By default, a practitioner's appointment book is completely available. By using Rosters and Roster Overrides, you can define a practitioner's exact availability, and that availability is what powers several other tools:
The Find Times tool (Appointment Finder), which searches for availability based on Roster Availability
In other words, a Roster isn't just a display preference — it's the source of truth PracSuite uses to decide what can be booked, when, and by whom (staff, online patients, or the waiting list).
Mental model: think of a Roster as the practitioner's normal weekly pattern, Rules as exceptions within a day (like a lunch break), Roster Overrides as one-off or repeating changes to that pattern (like a swapped shift), and Days Off as full-day blocks (like leave or a public holiday). Knowing which tool to use for which job will save you the most time.
Creating a Roster
Go to Settings > Practitioners > Rosters and select Add. Use the drop-down arrow next to Add to pre-set the roster's hours based on a selected business.
See Creating Rosters and Roster Overrides for screenshots of each step.
In the Roster Availability section you can customise:
Description — helps you identify this roster later
Background colour and Text colour — how the roster displays on the appointment book
Display text (optional) — shown in every appointment slot on the appointment book
You then choose which booking types are allowed by default, when no rule is present:
Manual Appointments (M) — staff can book in this time
Waiting List (W) — the Waiting List and Appointment Finder can use this time
Online Appointments (O) — patients can book online in this time
Most practitioners begin with a roster that's completely available, using Rules to mark specific times unavailable (e.g. lunch breaks). It's also valid to start completely unavailable and use rules to "rule in" bookable time — useful if you'd rather disable online bookings and the waiting list by default and only open hours up deliberately.
Finally, select which days should appear on the appointment book, and set the start/end time for each enabled day. Note that Roster Overrides (below) can override these day/time preferences.
Adding Rules to a Roster
Rules let you carve out exceptions inside a day — lunch breaks, regular meetings, new-patient-only slots, and so on. Select Add Rule for the relevant day and configure:
See Creating Rosters and Roster Overrides for screenshots of each step.
Display Text — shown on the appointment book during this time
Start Time / End Time
Appointment Types — restrict what can be booked in this window (optionally only for online bookings)
Background / Text colour
Booking Types (M / O / W) — exactly like the roster-level defaults, but scoped to this rule's time window
Blocking a lunch break properly: if you're adding a rule for time a practitioner is unavailable, untick both O (online) and W (waiting list) — otherwise patients can still self-book or get pulled from the waiting list into that "blocked" time.
If the same rule applies to multiple days, use Copy to add it to other days, or Copy All Rules if every rule on a day should be duplicated elsewhere.
Roster Overrides (once-off and repeating changes)
Overrides handle changes to the normal pattern — a practitioner picking up an extra shift, alternating fortnightly schedules, a temporary closure, and more.
See Creating Rosters and Roster Overrides for screenshots of each step.
You can create an override two ways:
From the roster itself — hover a practitioner's name on the appointment book, select Roster, then Add Override at the top (use Manage Overrides to edit all of them at once)
From the appointment book — click and drag to select a timeframe, then choose Override from the pane that appears
Either way, you'll configure: repeat frequency, start/end dates (optional), display text, start/end time, appointment types, colours, and — for multi-column practitioners — which column the override affects.
Overrides are ranked. When two overrides overlap, the one higher in the list wins. This ranking is the single most common cause of "I set up an override but it's not doing what I expected" support tickets — see the troubleshooting section below for a real example.
To delete an override: open the roster, select Manage Overrides, click Edit in the top-left, then use the delete icon on the override itself.
Assigning a Roster to a Practitioner
Creating a roster doesn't apply it anywhere on its own — the final step is assigning it to a practitioner. Either:
See Assigning a Roster to a Practitioner for screenshots of each step.
