Blocking Time Off and Holidays

Use blocked time to prevent patients from booking appointments during vacations, holidays, lunch breaks, or any other period when your chairs are not available. This article walks you through every way to block time in Dental Marketing Tool.

Why Blocking Time Matters

Once you share your booking link or embed a scheduling widget on your website, patients can request appointments around the clock. Without blocked time, the calendar has no way to know that your office is closed on Thanksgiving or that the doctor is at a conference Tuesday through Thursday. Blocked time tells the system to mark those slots as unavailable so patients never see them as open.

Three Ways to Block Time

Dental Marketing Tool gives you three tools to cover different situations:

• One-time blocks for a specific day or time range (a vacation, a CE course, a staff meeting).
• Recurring blocks for something that repeats on a schedule (a lunch break every weekday, an early close every Friday).
• Office hours for setting the days and hours your practice is open in the first place. If you have not done that yet, start with Setting Your Office Hours and Availability before adding blocks on top of it.

Adding a One-Time Block

1. Open the Calendars tab from the main left-hand menu.
2. Click into the calendar you want to update, then open its Settings.
3. Scroll to the Availability section and click Add Blocked Time (you may also see this labeled Block Off Time depending on your plan).
4. Choose One-Time Block.
5. Set the Start Date and Time and the End Date and Time for the period you want to close off.
6. Add an optional internal note (for example, Doctor at CE conference) so your team knows why the time is blocked.
7. Click Save. Those slots will immediately disappear from the booking flow.

Adding a Recurring Block

Recurring blocks work well for anything that repeats: a daily lunch window, an early-close afternoon, or a weekly staff huddle.

1. Follow steps 1 through 3 above to reach the Add Blocked Time screen.
2. Choose Recurring Block instead of one-time.
3. Select the days of the week the block applies to.
4. Set the start time and end time for the recurring window (for example, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM for lunch).
5. If the recurring block has an end date (for example, a temporary schedule change through the end of a month), toggle on Set End Date and choose the last date it should apply. Leave it off if the block should repeat indefinitely.
6. Click Save.

Blocking Holidays for the Whole Year

The most efficient way to handle standard office holidays is to add them all at once as individual one-time blocks. Open Calendars, pick your calendar's Settings, and work through each holiday date in order. Most practices block the same six to ten federal holidays every year, so this process takes only a few minutes once a year, ideally during your end-of-year planning.

Editing or Removing a Block

To change or delete an existing block, go to the calendar's Settings, scroll to the Availability section, and find your block in the list. Click the block to edit the dates and times, or click the trash icon to remove it. Changes take effect immediately on the live booking link.

Blocking Time for a Specific Team Member

If you use team calendars or round-robin scheduling, you can block time at the staff member level rather than the whole calendar. This is useful when one provider is out but others are still seeing patients. You can manage per-person availability from My Staff under each team member's profile. For full instructions, see Setting Staff Availability for Booking.

Once your time-off blocks are in place, consider setting up automated appointment reminders so that patients with upcoming visits before or after a holiday are confirmed well in advance and your phones stay quiet while the office is closed.