How can I add a buffer time before or after the appointment

Give yourself some time between appointments

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What are buffers?
• How to set up a buffer?
• Buffer logic

If you want to avoid back-to-back meetings, add buffer time before or after your appointments in Leadmonk.

What are buffers?

Buffers are extra time that can be added before and/or after an appointment. This can be helpful if you want extra time to prepare before a meeting or post appointment work. Buffers are event type-specific so you can tweak and optimize buffer settings for each of your event types.

How to set up a buffer?

Select your event type and go to event type customization and click on the highlighted section "Availability Preferences".

Now you go the field shown below in the availability preferences section.

Here you can specify buffer time for before and/or after appointment. This gives you a buffer—the time before or after any appointment will be marked as busy, so people can't book your time then. This means you can prep for the next appointment...or just get some coffee.

Buffer logic

Buffers only apply to appointments booked through Leadmonk, but meetings booked outside of Leadmonk are taken into consideration when booking an appointment with a buffer. This means that buffers cannot overlap regular calendar meetings.

For example, if you have a 60-min event type with 15-min buffers before and after, the total calendar time needed for this appointment is 90 minutes: 

15min before + 60 min + 15min after = 90 min calendar availability window to confirm the appointment.

The appointment duration and calendar invite will say 60 mins, but 90 minutes of free time is required in order for a time slot to display on the booking page.

NOTE

• Buffers only apply to appointments booked through Leadmonk. However, appointments booked outside of Leadmonk are taken into consideration when booking an appointment with a buffer. This means that buffers cannot overlap regular calendar meetings.
• Buffers apply between appointments. [e.g.: "Buffer before appointment" condition does not apply while booking the first appointment of the day as buffer is always applied b/w appointments.]
• If there are no appointments during the day, no buffer is applied and you will see available appointment slots without the buffer time. Buffer time is taken into consideration while showing available slots immediately before or after the booked appointment time depending on your buffer settings.
• If you modify the buffer settings on an event type, the change will apply only to future scheduled appointments. New buffer settings will not be retroactively applied to previously scheduled appointments. To apply the new buffer settings, you can reschedule the appointment for the same date and time. The rescheduled appointment will have the newest buffer settings applied (whatever setting is present in the event type at the time of booking).
• Scheduled appointments retain the buffer setting present at the time of booking. For the previously scheduled upcoming appointments that are blocking desired times slots, you can override old double buffers by rescheduling the appointment for the same date and time with new buffer settings.
• For round robin event type, buffer settings on individual’s other event types could lead to uneven meeting distribution.
  
• For collective event types, buffer settings on an individual’s other event types can prevent collective appointments from being booked in time slots that appear to be free.
• “Double buffers” issue: Adding both a before and after buffer to an event type can cause the buffers to stack up and remove large time slots from your booking page.
• Its recommended to use only a single buffer either before or after the event. This will result in having more available time slots on your appointment booking page.