Click Assign To Practitioner at the bottom of the roster and pick the practitioner, or
Go to Settings > Practitioners, open the practitioner, Edit, scroll to the Roster section and Add under the relevant business
Set a start date (and an end date if the change is temporary or scheduled). If a practitioner's hours are changing significantly on a known date, set an end date on the current roster and a start date on the new one so the transition happens automatically.
Default roster for new practitioners: in Settings > Practitioners > Rosters, you can mark one roster as the Default. Any new practitioner file will automatically be assigned that roster. Most practices set an "N/A" roster (see below) as the default, so a brand-new practitioner file can't be accidentally booked into before their real hours are configured.
The N/A Roster (marking a practitioner fully unavailable)
If no roster is assigned to a practitioner, they inherit the business's open hours — which usually means they look fully bookable. An "N/A" roster is the standard way to prevent bookings before a practitioner starts, or after they finish.
See Creating an N/A Roster for screenshots of each step.
Go to Settings > Practitioners > Rosters and click Add
Enter
N/Aas the DescriptionUncheck every day of the week
Save, then assign it to the practitioner as usual
You can also set this N/A roster as the practice-wide Default, so every new practitioner file starts fully closed until you configure their real hours.
Setting a practitioner up ahead of their start date: it's common for a practice to want a new practitioner's file created and online booking configured weeks before they actually begin seeing patients. In that case, assign the N/A roster to the practitioner starting from the day their file is created, and only start their real roster on their actual first working day. There's no benefit to starting the real roster immediately — the practitioner isn't working yet, so the appointment book would just sit open and bookable for weeks with nobody there to see patients. Set the real roster's start date to their genuine start date, and let the N/A roster cover the gap.
Copying a Roster
When a new roster is similar to an existing one, copying saves rebuilding it from scratch. Open the roster you want to copy, select the cog icon at the top of the page, choose Copy Roster, make your edits on the new copy, and Save.
See Copying a Roster for screenshots of each step.
Support-desk tip: Copy Roster is also the recommended way to change an existing recurring pattern (e.g. a staff member dropping a day) — see "Changing a recurring roster" in the troubleshooting section below, since editing the live roster directly can look like it deleted appointments (it hasn't).
Days Off (leave, closures and public holidays)
Days Off completely rule out a date range for one or more practitioners, or an entire business — the appointment book column(s) won't accept any bookings at all. Typical uses: annual leave, sick leave, and public holidays.
See Days Off for screenshots of each step.
Go to Settings > Practitioners > Days Off and click Edit, then Add
Enter a description (shown on the appointment book), start and end dates
Choose which Businesses and/or Practitioners it should affect
Save
To delete a Day Off, tick the checkbox next to it and click Delete. Use the filters at the top to find entries for a particular practitioner, business, or date range.
Public holidays sync weekly, not instantly. The "automatically add public holidays" option syncs every Sunday night. If you've just enabled it, don't expect that week's public holiday to appear immediately — add it manually via Days Off if it's coming up before the next sync.
Days Off is all-day only. There's no start/end time field on a Day Off — it blocks the whole day. For a partial day (e.g. a practitioner leaving at lunchtime), use a Rule Out or a Roster Override on the appointment book for just that time window instead.
How Rosters control Online Bookings and the Waiting List
Online availability and Waiting List availability are both driven by the same roster mechanics, layered on top of each other:
See Specifying Available Time for Online Bookings and Specifying Available Time for the Waiting List for screenshots of each step.
Minimum/maximum search period and consecutive appointment settings (Settings > Online Booking > Online Booking Overview)
Roster Availability — the O and W checkboxes on the roster itself set the default
Roster Rules — can open or close specific windows within a day, overriding the roster default in either direction
Roster Overrides — can do the same thing for one-off or repeating date ranges
Days Off, existing appointments, day notes and rule-outs all remove time as a final layer
You can also restrict what appointment types are bookable in a given window (e.g. reserve a block exclusively for new patients) via the cog icon when editing a Rule.
