Three settings decide what your receptionist does with a call at 9pm, and most people leave them on the default without reading them. Here's what each one actually does.
Your business hours are the diary. The receptionist only offers appointments inside them, day by day, so a 7:30 to 3:30 sparkie gets 7:30 to 3:30 slots and nothing at 4pm. They are also your clock: pick your state at signup and the hours mean what you think they mean, daylight saving included, whether you're in Perth or Hobart.
Hours are not "when the receptionist answers". It answers around the clock. Hours are when it will book you in.
Outside your hours, one of two things happens, and you choose which at signup and on the settings page:
Most trades that do after-hours work pick the second. Most that don't pick the first. There's no surcharge either way: the 2am call costs the same as the 2pm one.
Separate from after hours, and often confused with it. The urgent-calls number is where the receptionist puts a caller who asks for a human, is upset, or has an urgent job, at any time of day. During business hours it's how a customer standing in a flooded kitchen reaches you while the receptionist handles the rest. Leave it blank and urgent callers get a message taken instead, with a text to you marked priority.
A medical, dental, allied health or psychology practice runs in restricted mode, and carries one rule that outranks every other: if a caller describes danger to life or limb, the receptionist stops whatever it was doing. The practice chooses, at signup and on the settings page, how that call is handled: tell the caller to contact emergency services themselves and text the owner, which is the default; put the caller through to the practice's own emergency number first; or say the practice's own sentence first. In every case the receptionist never contacts emergency services itself and never says help is on the way.
An ordinary business doesn't carry that rule. A plumber's receptionist should never hang up on a caller who mentioned a burst pipe; it books the job.
On the Flat Out plan the call-flow settings add the rest: dated closures ("closed 24 December to 2 January, back on the 3rd"), an on-call roster by day of the week for where urgent calls go, your own escalation words ("anyone who says 'gas' goes straight through"), and a failover number if your nominated one doesn't answer.
All four live on the settings page and a change takes effect on the next call. More on the round-the-clock side on the after-hours answering page.
Your 24/7 receptionist, from $49 a month — first week free. No setup fee, no lock-in, cancel anytime.