Every bookable service in Opencals has to happen somewhere — a studio, a clinic, a specific branch, or a video call. Locations are how you model those places, and they feed directly into availability: a booking is only offered when the service, the staff member, and the location are all free. This guide walks through creating physical and online locations, giving each one its own hours, and connecting the staff and services that work there.
Create a location under Locations, choose Physical or Online, and fill in the address or meeting link. Give it a schedule and working hours, then connect the staff and services offered there. A service is only bookable at a location once it has been assigned to it, so the last step matters.
Before you start
You'll need admin access to your Opencals dashboard. If you're setting up an online location and want Opencals to generate a fresh meeting link for each booking, connect Zoom or Google Meet first. Physical locations use Google Places to look up addresses — no setup needed on your side. Note that the number of physical locations you can create is capped by your plan; online locations are not.
Step 1 — Open Locations and create one
Open Locations from the dashboard to see every place you've set up, with its Type, Schedule and Address at a glance. Click Create Location to add a new one.
A new location needs three things to start: a Title (the name customers see), an optional Description, and a slug. The slug is generated from the title automatically and forms part of the location's URL — keep it lowercase with hyphens only.
Step 2 — Choose the location type
The Location type field decides what kind of place this is and which fields you fill in next:
Physical
An in-person address — a studio, clinic, salon or branch. You'll enter a street address that customers can navigate to.
Online
A virtual location for video calls. You provide a meeting link, or let a Zoom / Google Meet integration create one per booking.
Delivery
A service performed at the customer's own address, which they provide when they book. No fixed address is stored on the location.
This guide focuses on the two most common types — physical and online.
Step 3 — Enter a physical address
For a Physical location, start typing into Address line 1 and pick the match from the Google suggestions. Selecting a suggestion fills in the City, State, Postal Code and Country automatically and stores the map coordinates behind the scenes — which is why picking from the list matters rather than typing the address free-hand.
General info
You can still edit any field afterwards, and add an Address Line 2 for a suite or unit number. A physical location won't save until an address has been selected from suggestions, because the coordinates are what place it on the map.
Step 4 — Set up an online location
For an Online location, the address fields are replaced by a single Link field. Paste the meeting URL you want customers to join.
General info
If you'd rather not reuse one static link for everyone, connect a meeting integration and Opencals will generate a unique link for each booking instead. See Connect Zoom and Connect Google Meet — you attach the integration to the location in Step 6.
Unique links beat a shared room
A single reused meeting link means two customers can wander into the same call. Connecting Zoom or Google Meet gives every appointment its own room automatically, which is safer and looks more professional.
Step 5 — Assign a schedule and working hours
Under Availability, attach a Schedule to the location. The schedule sets the baseline of when this place is open. For a physical location you can then set recurring Working hours and mark Days off directly on the location.
Availability
Working hours
Days off
Specify days off to indicate periods when your services or staff members are unavailable.
A booking's availability is the intersection of everything involved: the service's own hours, the location's hours, and the assigned staff member's hours. If a location is closed on Sundays, nothing books there on Sunday even if the staff member is free. For more on building the underlying schedules, see Manage schedules.
Step 6 — Connect staff, services and integrations
Finally, wire the location up to the rest of your setup in the side panel:
- Select staff members — assign the staff who work at this location.
- Select services — assign the services available here. A service must be assigned to at least one location to be bookable, so don't skip this.
- Add-ons — assign any add-ons offered at this location.
- Integrations — connect a Zoom or Google Meet integration so online bookings get a generated link.
These relationship fields save on their own as you change them when editing an existing location, so you don't have to hit Save again for each one.
A location does nothing until a service points at it
Creating a location is only half the job. Until you assign at least one service to it — here or from the service's own page — customers will never see it offered. If a location isn't showing up in availability, this is almost always why.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Keep going
Set up your services
Make your services bookable and assign them to the locations where they're offered.
Manage schedules
Build the recurring schedules that set when a location, service or staff member is open.
Onboard staff members
Add the staff who work at each location so their availability feeds into bookings.
Locations overview
See how physical, online and multi-branch locations fit into Opencals.
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