There's plenty you can try to see in a calendar, but rarely all of it at once. When you're at the chair and want to know 'who's next', you need one view. When you're planning the week and balancing time off, you need another. When you're staring at the month to decide team holidays, yet another. And when you're on your phone looking for a quick briefing before the doors open, something else entirely.
BookHero ships with four views built for those moments: Day, Week, Month and List. This guide shows what each one displays, when to use it, and how to jump between them without losing where you were. If you haven't created your first manual booking yet, start there: How to create a manual booking on the calendar.
Where you switch views: the segmented switcher
All views live in the same calendar. What changes is what shows up in the middle. You switch them in the top-left corner of the toolbar, in a segmented control with four buttons. On narrow screens, the switcher collapses into a compact dropdown, but the options are the same.
The four views, in detail
Before we get to the 'when to use' part, it's worth understanding what each view actually shows. The details matter: that's how you pick the one that fits the task in front of you.
Which view for which task
Picking a view isn't about aesthetic preference, it's about the task you're doing. This table lays out where each view is clearly the right pick (and where it isn't).
| Task | Best view | When it doesn't work |
|---|---|---|
| Serving clients and seeing 'who's next' | Day | If you need to plan ahead: use Week or List. |
| Distributing time off and shifts across the team | Week | For long holidays or monthly strategy: jump to Month. |
| Deciding team holidays, spotting volume peaks | Month | For hour-by-hour allocation: switch to Day or Week. |
| Quick morning briefing to the team | List (on phone) | If you need to create bookings now: use Day for the quick panel. |
| Reviewing what actually happened at end of day | List (filtered to today) | If you need to spot gaps between bookings: Day shows them better. |
| Fitting a client who asks for 'somewhere this week' | Week | Can feel tight on a phone: drop down to Day or List. |
| Seeing a single employee's real workload | Day (columns) or Week (employee row) | Month doesn't break down per employee, avoid it here. |
How you jump between views
The shortcuts between views are designed so you don't lose your spot. Rule of thumb: the system always keeps your employee filter and tries to open the new view on the most relevant day.
- From Week to Day: click a day header, or 'Show all' inside a cell. Day View opens on that exact day.
- From Month to Day: click a day cell. Day View opens on that day.
- From any view to another: use the segmented switcher in the toolbar. The current date is translated to the other view (in Week, anchored on the week start; in Month, on day 1).
- From any view to today: 'Today' button next to the arrows. Jumps to the current day, keeping your view.
- To step forward in time: left / right arrows in the toolbar. They move 1 day in Day, 1 week in Week and List, 1 month in Month.
Filters, team tint and real time
Three behaviours are shared by every view. Worth knowing before you pick a 'favourite view'.
- Employee filter in the sidebar: tick or untick people, and that applies instantly to any view. Useful to focus on one person, or only on bookable team members.
- Team tint: each employee has a stable colour. Their bookings inherit that colour in every view, so you can spot at a glance who's responsible.
- Real-time: the calendar listens on Supabase Realtime and updates itself when anyone creates, edits or cancels a booking. If you want to force it, there's a manual refresh button (limited to one click every 3 seconds to keep things cheap).
Blocks and time off: how they appear in each view
Blocks (lunch, training, one-off day off) and approved time off show up in every view, but with different visual weight.
- Day: blocks are grey boxes on top of the timeline, spanning the employee's column width. Full days off appear as a hatched band across the column.
- Week: blocks turn into grey pills mixed in with bookings, sorted by time.
- Month: individual blocks aren't drawn to avoid clutter, only booking totals. Days with 100% time off get the 'Day off' label.
- List: blocks don't show up (List is client-booking oriented). To see blocks in list form, use Day.
If you haven't mastered the create-and-manage-blocks flow yet, read: How to block time on the calendar.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pin a 'preferred view' so the calendar always opens in it?
The calendar remembers the last view you used on the same device, so in practice it works like a preference. If you tend to serve clients from your phone, it'll open in List (if that was the last one). If you tend to plan from a laptop, it'll open in Week. There's no global setting in your profile; it's local to the device, which is normally what you want anyway.
Why does the Week view only show 3 bookings per cell?
So the grid fits without scrolling and the comparison between days stays honest. When there are more than 3, a 'Show all (N)' button appears and takes you to Day View for that day with everything visible. Week is an index; the detail lives in Day.
The Month view tells me '12 bookings' on a day but doesn't let me see them. Where are they?
Click the cell for that day. Month is deliberately lightweight (up to 2 pills + counter) and the click takes you to Day View with the full timeline. Same pattern as any monthly calendar: see the volume, then drill into the detail.
Does List always show 14 days? Can I stretch it to 30?
For now the window is fixed at 14 days from today. It's a trade-off between covering two weeks (enough for most plans) and not ending up with a list that's too long to scan on a phone. To look further ahead, jump to Month.
Is there a horizontal 'swimlane' view with multiple employees on the time axis?
No. The Day View already gives you a vertical swimlane: each column is an employee, time runs downward. That's BookHero's take: more readable on screens with height than on screens with width, and works just as well on tablet or a phone in portrait.
Where to go next on the calendar
Now that you know which view to live in for each task, these guides round out the loop:
- Create a manual booking on the calendar: the panel, the fields, the warnings.
- Block time on the calendar: lunch, training, one-off days off.
- Reschedule and cancel bookings: change time, notify the client, cancel.