"Is it open right now?" is the question almost every store locator visitor is actually asking. A list of branches that makes them read a table of times and do the arithmetic themselves is doing half the job. Here's how to add opening hours that produce a live open/closed status on each location.
What you get
Add a working-hours column to your location data and each card in the sidebar gains a status line — open or closed right now, plus the next change, like "Open · Closes 17:00". The same line appears in each location's detail view, and visitors get an Open now filter that hides everything currently closed. They scan the list and immediately see which branches are worth traveling to.
Step 1: Format your hours column
Add one column to your spreadsheet holding the whole week's hours per location.
Separators:
- A semicolon (or a line break) separates days. A comma followed by a day
name works too (
Mon-Fri 9-5, Sat 10-2). - A comma between two times separates time ranges within the same day.
A standard week:
Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00; Sat 10:00-16:00; Sun Closed
12-hour and 24-hour clocks both work, with or without minutes:
Mon-Fri 9:00 AM-5:30 PM; Sat 10 AM-4 PM; Sun Closed
Day names can be short or long — Mon, Monday, Tue, Tues, Weds,
and OpenStreetMap's two-letter Mo–Su all resolve. Day ranges (Mon-Fri)
and day lists (Mon, Wed, Fri) both work. Bare hours read like a shop sign:
9-5 means 9:00 to 17:00.
Closed days can be written as Closed or Off, or simply left out — any
day you don't mention is treated as closed.
All-day opening is 24h, 24 hours, Open 24h or 00:00-24:00, and
24/7 on its own covers the whole week:
Mon-Sat 09:00-17:00; Sun: 24h
Past midnight — a closing time at or before the opening time runs into the next day, so a bar open until two is open after midnight too:
Mon-Thu 18:00-23:00; Fri-Sat 22:00-02:00; Sun Closed
noon and midnight work as times (10am to midnight).
Split shifts — a lunchtime closure is two ranges on one day, separated by a comma:
Mon-Fri 09:00-13:00, 14:00-18:00; Sat 09:00-13:00; Sun Closed
That last one is the case most locator tools get wrong, and it's very common for pharmacies, clinics, and independent shops.
If you give a bare time range with no days at all, it's applied Monday to Friday and the weekend is treated as closed:
09:00-17:00
Step 2: Map the column
Import your data as usual — upload a CSV or Excel file, or connect a Google Sheet so hours stay editable by whoever maintains them.
In the store locator settings, point the working-hours field at your column. Parsing can be set to text, structured JSON, or automatic detection; automatic is right unless you're generating the column from another system in a fixed shape. The store locator reference covers the rest of the settings.
Step 3: Check the parse
Look at the sidebar and confirm the badges match reality, especially for:
- Days with split shifts
- Days written as closed
- Anything using 12-hour times without minutes (
9 AMrather than9:00 AM)
If an entry doesn't parse, it falls back to a neutral grey badge showing your raw text, rather than guessing at an open/closed status. That's the safe failure — nobody is told a closed branch is open — but it's quiet, so scan the sidebar for grey badges among the green and red ones.
The same goes for part of an entry: in Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00; Sat by appointment, Saturday can't be read, so on a Saturday the badge is grey (and
the branch is left out of Open now) instead of saying "Closed". The weekly
table in the detail view shows a dash for that day.
Time zone, clock and "Closes soon"
By default the open/closed state is judged on the visitor's device clock. For a chain in one country, visited by people in that country, that is exactly right.
If your visitors browse from elsewhere — tourists planning a trip, or a head office abroad — set Time zone under Opening hours to the zone your hours are written in. The badge is then judged on the store's clock wherever the visitor is. One zone applies to the whole locator, so a chain spanning several zones is still best split into one locator per region.
The same section switches the times to a 12-hour clock (5:00 PM) and can
say Closes soon during the last half hour.
Step 4: Make the rest of the locator earn its keep
Hours are one field. A few others turn a list into something genuinely useful:
- Near Me. Sorts results by distance from the visitor's browser location and shows the distance on every card. Combined with the Open now filter, "closest and open" is answerable at a glance — which is the actual job.
- Directions. A button on every location opens the route in Google Maps, or Apple Maps on an iPhone or iPad.
- Category filters. Toggle pills for any column with up to 30 distinct values, or a range slider for a numeric one: services offered, parking, accessibility. New values in your data appear as options automatically.
- Per-category marker icons. Different pin icons per filter option, so the map itself is readable before anyone opens the sidebar.
- Extra display fields. Up to five additional fields per location, typed as text, phone, email, or URL — so phone numbers dial on mobile and websites are clickable.
Keeping hours accurate
Opening hours are the fastest-rotting data in any locator. Christmas, bank holidays, a branch changing its Saturday closing time — all of it goes stale quietly, and a confidently wrong "Open now" badge is worse than no badge at all.
The maintenance answer is to connect a Google Sheet rather than uploading a file. Branch managers can edit their own row in a spreadsheet without a login to anything, and the map picks the change up within minutes. A file upload means every hours change is a job for whoever owns the map, which in practice means it doesn't happen.
Ready? Build a store locator — free to start.