.

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Syncing the Schedule to Technicians

When you save a change to the weekly schedule, FieldCamp asks whether you want to also push those weekly hours to team members who have "Use Company Schedule" enabled on their profile. The confirmation dialog shows how many team members currently have that setting on.

You can choose:

• Update business schedule only -- team members keep their current schedules and can update manually if needed.
• Update and sync to team members -- the new weekly hours are also written to each eligible team member.

Date-specific hours on team members are not overwritten by either option; only the weekly hours are synced.

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Testing Your Schedule Setup

Before relying on the schedule for live dispatch, run a few sanity checks. For an end-to-end view of dispatch, see Submitting a Job for AI Dispatch.

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Troubleshooting

A technician is available but the job still appears blocked. The validator walks service area, technician, and company layers in order. Check whether a narrower layer (a service area block, a technician's date-specific Unavailable entry, or that technician's weekly day-off) is intercepting the request before the company schedule is reached. See When the AI Dispatcher Can't Find a Technician for more diagnostic paths.

Holidays are being ignored. Add the date as an entry in the Date-specific hours panel and mark it Unavailable. Removing the day from the weekly schedule is not sufficient because the weekly schedule applies every week.

An overnight shift is throwing a warning. If a day ends after midnight (end time earlier than start time) and the next day is toggled off, FieldCamp warns that the morning hours of the next day are not covered. Either turn the next day on and add a morning slot for the spillover, or adjust the overnight slot.

The save button is disabled. Save is blocked while any day has a validation error (missing times, end before start, overlapping slots) or an unresolved overnight warning. Resolve the inline errors on each day card to re-enable save.

Changes did not affect a teammate's schedule. The sync prompt only updates team members who have "Use Company Schedule" enabled on their profile. Anyone with a custom schedule keeps their existing hours. Update those individuals from Team Settings if needed.

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FAQs

Can I set different business hours for different service lines? The Business Schedule is company-wide. Narrower per-area hours can be configured on a service area's own schedule, and individual technicians can carry their own working hours.

What happens if a technician's hours are wider than the business hours? The dispatch validator checks the technician layer before the company layer. A tech's specific hours and weekly schedule can extend availability beyond the company-wide envelope when that data is present.

Do I need to enter holidays one year at a time? Add specific dates in the Date-specific hours panel as you plan them. Most teams add the next twelve months in one pass and revisit each quarter.

Can I temporarily close the business for weather? Add the affected date in the Date-specific hours panel and mark it Unavailable with a short reason (the placeholder suggests "Office closed" as one option).

Does saving my changes affect jobs already on the schedule? Saving updates the schedule used to validate future requests. Jobs and visits already created keep their original assignments unless they are re-evaluated.

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Quick Reference

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Related Articles

• Setting Up Your Team & Configuring Technicians
• Service Areas and Zones
• Capacity and Workload Limits
• Defining Job Types and Priorities
• Reviewing AI Suggestions
• Submitting a Job for AI Dispatch
• Understanding the Calendar View
• How AI Dispatcher Works Under the Hood
• When the AI Dispatcher Can't Find a Technician
• Handling Schedule Conflicts and Overlaps
• Signing Up and Getting Access