Availability Overview
When a customer visits your booking page, Driive shows them a set of available time slots. Behind the scenes, there's a layered system that calculates exactly when your team can take appointments. Understanding these layers helps you configure availability correctly so customers see the right options and your team never gets double-booked.
The availability layers
Driive checks four things — in order — to determine whether a time slot is available:
1. Organization business hours
These are your company-wide operating hours — the default weekly schedule for everyone in the organization. If nothing more specific has been set for a team or a user, Driive uses these hours. If your business hours are Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM, that's the schedule every user starts with.
Business hours are configured once and apply as the fallback for everyone. Learn how to set them in Setting Business Hours.
2. Team and user hours
Teams and individual users can each have their own weekly schedule that overrides the defaults. Driive always uses the most specific schedule it can find for a person, falling back one level at a time:
- The user's hours for a specific team (if set)
- The user's own general hours (if set)
- The team's default hours (if set)
- Your organization's business hours
This is useful when:
- A technician works four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days
- A part-time employee only works mornings
- Your install crew runs different hours than your service techs
If a user hasn't set individual hours, they inherit their team's hours — or the organization's business hours if the team hasn't set any either.
Learn more in User Availability.
3. External calendar events
When a user connects their Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook account, Driive reads their existing events and treats them as busy time. If a technician has a dentist appointment on their Google Calendar from 2 PM to 3 PM, that hour won't be offered to customers.
This happens automatically — no manual blocking required. Set up calendar sync in Integrations.
4. Existing Driive appointments
Time slots that already have a Driive appointment assigned to the user are blocked. Driive also accounts for buffer times (travel time between jobs) when calculating gaps. Learn more in Buffer Times and Booking Windows.
How the layers combine
Here's a practical example of how the layers work together:
| Layer | Rule | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Organization hours | Mon-Fri, 8 AM - 5 PM | The default schedule for anyone without their own hours |
| Sarah's hours | Mon-Thu, 7 AM - 4 PM | Sarah's personal schedule replaces the default for her |
| External calendar (Sarah) | Dentist at 2-3 PM Tuesday | Tuesday 2-3 PM blocked for Sarah |
| Existing appointment (Sarah) | Roof inspection 9-11 AM Wednesday | Wednesday 9-11 AM blocked, plus buffer time |
When a customer tries to book a service that Sarah is eligible for on Tuesday, they'll see her available slots as: 7 AM - 2 PM and 3 PM - 4 PM. Sarah's own schedule is used in place of the organization default, and the dentist appointment blocks 2-3 PM.
Key point: Driive starts from the most specific weekly schedule for each person, then blocks out external calendar events and existing appointments. A time slot must survive every check to be offered to a customer.
What about teams?
Teams can have their own default hours, and each user can set different hours for each team they belong to. Because appointment types are linked to specific teams, the practical effect is that each service only shows availability for the right group of people.
For example, if "AC Repair" is linked to the "HVAC Team," customers booking that service will see a combined view of available slots across all HVAC Team users — not your roofing crew.
Note: When someone is on multiple teams, being available on any of them counts — Driive combines their availability across team contexts rather than restricting it.
Timezone handling
Driive handles timezones at two levels:
- Organization timezone — Set during onboarding. This is the default timezone for your business and is used on booking pages.
- User timezone — Each user can set their own timezone in their profile. Driive converts their availability to the organization timezone when displaying slots to customers.
If your entire team is in the same timezone, you don't need to think about this. But if you have remote dispatchers or technicians in different regions, make sure each person's timezone is set correctly.
Next steps
- Setting Business Hours — Configure your organization-wide schedule.
- User Availability — Set up individual hours for each user.
- Buffer Times and Booking Windows — Add travel time buffers and control how far in advance customers can book.