What are buffers?

Buffers are extra time added before and after tour appointments. They give you breathing room to prepare for tours, travel between locations, or wrap up with families without back-to-back bookings.

Each calendar type can have its own buffer settings, so you can customize them based on your needs — longer buffers for in-person tours, shorter ones for phone calls.

How to set buffers

Here's how to add buffers to your tour calendar:

  1. Select the calendar you want to add buffers to
  2. If you're creating a new calendar, go to Advanced Settings. For existing calendars, click Edit
  3. Navigate to the Availability section
  4. Find the Pre buffer time and Post buffer time options
  5. Enter the duration you need for each buffer
  6. Click Save

[SCREENSHOT: Calendar edit screen showing Availability section with Pre buffer time and Post buffer time fields]

How to turn off buffers

To remove buffers from a calendar:

  1. Select the calendar and click Edit
  2. Go to Availability and scroll to the buffer settings
  3. Set both Pre buffer time and Post buffer time to 0
  4. Click Save

Any new appointments booked after this change won't include buffers.

How buffers work

Buffers apply to appointments created in Enrollio or synced from external calendars (Google, Outlook, iCloud) when the "Allow Contact Creation" feature is enabled.

When calculating available time slots, Enrollio considers both your buffers and any blocked time from external calendars. This prevents buffers from overlapping with existing commitments.

Pro Tip: If you sync your personal calendar with Enrollio, buffers won't overlap with your existing meetings — they'll automatically adjust to find the next available slot.

How buffers affect booking availability

Let's say you have a 30-minute tour with 15-minute buffers before and after. When a family books this tour, the system blocks out 60 minutes total (15 + 30 + 15).

The next available booking slot will be 30 minutes after the previous tour ends — not immediately after.

Watch out for double buffering

When you use both pre and post buffers, they can stack up and create surprisingly large gaps in your calendar. Here's why:

If one tour ends at 2:00 PM with a 15-minute post-buffer, and the next tour has a 15-minute pre-buffer, that's 30 minutes of unavailable time between tours. This "double buffer" can make your calendar look busier than it actually is.

To maximize bookable slots: Consider using just one buffer type — either pre or post — instead of both.

Buffers with team calendars

Round-robin calendars

If you use round-robin scheduling (where tours are distributed among multiple staff members), individual buffer settings can affect distribution.

When each staff member has different buffers on their personal calendars, some team members may appear unavailable more often, leading to uneven tour assignments.

[SCREENSHOT: Round-robin calendar settings showing multiple team members with different availability]

Group calendars

For group bookings where multiple staff need to be present, individual buffer settings can block time slots that look available.

If one staff member has a 30-minute buffer after another commitment, that entire time block becomes unavailable for the group calendar — even if other team members are free.

Pro Tip: For the smoothest scheduling experience, keep buffer settings consistent across team members who share calendars.

Common questions

Do buffers affect appointments from my Google or Outlook calendar?

Buffers only apply to tours booked through Enrollio. However, if you have two-way sync or smart sync enabled — where external calendar events are converted into Enrollio appointments rather than just blocking time — buffers will apply to those as well.

Can I change buffers for appointments that are already booked?

Yes. When you update buffer settings, they apply based on your latest configuration. Changing buffers won't affect the scheduled time of existing appointments, but it will affect future availability calculations.

What happens if I set different buffers on multiple calendars?

If you're assigned to multiple calendars with different buffer settings, the buffers from one calendar will affect your availability across all calendars. This can create unexpected gaps in your schedule.

For example, if your tour calendar has a 30-minute post-buffer and you book a tour at 2:00 PM, you won't be available on your phone consultation calendar until 2:30 PM — even if that calendar has no buffers set.

What exactly is "double buffering"?

Double buffering happens when both pre-buffer and post-buffer times are active, creating extended blocks of unavailable time.

For example: A 30-minute tour with 15-minute buffers on both sides actually blocks 60 minutes from your calendar. If families are booking back-to-back tours, each appointment's post-buffer combines with the next appointment's pre-buffer, creating 30 minutes of buffer time between tours.

This reduces the number of tours you can book in a day, which is why we recommend using a single buffer type when possible.