Question 1

What is an appointment buffer?

Accepted Answer

A buffer is an invisible amount of time (0 to 30 minutes) added after every online booking when Pawfectly Booked works out availability. It gives you breathing room for cleaning, overruns and paperwork between dogs. Clients never see it — they only ever see valid start times.

Question 2

What is Consecutive Booking mode?

Accepted Answer

Consecutive Booking always offers the earliest slot right after your last occupied period, so online bookings cluster together instead of scattering across the day. It also skips ahead past any dead gap too small to be usable before a lunch break or closing time.

Question 3

What is Gap Protection?

Accepted Answer

Gap Protection hides any slot that would leave an unusable gap before your next appointment, lunch break or end of day — a gap too small to be useful. A configurable floor and optional reference-service anchor let you tune exactly what counts as 'too small'.

Question 4

What is the Gap Protection floor?

Accepted Answer

The floor is a single salon-wide minimum gap in minutes (set in 10-minute increments, auto-suggested from your booking history). It governs every gap check in Gap Protection mode. Quick services like nail trims can no longer accidentally shrink the required gap.

Question 5

What is the Reference-Service Anchor?

Accepted Answer

An optional setting that sizes the gap required for the very first bookable slot of an empty day — or the first slot after lunch — based on a specific service's duration. For example, anchor it to your Full Groom so the diary always opens with a groom-sized gap, no matter what the client is booking.

Question 6

How does the lunch break work?

Accepted Answer

You set a lunch window per weekday. By default it appears as a labelled band on your internal calendar day view, so staff know those times are reserved, but bookings can still be made over it. Toggle 'Enforce lunch break' on to block both online and manual bookings from overlapping your lunch.

Question 7

Does the buffer or optimisation change my existing appointments?

Accepted Answer

No. Changing the buffer or optimisation mode only affects future availability calculations for online booking. Your existing appointments and diary are never modified or recalculated.

Question 8

Is diary optimisation available on all plans?

Accepted Answer

The two optimisation modes — Consecutive Booking and Gap Protection with configurable floors and anchors — are Gold-tier. Online booking, appointment buffers and lunch breaks are available on every plan. Standard plans get online booking with buffers and lunch breaks; Gold-plan salons add the two smart diary-packing modes.

Online Booking Diary Optimisation