---
schema_version: "1"
id: f4b0325c86f8355ed51c351e4bb89fe6f9cc0e92d664cc00482bee579784b0f4
title: Guidelines for Setting Business Hours
collection: admin
version: current
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/service/264-0-0/customize_supporthours_guidelines.md
canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.customize_supporthours_guidelines.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5
source_site: help.salesforce.com
content_type: documentation
content_hash: d3b07a90cec8e078769d2bfeccc15bd358217d59927bce8974e3f2074de5fc8c
description: To make your support processes more accurate, define when your support team is available to help customers. There are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you set business hours.
products:
  - Service Cloud
release: "264"
---
# Guidelines for Setting Business Hours

To make your support processes more accurate, define when your support team is available to help customers. There are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you set business hours.

### Required Editions

<table class="slds-table slds-table_bordered slds-max-medium-table_stacked slds-m-bottom_small edition"><colgroup><col></colgroup><tbody><tr class=""><td class="slds-cell-wrap" style="vertical-align:top;"><a href="https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.service_editions_reference.htm&amp;language=en_US" target="_blank">View supported editions</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table>

- After you set business hours, add the Business Hours lookup field to case layouts and set field-level security on the Business Hours field. This lets users view and update the business hours on a case.
- Business hours on a case are automatically set to your organization's default business hours, unless the case matches the criteria on an escalation rule associated with different business hours.
- Salesforce automatically calculates daylight savings times for the time zones available for business hours, so you don’t have to configure rules to account for time zones.
- Business hours on a case include hours, minutes, and seconds. However, if business hours are less than 24 hours, the system ignores the seconds for the last minute before business hours end. For example, suppose it is 4:30 PM now, and business hours end at 5:00 PM. If you have a milestone with a 30-minute target, it’s more common to say that the target is 5:00 PM, not 4:59 PM. To accommodate this, the system stops counting seconds after 5:00. If seconds were counted from 5:00:00-5:00:59, the 30-minute target would occur after the 5:00:00 PM target cut-off and would roll over to the next day.
- Escalation rules only run during the business hours they’re associated with.
- You can update cases associated with business hours that are no longer active.
- You can’t include the Business Hours field in list views or reports.
- You can create multiple business hours for support teams that operate in the same time zone but at different hours.
- For simplicity, we recommend that you create one set of business hours per support center.
- You can’t deactivate business hours that are included in escalation rules. You must first remove them from the escalation rules.
- You can associate up to 1000 holidays with each set of business hours.
- On cases that include entitlements, business hours are applied according to a hierarchy. For details, see [How Business Hours Work in Entitlement Management](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.entitlements_business_hours.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "When a support record is linked to an entitlement, the record, its milestones, its entitlement process, and the entitlement itself can each use different business hours. Learn how Salesforce approaches business hours in these situations.").

![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-service-support-264-0-0-production-enus/dd14551c-a772-4db6-9a1d-d84df8df2980/images/icon_note.png)

Note All users, even those without the “View Setup and Configuration” user permission, can view business hours via the API.

#### See Also

- [Set Business Hours](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.customize_supporthours.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Specify the hours when your support team is available to serve customers. This helps make your department’s processes, such as escalations and milestones, more accurate.")
- [Set Up Support Holidays](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.customizesupport_holidays.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Holidays let you specify the dates and times your customer support team is unavailable. After you create a holiday, you can associate it with business hours to suspend business hours and escalation rules during holiday dates and times.")