Add Padding between appointments

Our padding feature will add buffer time between bookings to prevent you from being booked back to back. This is helpful if you need time to setup between appointments, or write up some meeting notes. 

Setting up Padding

Padding is tied to the  grid display -  the increments of time that we divide your availability into. On a new booking page, your grid display defaults to 1 hour, so we divide your time into 60 minute blocks. You can edit your grid display to be anything from 10 minutes to 24 hours under Times & Availability > Duration & display.

Once you adjust your grid display, you can set your booking duration and your padding - both as increments of that grid display.

If you feel restricted by the padding options, adjust your grid display. 

• Padding may reduce your availability on your booking page, as the page will only show time slots that can accommodate the booking duration plus padding before and after the appointment.  If you are taking 1 hour bookings with 30 minutes of padding, we will only display start times where we find at least 2 hours of bookable time on your linked calendar (30 minutes + 60 minutes + 30 minutes = 2 hours). 
• Longer padding can reduce the availability on your booking page - try adjusting your grid display to offer smaller increments of padding.
• Padding will also be applied to existing events on your linked calendar, so you're never booked right after another commitment.

Why we include padding before and after a booking

Padding before and after an appointment prevents you from ever being booked back to back. 

If you take a 30 minute booking at 9:30am, 30 minutes of padding will:

• Prevent anyone booking from 9:00-9:30
• Prevent anyone from booking 9:30-10:00
• Allow a booking at 8:30 or 10:30

Padding does not compound between bookings, so your set padding will be the maximum amount of time left between bookings

Alternatives to using padding

• Try Calendar Managed Availability where you can specify slots in your calendar to create your own padding
• Set your meeting duration to include your padding - for example, set a 1 hour booking duration, but in your booking page intro advertise your sessions as 45 minutes. To do this, you'll need to remove all references to the shorthand code {DURATION} in confirmation and reminder emails.