Enhancement: Pre-buffer

Enhancement: Pre-buffer

Hello Bookings Community,

 

Greetings from the Bookings Team!

 

We're delighted to announce one of the most-awaited features, Pre-buffer, which allows you to add buffer time before the appointment time.

 

What is buffer time?

Buffer time is additional time added to the appointment duration, either before or after the appointment. It can be used to ensure that you have enough time to prepare or get ready for the next appointment. Pre-buffer refers specifically to the buffer time added before the appointment, and post-buffer is for after the appointment.

 

How has buffer time worked so far in Bookings?

  • Until now, you've been able to include buffer time when setting up a new service, and it was added after the appointment time.
  • If appointments were created as calendar events, the buffer time was blocked along with the appointment time by default.

 

How will buffer time work from now on?

  • Beginning 08-Dec-2023, you can add a buffer time before and after the appointment time.
  • If the appointment is created as a calendar event, you have the option to choose whether to block buffer time along with it or not.

 

Learn how to implement buffer time


While adding a new service, you can tick the Add buffer time checkbox. Then, add the time duration for Pre-buffer and Post-buffer.

 


When the customer books an appointment, slots will be made available calculating the buffer time and appointment duration. For instance, if a service is created with an appointment duration of 30 minutes, a pre-buffer of 15 minutes, and a post-buffer of 15 minutes, the time slot will only be offered if a total duration of one hour is available for the staff (i.e., pre-buffer + appointment duration + post-buffer).

 

Once the appointment is booked, staff can view the buffer time from the Appointment Summary and Calendar View.


 

Block buffer time in calendar events

In Bookings, the availability of a staff member for an appointment is decided by including the buffer time. But, there can be situations where a staff member's exact availability is needed in external calendars. This can be useful if the staff member has to attend meetings apart from the appointments in Bookings. You can then choose to block buffer time in your calendar events along with the appointment time.  


 

Notifications

You can include the pre_buffer and post_buffer variables in the email and SMS notification templates for your staff.

 

Please note that your customers will not be aware of this buffer time, but if the buffer time is added to calendar events, then the customer can view this additional time in their calendar invite.  


 

Help documentation

Explore our extensive help document designed to provide a thorough understanding of buffer time.

 

We value your feedback and are constantly working to improve and innovate based on your needs. Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts or questions with us at support@zohobookings.com or in the comments section below.

 

Thanks,

The Zoho Bookings Team

 

 


    • Sticky Posts

    • New feature: Invite additional guests for your bookings

      Hello everyone, Greetings from Zoho Bookings! We are happy to announce the much-awaited feature Guest Invite, which enhances your booking experience like never before. This feature allows additional participants to be invited for the bookings to make

    • 📣📣 Zoho Bookings Schedulathon 2025 is here!

      Hey Zoho Bookings fam, We're excited to invite you to our first-ever hackathon: Yes, Zoho Bookings Schedulathon 2025 is live now. This is a virtual event and you can participate anywhere from the world. Businesses should be able to set up meetings from

    • 📣 [Webinar] Spikra shows how businesses leverage Zoho Bookings to increase revenue

      [Webinar] Spikra shows how businesses leverage Zoho Bookings to increase revenue Hi all, Service-based businesses need to be on top of their client experience game to stay ahead. Spikra, one of our Advanced Zoho Partners, has been helping businesses deliver

    • 📣📣 Zoho Bookings - Feature Roadmap 2024

      Hi Everyone, Thank you for all the support you have been showing Zoho Bookings. We had a fabulous 2023, with a bunch of new features and over 60K new users. In 2024, our prime focus will be on user experience, and we have a few vital features coming in

    • Attention: Important updates to the payment gateway integrations

      Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We have a few important updates to the payment gateway integrations that allow you to collect online payments for your appointments. The following payment gateways will be updated, and we encourage you to make the

    • Recent Topics

    • Is there a problem with sharing workdrive files with links since last night?

      As per title, we can't access folders/files through share links since last night. I created ticket but we need quick solution and didn't hear back from the support yet. The files are still accessible by the main account but all zoho files that we are

    • Enable Screen Recording in Zoho WorkDrive Mobile Apps (Android & iOS)

      Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, How are you? We are enthusiastic Zoho One users and rely heavily on Zoho WorkDrive for internal collaboration and content sharing. The screen-recording feature in the WorkDrive web app (similar to Loom) is extremely useful- however,

    • Production Management Tool (MRP / BOM)

      Hi Guys, is there any recommended App available that works with zoho and covers the needed applications for a production? What we need is a system that covers the BOM (bill of materials), MRP (material ressources planning), MRP II (manufacturing ressources

    • Bug in Zoho Cliq Signup Flow – "%s" Placeholder Visible Instead of Product Name

      Hi Zoho Team, I would like to report a UI bug in the Zoho Cliq signup/enable flow. During the step where Cliq asks to enable the product for the company, the following text appears: Great! Your company is already available in Zoho, so you just have to

    • Exporting tickets

      I went to Setup -> Organization -> Import/Export in order to export tickets but found 2 issues: 1. The email body never gets exported. 2. There are some large numbers (like 5.57E+16) under certain columns of the exported CSV file. I could not find any export options. Please can you help with this?

