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Buffer Time Between Bookings

Buffer time reserves extra minutes before and after each booking, so your team has room to clean a room, reset equipment, or write up notes before the next customer arrives. Your customers still see the normal service length — only your availability changes.

Navigation Path:
Bookings → Booking Settings → Cut-Off Times

1. Turn Buffer Times On for Your Business

Buffer time is switched off until you enable it, so nothing changes for your bookings until you decide to use it.

  • Go to Bookings → Booking Settings and open the Cut-Off Times tab.
  • Find the Buffer times card and switch Allow buffer time on services to On.
  • Click Save in the top-right corner of the page.

Until this switch is on, no buffer options appear anywhere in your services.

2. Set the Buffer on a Service

Buffer time is set on each service individually, so a 90-minute treatment can reserve clean-up time while a quick consultation reserves none.

Navigation Path:
Booking Types → Services → Services

  • Open the service you want to change and go to the Schedule & Slots tab.
  • On the How are booking slots generated? line, click the clock chip on the right. It reads Buffer: none until you set one.
  • In the popover, choose:
    • Before — time reserved ahead of the booking (preparation, setup).
    • After — time reserved once the booking ends (clean-up, notes).
  • Options are None, 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 minutes or 1 hour for each.
  • Click Update Service to save.

The chip then summarises the setting, for example Buffer 15 / 15 · Back-to-back.

3. Choose How Slots Are Spaced

When you set a buffer on a service that generates its own time slots, a Slot spacing choice appears. It decides how the bookable times are laid out.

Using a 60-minute service with a 15-minute buffer before and after, at a branch that opens at 09:00:

  • Back-to-back (default) — each slot starts where the previous one's buffer ends: 09:15, 10:45, 12:15 … This packs the day as tightly as the buffers allow.
  • Regular interval — slots keep their familiar hourly rhythm: 09:15, 10:15, 11:15 … Customers see the times they expect, but taking one booking removes the slot next to it. Booking 10:15 makes 11:15 unavailable; 12:15 stays open.

A live example under the buttons shows the times your current settings produce.

Slot spacing only applies to services where FoxConnect generates the times for you. If you set fixed or recurring times yourself, your times stay exactly as you defined them — the buffer only decides whether a fixed time is still available.

4. What Buffer Time Changes

The buffer is invisible to your customer and blocks your resources behind the scenes.

  • Your customer sees the normal service time. A 10:00 booking on a 60-minute service is confirmed, reminded and invoiced as 10:00–11:00, never 09:45–11:15.
  • Staff and rooms are held for the full reserved time. Nobody else can be booked into a buffer.
  • Gaps add up between services. If one service reserves 15 minutes after and the next reserves 10 minutes before, FoxConnect keeps 25 minutes between them.
  • Opening hours are respected. A branch that opens at 09:00 with a 15-minute before-buffer offers 09:15 as its first booking. One that closes at 18:00 with a 15-minute after-buffer takes a last booking that ends by 17:45.
  • Add-ons are covered once. The buffer wraps the whole appointment, including any add-ons — it is not repeated for each one.

5. Changing or Removing a Buffer Later

  • Existing bookings keep the buffer they were made with. Changing a service's buffer never shifts or re-blocks bookings that are already in your calendar; it applies to new bookings from that point on.
  • Rescheduling uses the current setting. When you move a booking, it takes the service's buffer as it stands today.
  • Switching the feature off stops buffers being applied to new bookings, but your services keep their values — turn it back on and they apply again without re-editing anything.

6. Where Buffer Time Does Not Apply

Buffer time is available for standard, timed services booked as a single appointment. The clock chip does not appear for:

  • Full-day services
  • Services booked as multiple time slots
  • Courses and classes
  • Tickets and events

Summary Checklist

  • Allow buffer time on services switched On in Cut-Off Times, and the page saved.
  • Before and After set on each service that needs it.
  • Slot spacing chosen (Back-to-back or Regular interval).
  • Example times under the spacing buttons checked against your opening hours.
  • First and last bookable times of the day still make sense for your branch.