Documentation

6. Setting Up Automatic Booking Buffers & Turnaround Time

Automate Setup, Cleanup, and Cool-Down Buffers for Rooms and Equipment

The Scenario

Back-to-back reservations without turnaround time lead to uncleaned spaces, equipment overheating, and scheduling conflicts. Whether you need setup for meeting rooms, cool-down time for lab instruments, cleanup and safety resets for woodshop machinery, or rigging breakdown for studios, manual padding rarely works. Booking buffers automatically insert mandatory buffer periods before or after reservations to keep your spaces and equipment ready for the next user.

🏢 Coworking Spaces & Facility Management (Primary Example)

  • Example: Automatically pad meeting rooms, event spaces, or podcast booths with a 15-minute buffer before and after bookings so housekeeping can sanitize tables, reset seating, test AV gear, and restock catering.

🔬 Research Labs & Core Facilities

  • Example: Automatically add a 30-minute cool-down or automated cleaning cycle buffer between bookings for high-demand instruments like autoclaves, electron microscopes, or mass spectrometers.

🛠️ Makerspaces & Machine Shops

  • Example: Enforce a 15-to-30 minute cleanup and inspection buffer after woodshop or metalshop tool reservations (e.g., CNC routers, saws, laser cutters) to ensure the workspace is clear of debris and safe for the next member.

🎙️ Media & Production Studios

  • Example: Set a 1-hour teardown and setup buffer between studio rental sessions to allow crews to swap lighting grids, strike sets, reset audio mics, or clean camera gear.

QReserve Subscription: Core
Implementation Difficulty: Beginner

Implementation Steps

    1. Go to Resources → [Room Name] → Reservations → Time Restrictions → Buffer Time Before or Buffer Time After.
    2. Once configured, buffer times are automatically applied to all reservations. You can view the shaded buffer area on any timeline calendar view to help visualize the time between bookings.

📖 Learn more about Time Restrictions

🎬 [ ▶ Watch: Setting Up Automatic Booking Buffers]
In this video guide, we walk through configuring automatic buffer times before and after meeting room reservations for housekeeping and AV reset. However, the exact same setup applies to adding cool-down windows for lab instruments, mandatory cleanup buffers for makerspace tools, or set changeover time for production studios.