Booking buffer

A booking buffer is padding added before or after an appointment that stays blocked on the calendar. It gives a shop time to clean down, reset a station, and take payment without the next client's slot starting early.

Also called: buffer time, turnaround time, gap between appointments

A 30-minute cut that really takes 40 by the time the chair is swept will run late by mid-morning and be an hour behind by close.

The practical approach is to set the service duration to the time in the chair and the buffer to everything around it. Clients see an honest finish time, and the calendar stops promising slots the shop cannot serve.

In Booked, the booking buffer is one shop-wide setting on Dashboard → Hours and is included when availability is calculated, so a buffered appointment blocks the following slot automatically.