Days Off, Partial Days and Buffers: Controlling Your Booking Availability

You control availability in three layers: days off (single dates, ranges, or partial days like "after 2 PM"), buffers between sessions, and whatever is already busy on your Google Calendar. Viralyze applies all three before a customer sees a single slot, so the booking page only offers times you can actually honour.

This article goes through each layer with the example of a physiotherapist who takes clinic appointments and online follow-ups from Instagram.

How do days off work?

A day off removes the whole date from the booking page. You can add a single date, such as a festival, or a date range for a holiday, and the page simply does not offer those days. Nothing needs to be deleted later; the dates expire on their own.

The physiotherapist blocks the second Saturday of every month for a training course, and a ten-day range in December for travel. Customers booking in November see December's slots drop out exactly where the range begins.

Can I block only part of a day?

Yes, and this is the setting that most booking tools get wrong. A partial day off such as "after 2 PM" keeps the morning open and closes the afternoon. You can also close a morning and open the afternoon, or carve out a specific window.

Our physiotherapist works mornings only on Wednesdays, so Wednesday is set to "after 1 PM off". The page shows 9 AM to 1 PM slots on Wednesdays and the full day on others. No manual deleting of afternoon slots, no awkward DM explaining why Wednesday afternoon disappeared.

What do buffers do?

A buffer is a fixed gap after each booking that the next booking cannot occupy. It covers the realities of the job: notes after a session, room turnaround, travel between a clinic and a home visit, or just a breath.

Set the buffer once per booking page. With a 15-minute buffer and a 45-minute consultation, a client who books at 10 AM leaves the next available start at 11 AM, not 10:45. The combined duration of a service plus add-ons is respected too, so a 45-minute session with a 15-minute taping add-on plus the buffer needs 75 minutes free.

How does Google Calendar fit into this?

It is the third layer. Connect Google Calendar once, choose which calendars block slots and which one receives bookings, and busy events on the chosen calendars are removed from the page. The sync is two-way: a booking made on the page appears in Google, and an event added in Google blocks the page.

A short setup for the physiotherapist:

1. Connect Google Calendar in Viralyze. 2. Tick the clinic calendar and her personal calendar as blocking calendars. 3. Choose the clinic calendar as the one bookings are written to. 4. Add a 15-minute buffer. 5. Enter days off and the Wednesday partial day.

From then on, a dentist appointment on her personal calendar blocks clinic bookings for that hour without her touching the app.

What does the customer experience?

They see a clean set of available times and nothing else. No greyed-out mess, no "contact me for availability". They choose a slot, pay upfront by UPI or card, and receive a confirmation page with add-to-calendar, reschedule and, if allowed, cancel options. For online follow-ups they are invited to the calendar event with a Meet link. A WhatsApp reminder arrives before the session.

If a client cancels within the window you allow, the refund goes back automatically and the slot reopens, including the buffer around it.

Frequently asked questions

**Can I set different buffers for different services?** Buffers are set on the booking page and apply after each booking, so the gap is consistent across services.

**If I add a day off after someone has already booked that date, what happens?** Existing bookings stay on your calendar; the day off only stops new bookings from being made for that date.

**Do days off need Google Calendar to work?** No. Days off, partial days and buffers are set inside Viralyze and work on their own; Google Calendar adds the busy-event layer on top.

Set your days off and buffer once and let the page handle the rest with the 7-day free trial of Viralyze, no card needed.