TL;DR
Working hours in Plutio let freelancers and agencies define per-day schedules at the workspace level and per-person level, controlling when clients can book meetings, how workload capacity gets calculated, and what counts as working time for time tracking.
Plutio stores working hours in Settings > Working Hours, where each day of the week can be toggled on or off independently with custom start and end times. Over 65% of Plutio users on team plans configure personal working hour overrides within the first week of setup, which means scheduler availability and workload view capacity reflect each person's actual schedule rather than a generic 9-to-5 default. The core value: one configuration controls scheduler booking windows, workload capacity bars, and time tracking context simultaneously, so there is no drift between what the calendar shows and what the team actually works.
Working hours come with all Plutio plans starting at $19/month, with a 7-day free trial. Configuration takes under two minutes in Settings > Working Hours.
What working hours configuration is
Working hours configuration is the process of defining the specific days and time ranges when work happens, at both the workspace level and the individual level, so that every scheduling, capacity, and time tracking feature in Plutio respects those boundaries automatically.
In Plutio, working hours live in Settings > Working Hours. The workspace owner sets the default schedule that applies to everyone in the workspace. Each day of the week, Monday through Sunday, can be toggled on or off independently. For enabled days, a start time and end time define the working window. Personal working schedules let individual team members override the workspace defaults with their own per-day configuration.
Workspace-level working hours
Workspace working hours set the baseline schedule for the entire team. When a workspace owner enables Monday through Friday and sets 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM as the working window, every team member inherits that schedule by default. The scheduler only shows booking slots within those hours, and the workload view calculates capacity based on 8 available hours per enabled day. Disabling Saturday and Sunday means clients browsing a booking page never see weekend slots, and workload calculations treat weekends as zero-capacity days without any manual adjustment.
Personal working hour overrides
Team members who work different schedules can set personal working hours that override the workspace defaults. A part-time contractor working Tuesday through Thursday from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM configures those hours on their profile, and Plutio uses the personal schedule instead of the workspace default for that person's scheduler availability and workload capacity. The workspace schedule stays unchanged for everyone else. Personal overrides are especially useful for distributed teams: a team member in Berlin sets 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM CET while a team member in New York sets 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST, and both profiles show accurate local availability on shared booking pages. Personal overrides apply everywhere working hours are referenced, so one configuration change updates scheduler slots, workload bars, and time tracking context for that person across the entire workspace.
Setting up working hours took two minutes and immediately fixed our booking page. Clients used to book 7 AM calls because there was no boundary. Now they only see slots during our actual hours.
Why working hours matter for freelancers and agencies
Without defined working hours, every scheduling and capacity feature defaults to assumptions that rarely match reality. A scheduler with no hour boundaries shows 7:00 AM and 9:00 PM slots as available, so clients book calls before breakfast or after dinner. A workload view treating every day as a full 24-hour window calculates capacity incorrectly, making a developer with three assigned projects look underbooked when they are actually working at 95% of their real available hours. Time tracking entries logged outside defined working hours blend into billable time without any context for whether the work happened during regular hours or overtime.
The financial cost adds up fast. A freelance consultant billing $150/hour who gets booked for a 7:00 AM call every Tuesday loses 30 minutes of productive morning time each week adjusting their routine, which across 48 working weeks means 24 hours of disrupted workflow annually, roughly $3,600 in indirect cost. For agencies with five team members, inaccurate workload calculations lead to overbooking on some days and underbooking on others, which creates missed deadlines or idle capacity that both reduce margins.
Calendly handles availability through calendar integration and custom schedules but operates as a standalone scheduling tool with no connection to project workload or time tracking. Availability set in Calendly does not inform how task assignments are distributed or how capacity gets calculated across a project portfolio. Acuity Scheduling (now Squarespace Scheduling) offers working hours per calendar but similarly has no native project management, so a freelancer still needs separate tools for tasks, invoicing, and workload planning, each with its own availability settings that can drift out of sync.
The most costly outcome of missing working hours is not a bad meeting time but a workload view that shows false capacity, leading to overcommitment on projects that then run late and damage client relationships.
Plutio eliminates the drift by storing working hours once and applying them everywhere: scheduler slots, workload capacity, and time tracking context all read from the same configuration in Settings > Working Hours.
How working hours work in Plutio
Open Settings > Working Hours, enable or disable each day of the week, set start and end times, and every scheduling, capacity, and time tracking feature in Plutio respects those boundaries immediately.
Before configuring, decide whether the workspace needs a single schedule for everyone or whether individual team members need personal overrides. Most solo freelancers set workspace hours once and move on. Agencies with remote team members typically set a workspace default and then have each person configure personal overrides.
Step by step
- Step 1: Navigate to Settings > Working Hours. The workspace-level schedule shows all seven days of the week with toggle switches and time fields for each day.
- Step 2: Toggle each day on or off. Enabled days show start time and end time fields. Set Monday through Friday to 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM and disable Saturday and Sunday for a standard work week.
- Step 3: Adjust individual days as needed. Set Friday to 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM for a half-day, or enable Saturday with a 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM window for weekend availability.
- Step 4: For team members who work different schedules, have each person set personal working hours that override the workspace defaults. Personal hours follow the same per-day toggle and time format.
- Step 5: Verify the result by checking the scheduler booking page (client-facing slots now match the configured hours) and the workload view (capacity bars now reflect actual available hours per person per day).
Practical tip: set workspace hours first as the baseline, then only configure personal overrides for team members whose schedules genuinely differ. Starting with the workspace baseline keeps maintenance minimal and ensures new team members automatically inherit the correct default schedule.
Who needs working hours configuration
Freelancers, agencies, and small teams who use scheduling, workload planning, or time tracking in Plutio get measurable value from configuring working hours, particularly anyone whose real schedule does not match a generic Monday-through-Friday 9-to-5 default.
A freelance designer working four days a week (Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM) needs working hours configured so the scheduler booking page does not show Monday slots and the workload view calculates capacity based on 32 available hours per week instead of 40. Without that configuration, clients book Monday calls that get declined, and project load appears lighter than reality. Over 58% of Plutio freelancers on paid plans configure non-standard working hours, which means the majority of users benefit from per-day customization rather than accepting the default.
Agencies with distributed teams face a different version of the same problem at a larger scale. A five-person agency spanning three time zones needs each team member's scheduler and workload to reflect local hours. The workspace owner sets a baseline (Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM) and each team member adjusts to their local working window. Workload view then shows accurate per-person capacity, so project managers assign tasks based on real availability rather than assumptions.
Freelancers switching from Calendly often find that availability set in Calendly only controls booking slots but has no connection to project workload or task assignment. Plutio's working hours feed into scheduling, workload, and time tracking from one configuration, so there is no separate availability tool to maintain. Freelancers moving from Acuity Scheduling gain the same scheduling control but with native project management, invoicing, and client portal access included in every plan starting at $19/month.
Bottom line: any freelancer or agency whose real working schedule does not match the default 9-to-5 Monday-through-Friday window needs working hours configured so that every booking slot, capacity bar, and time entry reflects when work actually happens.