It works both ways. You don't have to start "open" and rule things out. You can set the whole roster to Online Appointments off / Waiting List off by default, then use Rules to open up specific windows for online booking or the waiting list only — a common pattern for practitioners who want tight control over what online patients can see.
Multi-column and Multi-location Practitioners
Practitioners with multiple appointment book columns often don't want online bookings appearing in every column. Two approaches:
See Specifying Available Time for Online Bookings for Multi-Column Practitioners for screenshots of each step.
Roster Override — if a column should never take online bookings, add an override covering all opening hours for that column and untick Online Booking
Rules — if online bookings are fine in multiple columns but only at certain times, use the column dropdown on a Rule to target "All", column 1, column 2, etc.
For practitioners working across multiple locations/businesses, each business generally needs its own roster, since a roster's hours are tied to a business. If you only want a practitioner's column to appear on the days they're actually rostered at that location (rather than showing an empty/blocked column on their days off), the cleanest approach is the inverse of the usual pattern: disable the day in the base roster, then add an override that opens it only for the weeks/fortnights they're actually rostered on. This keeps the appointment book clean instead of leaving a redundant blocked column every other week.
Tips & Troubleshooting from Real Support Tickets
These are the roster issues that come up most often in support conversations — worth knowing before they trip you up.
"I set up an override but staff still can't manually book that time"
This is almost always a second, higher-ranked override quietly blocking the time. In one real case, a practice set up an alternating Saturday/Sunday override for a staff member, but manual bookings were still blocked on the Saturdays. The cause was an older, unrelated override ranked above it that had the "M" (manual) box unticked. The fix: open Manage Overrides, check what's ranked above your new override, and either tick "M" on the blocking override or delete it if it's no longer needed.
"I changed a practitioner's roster and it deleted their patients"
It didn't — nothing you do with rosters can delete appointments or patient data. What happens is that unticking a day on a live roster hides that column going forward; the appointments still exist and still appear in reports and patient files. The recommended way to change a recurring pattern (e.g. someone dropping Thursdays) is:
Re-enable the day on the current roster if needed, then use the cog icon to Copy it
Untick the day you want to remove on the new copy, and save it under a new name
On the practitioner's file, set an end date on the current roster for the day the change takes effect
Add the new roster starting the next day
This keeps history intact (you can still see the old column in the past) while cleanly switching the pattern going forward.
"I need to block out a whole week for every practitioner at once"
Don't add individual Roster Overrides per practitioner — Days Off supports selecting multiple practitioners and/or an entire business in one entry. For something like a Christmas closure, one Days Off entry covering the whole business is much faster than overrides on every column.
"There's no time field on Days Off for a half-day"
Correct — Days Off only blocks full days. For a partial day off, use a Rule Out or a Roster Override by highlighting just that time range directly on the appointment book.
"I ticked 'auto-add public holidays' but the holiday still shows as available"
Public holidays sync on a weekly schedule (Sunday nights), not instantly when you tick the option. If a public holiday is coming up before the next sync, add it manually as a Days Off entry rather than waiting.
"A practitioner works at two locations and I want a clean appointment book"
Set up separate rosters per business, and where a column should be hidden on the days a practitioner isn't at that location, disable the day on the base roster and use an override to open it only on the weeks/days they're actually there (see the multi-column section above).
Quick Reference Cheat Sheet
You want to… | Use |
Set a practitioner's normal weekly working hours | Roster |
Block a recurring lunch break or add appointment-type-only windows | Rules (within a Roster) |
Make a one-off or repeating change to the normal pattern (extra shift, alternating weeks) | Roster Override |
Block a full day for one practitioner, several practitioners, or a whole business | Days Off |
Block part of a single day, one-off | Rule Out or Roster Override (not Days Off) |
Stop new practitioner files from being bookable before hours are set | N/A Roster, set as Default |
Reuse most of an existing roster for a new one | Copy Roster |
Change a recurring pattern without losing history | Copy the roster, edit the copy, end-date the old one and start-date the new one |