# How do you leave time between appointments?

> Add a buffer before or after the service, for setting up or cleaning down. Nothing can be booked inside it, and the customer never sees it.

- Before and after, in minutes, set on each service.
- The customer books the service's length; the diary loses the buffer too.
- A time is offered only when the appointment and its buffers fit.

## Two numbers, kept apart

A colour takes an hour in the chair and another twenty minutes to clean down.
Sell it as eighty minutes and the website tells the customer the wrong length.
Sell it as an hour and the next customer is booked into the clean-down.

A buffer keeps the two numbers apart. The service is an hour long, which is
what the customer books and what the confirmation says, and the twenty minutes
after it are taken out of the diary as well.

## Before, after, or both

- **Before**, for what has to happen first: setting up a room, reading the
  notes, getting to a home visit.
- **After**, for what follows: cleaning down, writing up, resetting the room.

Each service has its own minutes before and after, so a consultation can need
none while a treatment needs a quarter of an hour either side. The length of
the appointment itself can differ from one person to another; the buffers
belong to the service.

## How it fits around everything else

- **A time is offered only when the whole of it fits.** The appointment and
  both its buffers have to sit inside working hours and free time, so a buffer
  never runs past closing or into the next appointment.
- **Nothing can be booked into a buffer.** The time a booking blocks includes
  its buffers, and that is the time the rule against [double
  bookings](/guides/double-bookings/) reads, so no way of booking can
  get round it.
- **Blocked times that touch do not clash.** A booking blocked until 10:20 and
  the next one starting at 10:20 both fit.
- **Two buffers side by side add up.** A quarter of an hour of clean-down after
  one service and a quarter of an hour of setting up before the next leave half
  an hour between the two appointments.
- **A booking keeps the time it blocked.** A buffer added or changed later
  applies to new bookings, and the diary already written stays as it was.

## A buffer is not the grid

The grid decides which start times are offered, such as every quarter of an
hour. A buffer decides how much of the diary an appointment uses. Making the
grid coarser to leave gaps wastes time on every booking; a buffer takes only
what the service needs.

[Bookings](/product/bookings/) has the rest of the diary, and [How
far ahead should people be able to book?](/guides/how-far-ahead-to-book/)
covers the other limits on when a time is offered.

## Questions people ask next

### Does the customer see the buffer?

**No.** They book the service's own length, and that is what the confirmation email and the calendar file give. The buffer is only taken out of the diary.

### Can a buffer run past closing time?

**No.** A time is offered only when the appointment and both its buffers fit inside working hours, so the last slot of the day leaves room to clean down.

### What happens to bookings made before I add a buffer?

**They keep the time they blocked.** A booking takes its time out of the diary when it is made, so a new buffer applies to new bookings and leaves the rest of the diary as it was.

### Can each service have its own buffer?

**Yes.** Each service has its own minutes before and after, and a service with none can be booked right up against the next appointment.