    • Copy field information to clipboard

      I need to be able to transfer some field information in to the clipboard, so that I can then paste it in to our helpdesk system. Is there a way I could add a button to a detail report that does this?

    • Issuing reconciling a bank statement

      HELP! I'm trying to reconcile a bank statement. The prior month reconciled perfectly. Beginning balance is correct yet I'm off by the same amount each time. Both myself and my office manager, separately and together, have tried to complete this reconciliation

    • Detect and ignore bots in visitors

      The SalesIQ visitor numbers are basically useless to us because there is no bot detection. We get the same bots coming in from the same countries looking at the same pages every day. It can't be that difficult to tell the difference between an actual

    • Add Real-Time Microphone Audio-Level Indicator During Screen Recording

      Hi Zoho WorkDrive Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement to the Zoho WorkDrive screen-recording experience. Current Limitation: During a recording session, there is no visual indication that the microphone is

    • Zero Personalization of the File Sharing Experience

      By now (2025) this is the maximum level of personalization available for a Zoho sharing link. We gently asked Zoho if we could modify at least the background, and they replied that it cannot be customized. We're truly disappointed – and surprised every

    • Request for Solution to Reverse $500,000+ FY2024 Inventory/COGS Discrepancy in Zoho

      Dear Zoho Support Team, I hope you are doing well. We are contacting you regarding a significant discrepancy in our financial data within Zoho Books/Inventory, and we urgently need your guidance on how to correct and reverse these issues. After reviewing

    • Adding bank details to the contact through API

      How to add bank-related information to the contact while creating it using API? The account number needs to be encrypted before sending it through API but not sure how to encrypt and get those values. Please guide me in this.

    • Two factor authentication for helpdesk users

      The company i work for wants use the helpdesk site in Zoho desk, as a place for their distribution partners to ask question and look for information about our product. The things there is suppose to go up there is somewhat confidential between my company

    • Kiosk can't merge picklist or multiselect

      There is no ability to load a multiselect or picklikst field into a kiosk with the values that have been previously selected. So, I essentially have 3 unacceptable options: 1.)Load the value into a text string and include instructions like this: "Picklist

    • AGE field from DATE OF BIRTH Field.

      HI! I have a field called date of birth in my CRM (LEADS, CONTACT etc…)     How can I know the AGE today   I would like to create a field AGE. I now how to create a field but I don´t which calculation (CUSTOM FUCTION) to make ¿ANY HELP?

    • How to update/remove file in zoho creator widgets using javascript API

      Hi Team, I have developed a widget which allows inserting and updating records I have file upload field with multiple file upload. Now while doing insert form record, I am using uploadFile API to upload files for that record. I am using updateRecord API

    • Announcing new features in Trident for Windows (v.1.34.4.0)

      Hello Community! Trident for Windows just got better! With this update we have features that make your daily work easier and more efficient. We've added some features that are exclusive to our app and we're sure you'll find them useful. Let’s dive into

    • Report Hover Setting

      Would be great if we will able to show information to the user while hovering a record in a report.

    • Vertical images displayed as horizontal

      Some pictures that originally are in vertical position are displayed in horizontal after the upload. It seems that system rotates them by 90 degrees. How can I fix this issue?

    • Zoho Desk iOS app update: Saved filters and sort options

      Hello everyone! Saved filters created on the web(desk.zoho.com) for tickets are now accessible on the Zoho Desk iOS app. You can easily rename, delete, or clear filters on the go. We have also introduced Sort options on the ticket listing screen, allowing

    • Big Things Just Dropped in the SalesIQ Universe: Top Upgrades You’ll Love in Nova’25

      Nova'25 has landed, and it’s packed with meaningful upgrades to help you engage smarter, work faster, and scale with ease. Whether you're into proactive messaging, smarter automation, or better admin control, there's something here for everyone. Here's

    • Time Entries in Analytics

      I am trying to import a zoho sheet into zoho analytics. In my sheets one of the columns has "time Entries" in this "format HH:MM am/pm" example 11:00 PM. After import, i noticed that analytics converted the time to "00 Jan 1900 23:00:00".. how do i maintain

