Consecutive Reservations Buffer

The consecutive reservation buffer setting indicates how many consecutive reservations are required in order to trigger the automatic addition of a 15 minute buffer before and/or after the consecutive reservations.

For example, 

• If you set this setting to 2 (most common), a buffer will be added automatically when 2 reservations are scheduled back to back.  
• If you set this setting to 3, a buffer will be added automatically when 3 reservations are scheduled back to back to back.
• If you set this setting to 1, a buffer will be added automatically after every single reservation added to the calendar.  This is the most inefficient option for automatic buffers but if your business requires set up and clean up after each reservation it can be quite useful to automate the time needed between reservations.

Additionally, automatic buffers can be set up to be added at the beginning of the consecutive reservations, at the end of the consecutive reservations or both at the beginning and end. This is controlled by the toggles named “Add Buffer Before Reservations” and “Add Buffers After Reservations”.

The big "pro" with setting buffers to add before AND after consecutive reservations is that RKd will prevent the number of consecutive reservations from being higher than the set buffer trigger BUT the "con" is that the venue loses a little bit of opportunity for revenue in the space that the buffers hold.  Some venues opt to only add buffers to the end of consecutive reservations with the prospect of higher revenue on busy days but with the understanding that there is potential for consecutive reservations to be created in such an order that the number of consecutive reservations may exceed the set buffer trigger.  Some venues opt to have NO buffers at their venue and conversely, there are some venues with buffers before and after EVERY SINGLE reservation with the buffer setting set to 1.  It really just depends on the venue and we're confident that we can accommodate all preferences by having 2 separate toggles for buffers (before & after). 

Examples below:

When the "Consecutive Reservation Buffer" is set to 2, and buffers are set to add ONLY after reservations that means that a 15 min buffer will trigger when 2 reservations are made back to back.  The 2nd reservation to be created can be booked either before the 1st reservation or after the 1st reservation.  For example, if the 1st reservation to be booked is made for 6pm-7pm then a second reservation can either be booked for 5pm-6pm or 7pm-8pm which would create a "consecutive" reservation triggering the 15 min buffer to be added.  

1. If the 2nd reservation to be created is booked for 5pm-6pm, then the buffer will be added at the end of the original 6pm-7pm reservation (5pm-6pm / 6pm-7pm / BUFFER).  
2. If the 2nd reservation to be created is booked for 7pm-8pm, then the buffer will be added at the end of the 7pm-8pm reservation (6pm-7pm / 7pm-8pm / BUFFER). 

Depending on the facilities operating hours, this could still leave an time slot where another reservation can potentially be booked prior to the first 2.  Avoiding this particular scenario is exactly the purpose of adding the buffer *before* consecutive reservations as well as after in order to eliminate the chance of 3 consecutive reservations where the goal is a max of 2 back-to-back.  As mentioned above, this flexibility in RKd is intentional, in order to allow each venue the choice of how they want to handle the different pros and cons associated with each scenario.

The second scenario above could look like the following if a buffer is not added before AND after consecutive reservations. Order of booking as follows:

1. 6pm-7pm reservation books
2. 7pm-8pm reservation books
3. Buffer automatically added to 8pm-8:15pm time slot
4. 5pm-6pm reservation books

• Resulting in 3 consecutive reservations when the buffer trigger is set to 2 (5pm-6pm {last to book} / 6pm-7pm {first to book} / 7pm-8pm {second to book} / BUFFER)

With both the before and after buffer settings turned on the calendar would look like (BUFFER / 5pm-6pm / 6pm-7pm / BUFFER) or (BUFFER / 6pm-7pm / 7pm-8pm / BUFFER) depending on which time slot was booked by the 2nd reservation.  In the second scenario, a buffer added before the 6pm-7pm reservation would prevent a reservation from being made at 5pm-6pm on that resource due to the buffer holding the 5:45pm-6pm slot in addition to the 8pm-8:15pm slot.