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Closing Days and Hours Your Agents Shouldn't Book

If you don't run plumbing on Sundays, your agent shouldn't offer a Sunday. There are two ways to make that true, and which one you need depends on whether you're closing a stretch of dates or the same days every week. Getting the wrong one is the most common reason a customer ends up booked into a slot nobody meant to sell.

Which one you need

  • A date range — a heat wave, a holiday week, a stretch when a crew is out. Use a 0% cap on a date window in Capacity Autopilot. You can do this yourself today, on any account.

  • Something that repeats — every Saturday and Sunday, summer only, after 6pm, a specific trade you never book on Fridays. That's a closure rule. Email support@upsmith.com and we'll set it up.

These aren't two names for the same thing. A cap is a percentage of a day's capacity inside a date window. A closure rule is "these hours are shut for this kind of work, always." Neither one replaces the other.

Closing a date range yourself

  1. Go to Capacity Autopilot and create a date window covering the dates — give it a name, set the range, and save with Add date window.

  2. With that date window selected, type 0 into every cell you want shut.

  3. Check your work. A shut cell reads "Blocked — agents will not see any availability", and hovering it shows "0% cap — hard block. Nothing can be booked in this window."

  • Every arrival window and every day needs its own 0. A blank cell isn't blocked — it runs at 100% and stays bookable. This is the step people miss.

  • Make sure you're on the right date window, not Default. Filling in 0% on Default blocks that work all year.

  • Date ranges recur annually. The editor says so: "Date range (recurs annually)". A range that wraps the year end — Dec 15 to Feb 15 — works fine.

  • 0% is a hard block, not a throttle. Unlike a cap of, say, 70%, it doesn't wait for a window to be provably over the limit. Nothing gets through.

Closing something that repeats

Closure rules cover what a date-window cap can't:

  • Weekdays — closed every Saturday and Sunday, or every Friday for one trade.

  • Months — no installs in December, no maintenance in July and August.

  • Times of day — nothing after 6pm, or nothing before 9am. Overnight windows work too; an end time earlier than the start just means it runs past midnight.

  • Scoped to particular work — a rule can apply to specific job types, job type groups, business units, business unit groups or arrival windows, and can carve out exceptions. So "no electrical on weekends, but emergency no-heat calls are fine" is one rule, not a compromise.

Tell us what you want closed in plain English — "no plumbing maintenance Saturdays or Sundays," "nothing after 5pm for the Denver business unit" — and we'll build it and confirm what it covers before it goes live. Blocks apply everywhere your agents look at the calendar: when they search for slots, when they confirm one, and when they create the appointment.

A self-serve version is on the way. There's a Policies tab in Capacity Autopilot that we're switching on account by account. It's off for most people right now, and where it is on, it asks for ServiceTitan job type IDs typed in by hand rather than picking names off a list — so it isn't something to hand a dispatcher yet. Ask us whether yours is on if you want a look.

What your agent tells a caller

Your agents know about your closures and say so rather than going quiet. Depending on what's set up, a caller hears something along the lines of "Closed every Saturday and Sunday", with any upcoming closed dates named. If someone asks directly for a time that's shut, the agent won't take it — it says the time isn't available for that service and asks for another.

Your own team is unaffected. Closures stop agents offering and booking a slot; dispatch can still put work anywhere in ServiceTitan exactly as before.

Troubleshooting

You blocked a day and something still got booked on it. First check coverage — every arrival window and every day in the range needs a 0, on the right date window rather than Default. If every cell is filled in and it still slipped through, send us the customer name and the appointment at support@upsmith.com. We've fixed real defects in this area recently, so don't assume it's your setup — we'd rather look.

Your agent offered a weekend even though weekends are closed. Send us the conversation. Agents are now held to the slots the calendar actually returned, so an offer outside them is something we want to see.

You used to block days on a weekday grid and can't find it. That grid is gone, along with the old job restrictions editor. Whatever they held was carried over into closure rules — nothing was lost. Email us if you want to see what your account has now.

You want a day closed for one trade but open for another. A 0% cap can do this if the trade is its own job type group. Anything more particular — one job type, one business unit, a time-of-day cutoff — needs a closure rule.

Closing a day didn't stop outbound texts going out about it. Blocking availability stops booking, not outreach. Pausing a campaign is a separate control — see Configuring When and How Your Agents Reach Out.

Common questions

Do I need both a cap and a closure rule? Usually not. Use a cap for dates on the calendar, a rule for anything that repeats. If you're setting the same 0% cap every year, that's a rule.

Will a closure rule change what my technicians can be dispatched to? No. It only limits what your agents offer and book.

How fast does a change take effect? A 0% cap applies to the next availability search. A closure rule goes live when we save it, and we'll tell you when it's in.

Can I close a single date without building a whole date window? Not today — a date window is the unit, though a range can be one day long.

What happens to a job already booked into a slot I've just closed? Nothing. Closing a slot stops new bookings; it doesn't move work that's already on the board.

Where to go next