    • Amazon invoice in Zoho Books

      I have just made my first few sales on Amazon India. Amazon Seller account generates invoices for the sales made on Amazon. These invoices are sent to customers also. Now when I was only making offline sales, I used to create Invoices in Zoho Book. Now

    • Zoho Creator Upcoming Updates - November 2025

      Hello everyone, Welcome to your monthly roundup of new features and enhancements! We hope you've already taken a look at Release Projection 2—it details the features coming your way for the rest of the year. And this month, we're excited to start rolling

    • Zoho Webinar + HubSpot : Simplifiez la gestion de vos données de webinaires

      Les webinaires sont aujourd’hui essentiels pour interagir avec vos prospects et vos clients. Cependant, la gestion des données entre plusieurs plateformes peut vite devenir complexe. Grâce à la nouvelle intégration entre Zoho Webinar et HubSpot, vos outils

    • I am trying to give access to one of our educators access to 3 forms in Zoho and she is not able to view the data - Access issue

      Hi Team, When I try to provide read access to one of our educators on Zoho for Pre-training , post training and Impact survey forms submit form access which also allows them to read , it does not show them data

    • How to book GST paid in zoho books

      hi, i am a new user to Zoho books and not able to book GST paid in books, kindly suggest how i can book it in books. thanks, siddharth

    • PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (CORPORATE) INDIA - NOT AVAILABLE IN BANKING

      Dear sir, Kindly fix it. PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (INDIA) is available but PUNJAB NATIONAL BANK (CORPORATE) is not available. Kindly enable this banking since we need to categorize the entries. Regards, Sanjay Jena email id/ user id : travewithmerchant@

    • Is it possible to create a word cloud chart in ZoHo Analystics?

      Hi there, I have a volume of transaction text that I would like to analyse using word cloud (or other approcah to detect and present word frequency in a dataset). For example, I have 50,000 records describing menu items in restaurants. I want to be able

    • Unable to Delete Items – No Visible Transactions but Error “Items which are a part of other transactions cannot be deleted…”

      Hello Community, We are using Zoho Inventory for our business and encountered a persistent issue that is preventing us from deleting certain items. The message shown is: “Items which are a part of other transactions cannot be deleted. Instead, mark them

    • Kaizen #216 - Actions APIs : Email Notifications

      Welcome to another week of Kaizen! For the last three weeks, we have been discussing Zylker's workflows. We successfully updated a dormant workflow, built a new one from the ground up and more. But our work is not finished—these automated processes are

    • Facturation électronique 2026 - obligation dès le 1er septembre 2026

      Bonjour, Je me permets de réagir à divers posts publiés ici et là concernant le projet de E-Invoicing, dans le cadre de la facturation électronique prévue très prochainement. Dans le cadre du passage à la facturation électronique pour les entreprises,

    • Your bot just got smarter: AI-Powered routing that reads between the lines

      What if your bot could tell the difference? Between a visitor who just needs a quick answer, someone actively comparing options, and a frustrated customer one click away from leaving? Most bots can't. They deliver the same response to everyone, missing

    • Weekly Tips : Master Keyboard Shortcuts in Zoho Mail

      If you spend a lot of time managing emails, switching between your mouse and keyboard can slow you down. Whether you are replying to clients, organizing your inbox, or searching for messages, every second counts. So, how can you streamline your email

    • Introducing custom lookup fields in the Tickets, Contacts, and Accounts modules

      Hello all, We are excited to announce a new enhancement that will empower you to further customize the Tickets, Contacts, and Accounts modules. Now, you will be able to create custom lookup fields in your Tickets, Contacts, and Accounts layouts for more

    • DKIM cannot be enabled for the domain as no verified default selector present

      Can't get the DKIM working. May you please check my account (nksy.us) to see what's wrong?

    • Collections Management: #3 Tackling Payment Failures

      Sam refreshed the dashboard. "Payment failed". Same customer. Same subscription. This is happening for the third time. He sends a usual email: "Your renewal payment failed again. Could you please check and retry?" A couple of days passed, and there was

    • How do I increase the email attachment size in Zoho CRM ?

      It looks like I'm limited to 10MB when sending an attachment using the email widget on a record in Zoho CRM. Is there a way to increase the size? Or can I use some other tool? From what I'm reading online, I'm maxed out at 10MB. Any insight would be greatly

    • Problem : Auto redirect from zoho flow to zoho creator

      Hi there, I've been waiting for zoho team to get back on this for last couple of days. Anyone else have the problem to access zoho flow? everytime I click on zoho flow it redirects me to zoho creator. I tried incognito mode but it still direct me to zoho

    • WhatsApp Channels in Zoho Campaigns

      Now that Meta has opened WhatsApp Channels globally, will you add it to Zoho Campaigns? It's another top channel for marketing communications as email and SMS. Thanks.

    • Next Page