Short answer: Open Learning, switch on Enable business hours for automations, click Configure hours and save your timezone and opening times. Then switch on Apply business hours in every automation that should wait. Outside your hours, these automations hold back their actions and run shortly after you open again.
Before you start
Business hours are a setting of your brand. One schedule applies to all automations of that brand.
Team members need the permission manage learning to change the schedule.
They work for comment automations and for DM automations. DM automations need the Pro plan or higher.
Step 1: Turn on business hours for your brand
In the sidebar, click Learning (1). Under General settings for this brand:, switch on Enable business hours for automations (2). Then click Configure hours (3).
Step 2: Set your timezone and opening hours
Check the Timezone (1). It is pre-filled with the timezone of your browser. Type to search for another one.
Tick the days you are open (2). New schedules start with Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00, and weekends off.
Set Start and End for each open day. If the end is earlier than the start, the day runs past midnight (for example 18:00 to 02:00).
Click Apply Monday to enabled days (3) to copy Monday's times to every ticked day.
Click Save hours (4).
To switch business hours on, you need a timezone, at least one open day, and a start time that differs from the end time on every open day.
Step 3: Switch it on for each automation
Business hours only affect automations that have Apply business hours switched on. The switch is off by default.
Comment automation
Open the automation, switch on Apply business hours (1) at the top and click Save.
DM automation
Open the automation, switch on Apply business hours (1) next to Trigger once per user and click Save.
Once business hours are on for the brand, each row in the automation list also shows a clock switch. Hover over the row to see it. It turns Apply business hours on or off without opening the automation.
What happens outside your business hours
The automation still checks every new comment or message as usual. If the conditions match, it waits instead of acting.
The wait ends at your next opening time, plus up to 60 minutes. Items that arrive soon after closing run right at opening. Items that arrive later in the closed period run later in the first hour. This avoids a burst of replies at the exact opening time.
In comment automations, the Wait for time of the automation still applies after that.
In DM automations, only the start of the flow waits. Once the flow is running, its steps (for example Time delay) run as you set them.
You can see a waiting comment in the Comments tab: it shows Automation pending for this comment and the time it runs. Click Cancel Automation to stop it.
Nothing else is paused. New comments and DMs still arrive in replient.ai, and you can answer them by hand at any time.
Good to know
The brand switch comes first. If Enable business hours for automations is off, Apply business hours does nothing and automations run right away.
Business hours only delay. They do not skip an automation. It runs as soon as your hours allow.
Your times are in the timezone you chose, not in the timezone of the commenter.
⚠️ Important: Meta only lets you send a DM for a limited time after someone's comment or message. If a DM waits too long, for example over a holiday, Meta can reject it with the message "This message is sent outside of allowed window." Keep your closed periods short for DM automations.