Running late by ten in the morning

The third appointment of the day is the one that breaks. By four in the afternoon you are apologising to everybody, and none of it was anyone’s fault.

The work nobody schedules#

Every appointment has time around it that never appears in a diary: turning the room over, writing notes, washing up, walking to the next address, going to the lavatory. Book on the hour with a sixty-minute service and all of that has to come out of somebody's appointment, and it is always the next one.

And one length for everything#

If a cut and a full colour are both booked as "an appointment", the diary is wrong twice: too long for one and far too short for the other. The compounding is what produces the four o'clock apology.

Buffers, for the work between the work#

Buffer before and Buffer after, up to 120 minutes each. Invisible to the customer, not added to their appointment, and nothing can be booked into them. A 60-minute treatment at 10:00 with a 15-minute buffer means the next slot offered is 11:15 — when you are genuinely ready. Buffers and notice

Travel is a buffer too#

If you work at customers' addresses, the buffer is the journey. Forty-five to sixty minutes across a city is normal, and putting it in the diary is the difference between a day that works and one that does not.

One event type per service#

Honest durations, taken from what the work actually takes rather than what you would like it to. The customer picks the service and the calendar only offers slots long enough to hold it.

A cap on the day#

Max bookings per day is the setting people skip and then wish they had used. Six massages, four lash full sets, three cleaning jobs — whatever the number is at which the work starts to suffer. The calendar stops before you do.

And hours that are real#

If you do not work through lunch, put the break in the schedule as two ranges on that day rather than trusting yourself to leave it empty. Split shifts

Last reviewed 28 September 2026.