How do you leave time between appointments?
Buffers before and after a service: what they are for, how they fit around the rest of the diary, and what the customer sees of them.
Checked 6 October 2026 About 2 minutes View as Markdown
The short answer
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 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 has the rest of the diary, and How far ahead should people be able 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.