Appointment Scheduling and Booking Rules

The Scheduling and Booking Rules tabs on an appointment type control when and how patients can book, and what limits apply.

How to Get There

1. Open Configuration from the top navigation
2. Select Appointment Types
3. Click an appointment type, then click Edit appointment type
4. Select the Scheduling or Booking Rules tab

Scheduling Tab

Buffer Times

Buffers reserve a protected gap around an appointment so you're never booked completely back-to-back. Each buffer belongs to the appointment type and works in both directions:

• Buffer Before — a gap kept clear immediately before the appointment starts (e.g. prep time). When a patient books, the slot must leave this much space after any earlier appointment, and once it's booked nothing else can be scheduled into that gap.
• Buffer After — a gap kept clear immediately after the appointment ends (e.g. write-up or cleanup time). The slot must leave this much space before any later appointment, and once it's booked that gap is protected from other bookings.

Where two appointments sit next to each other, the gap between them is the larger of the first one's Buffer After and the second one's Buffer Before — the buffers don't stack.

Buffers apply between appointments only — they don't shorten a clinician's session. A session that starts at 9:00 still offers a 9:00 slot even on a type with a Buffer Before, and a session still offers a slot that ends at its closing time.

Options: None, 5 min, 10 min, 15 min, 20 min, 30 min, 45 min, 60 min.

Booking Window

• Minimum Notice - how much advance notice is required to book. Patients cannot book within this window.

  • Options: None, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours

• Maximum Advance Booking - how far into the future patients can book.

  • Options: No limit, 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months

• Cancellation Window - the minimum notice required for cancellation. Cancellations within this window may be flagged as late cancellations and may not receive a refund.

  • Uses the same options as Minimum Notice

Booking Rules Tab

Booking Limits

Toggle Enable booking limits per patient to restrict how often a single patient can book this appointment type.

• Per Day - maximum bookings per patient per day
• Per Week - maximum bookings per patient per week
• Active Bookings - maximum concurrent future bookings allowed. This prevents patients from holding multiple upcoming slots

Leave any field empty for no limit.

Accepting Bookings

Whether a type can be booked is no longer set on this tab. It is the Accepting bookings switch at the top of the Basic Info tab. Switching it off pauses the type: it stays set up and in view, but patients can no longer book it. Retiring a type you no longer offer is a separate step, Archive. See the Pausing and Archiving Appointment Types article for how the two differ.

If your practice uses the older version of the editor, the switch is still here under Workflow & Visibility, labelled Active. Switching it off pauses the type in the same way.

Tip: Use the cancellation window alongside your billing settings. If you charge for late cancellations, set the window to match your refund policy.