Guide

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Public Holidays

The Public Holidays page loads Australia's public holidays for your state, blocks out your team's and resources' calendars on the days you close, and shows your holiday hours on your showcase page.

Updated 27 September 2026 - 5 min read
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Petboost supports bulk business-wide public holiday and closure management, so you do not need to ask support to create blocked time for you. Use Public Holidays for named Australian public holidays, loaded from Google Calendar. For a continuous multi-day shutdown, such as a Christmas and New Year break, use Bulk Blocked Time instead: see Business closures & multi-day breaks below.

Where to find public holidays

Public Holidays is not in the sidebar. Open it at https://business.petboost.com/public-holidays, from the tools menu on Schedules & Sessions with Public Holiday Manager, or from Manage public holiday hours on Settings > Business Details > Hours.

Each team member's Leaves & Restrictions tab and each resource's Blocked Times tab also has a Public Holidays card, with Magic Load Public Holidays, for applying holidays to that one team member or resource.

Load and apply public holidays

Do this at the start of each year, or whenever you want next year's holidays on your calendars. Holidays are not applied automatically: nothing runs in the background to block them for you.

  1. Open Public Holidays.
  2. Choose your state or territory: ACT, NSW, NT, QLD, SA, TAS, VIC or WA. Petboost pre-selects one from your business time zone.
  3. Select Fetch Public Holidays.
  4. Switch each holiday on or off, or use Enable All or Disable All. Leave off any holiday you plan to work.
  5. For a holiday you open on, flip its Closed all day switch to Open with hours, then set the opening and closing times.
  6. Optional: set Holiday pricing for every holiday, or Custom pricing on one holiday. See Holiday and weekday pricing.
  7. Under Team Members and Resources, choose who gets the blocked time, or use Select All.
  8. Select Apply Holidays, then, in Apply Public Holidays, select the Apply button that names the number of holidays, such as Apply 5 Holidays.

The list shows national holidays plus the holidays of your selected state. Petboost loads the official Australian holiday calendar from Google and filters out observances, keeping only actual public holidays. The fetch needs an internet connection. If it fails, Could not fetch holidays shows with Retry.

Each holiday left Closed all day creates a full-day block labelled Public Holiday - {holiday name} on every team member and resource you selected. Every enabled holiday, open or closed, is saved as your holiday hours on your showcase page. When the apply finishes, Holidays Applied confirms it, and the results show how many blocked time entries were created and how many were already in place.

If your business hours are not set up, the page shows Business hours not set up with Set business hours. Until you set them, applying holidays only blocks out your calendars, and holiday hours do not appear on your showcase page.

Re-applying a holiday updates its showcase hours. Duplicate blocked time entries are skipped automatically, and the apply dialog says how many of the holidays were applied before.

Apply holidays to one team member or resource

Use the card on a profile when only one person or resource observes a holiday.

  1. Open Team Members and select Manage on the team member. For a resource, open Resources and select Manage on the resource.
  2. Open Leaves & Restrictions, or Blocked Times on a resource.
  3. On the Public Holidays card, select Magic Load Public Holidays.
  4. Tick the holidays they will observe, or tick All.
  5. Select Apply Selected, which shows how many holidays you ticked.

The card applies the blocked time to that team member or resource only. When all upcoming holidays are applied, it says All upcoming holidays applied.

How it works

  • Team members receive the holiday as leave, the same as manually added leave
  • Resources receive the holiday as blocked time, the same as manually added blocks
  • Blocked time prevents new bookings for those team members and resources on those dates
  • Existing appointments are not automatically cancelled or moved when you apply public holidays. They remain until you reschedule or cancel them

Check for appointment conflicts

After you apply holidays from a team member's Leaves & Restrictions tab or a resource's Blocked Times tab, the card lists the holidays it applied under Check each date for existing appointments to cancel. Select a date to see any overlapping appointments and cancel them one by one.

Applying from the main Public Holidays page creates the blocked time but does not show a conflict review. After applying, check your calendar for appointments on the holiday dates, then reschedule or cancel them.

Business closures & multi-day breaks

For a whole-business shutdown over a date range, such as closed from 25 December and reopening on 4 January, use Bulk Add Blocked Time, not a support request.

  1. Open Team Members or Resources, open the actions menu and select Bulk Block Time. On Appointments, the same tool is Bulk Blocked Time.
  2. Under Team Members and Resources, select Select All, or pick specific ones, then select Configure Blocked Time.
  3. Set the Start Date and End Date of the closure, such as 25 December to 4 January.
  4. Set From Time and To Time. New entries start at 9:00am to 5:00pm, so widen them to cover your whole working day. On a multi-day entry, the same time range applies to each day.
  5. Optional: enter a Label (Optional), such as "Christmas Closure", or pick one of the Quick labels.
  6. Select Review Changes, check the summary, then select the Apply button, which names the number of blocked times and team members or resources.

Existing appointments on those dates are not cancelled automatically. After applying, check your calendar, then reschedule or cancel any bookings that still fall inside the closure.

Holiday pricing

A public holiday can carry its own rate. You set one policy rate for every holiday under Holiday pricing, then override any individual holiday with Custom pricing, or leave that holiday with no rate.

A holiday rule is more specific than a weekday rate or a special-dates range. If a date has a holiday rule, that rule decides. A holiday with no rate set does not take a school-holiday or Saturday rate that also covers the date.

Set these rates on Public Holidays. For weekday and date-range rates, and what pet owners see while they book, see Holiday and weekday pricing.