Booking buffer

The booking buffer can be set to prevent attendees from making back-to-back bookings, which are time slots that are immediately before or after their existing bookings. This gap can be configured to a specific number of time slots.

We recommend only using this setting for shorter booking durations, as bookings with longer durations (e.g 20+ minutes) will mean attendees will need to wait around for longer until their next booking.

Only applies to attendees

The booking buffer is ignored when a booking is made by a staff member on behalf of an attendee, meaning staff are able to make back-to-back bookings.

Example

Let's say you're hosting parent-teacher conferences where each staff member is in their classroom.

• Each booking is 10 minutes long.
• If an attendee has a booking in Room 1 at 5:00pm, they'll finish their interview at 5:10pm.

The attendee wants to make a second booking:

• Without a booking buffer, the attendee is allowed to make a booking at 5:10pm.
  • Unless they finish their conversation early, they'll be running late by the time the 5:00pm booking is over and they go to the next classroom.
• With a booking buffer, the attendee cannot book 5:10pm.
  • The next available slot they can book is 5:20pm, giving them time to go from the first booking to this one.

Exceptions

The staff member is taken into account when making bookings. An attendee seeing the same staff member can make back-to-back bookings regardless of the booking buffer.

For example, using the same example above, the attendee is allowed to book 5:10pm if the booking is with the same staff member as the 5:00pm booking.