How to organise your veterinary team's working hours
Updated
Staff hours are not an HR document: they decide which appointments your clinic can offer. Get them wrong and the calendar offers impossible slots, then somebody has to phone the client to undo them, which is the worst possible way to start a relationship.
Start with roles, not people
Before assigning hours, be clear on who does what. In a clinic not everyone handles everything: a groomer does not give vaccines and a receptionist does not run consultations.
VeteApp distinguishes veterinarians, assistants, receptionists, groomers and nurses. Be clear on what the role does and does not do: it organises and identifies your team, but on its own it does NOT decide who can perform what.
Who can carry out each service is set on the procedure itself, by ticking the authorised staff. It is a separate step and easy to miss: assign roles without reviewing that list and public booking can offer people who do not perform that service.
Hours are defined per weekday
Almost no clinic runs the same hours every day. Saturday closes early, Wednesday someone starts late because they teach, and somebody has Mondays off.
That is why hours are configured day by day rather than as a single range. And lunch breaks have to be recorded: otherwise the system offers one o'clock as free and someone ends up eating between two consultations.
Holidays and absences: the part most often forgotten
The weekly schedule covers the normal case. What breaks the calendar is the exceptions: holidays, a conference, sick leave, the day someone leaves at three.
In VeteApp those are recorded as inactivity days and booking stops offering those slots. The habit to build is logging them the day they are approved, not the week they start: once a client has booked, undoing it costs an awkward phone call.
Review the schedule every season
Schedules age badly. Someone is hired, someone else swaps shifts, Saturday hours are extended, and six months later the configuration no longer describes how the clinic works.
Put it in the calendar: a fifteen-minute quarterly review stops your public booking page filling up with slots nobody can cover.
Frequently asked questions
- What staff types can I create?
- Veterinarians, assistants, receptionists, groomers and nurses. The role identifies each person, but who can perform each service is set on the procedure by ticking the authorised staff.
- Can hours differ by day?
- Yes. Working hours are assigned per weekday, with their lunch breaks, so a short Saturday or a late-starting Wednesday are represented exactly as they are.
- How do I block someone's holiday?
- Record it as inactivity days on that person's profile, and booking stops offering their slots on those dates.