Building cleaning and changeover time into your bookings

A party finishes at 4pm. The next hirer has booked from 4pm. Your cleaner has fifteen minutes to clear the cake, wipe the tables and sweep the floor. Anyone who runs a party room, hall or meeting room has been there.

On paper those two bookings do not overlap. In practice they collide. The fix is to stop the form from offering that time in the first place.

What a gap does

Alion Booking has a setting called a gap. It holds the item for a set time either side of a booking, so two bookings cannot collide in practice even though they do not overlap on paper. The help centre gives cleaning a party room as one of the uses.

Two things matter about how it works:

• The gap is taken out of availability, so nobody can book into it.
• It is not part of the booking, and the customer is not charged for it.

That second point is the one most owners want to hear. You are protecting your own time, not adding a line to the customer's invoice.

Where to set it

1. Go to Dashboard, then Booking Forms.
2. Open the form for the room or hall.
3. Click the Booking Rules tab.
4. Find Gap before each booking (minutes) and Gap after each booking (minutes).
5. Enter the number of minutes you need in each, then save.

Gap before is held ahead of the start time. Gap after is held after the end time. Enter whole minutes, so 30 minutes, not "half an hour".

A worked example

The help centre uses a court: a 1-hour booking with a 15 minute gap after it takes 1 hour 15 minutes out of the court's day. The customer pays for the hour. The extra 15 minutes keeps the next slot clear.

Here is the same idea for a party room. Say you set Gap before each booking to 30 and Gap after each booking to 45. Your team needs half an hour to set up tables and balloons, and 45 minutes to clean down.

A customer books 12pm to 3pm.

• The customer is charged for three hours, 12pm to 3pm.
• The room is held from 11:30am, because of the gap before.
• The room is held until 3:45pm, because of the gap after.
• The next customer cannot choose a start time inside those held periods.

I have picked those numbers for illustration. Work out your own by timing a real changeover with your team.

Choosing the numbers

Alion Booking does not tell you how long a clean takes, so this part is your judgement. A few practical ideas:

• Time one real changeover, including carrying things in and out, not only the cleaning.
• Think about your worst case, not your average. A kids' party leaves more mess than a board meeting.
• Use gap before for work you do ahead of the hirer arriving, such as setting out chairs. Use gap after for clearing and cleaning. If you do both, set both.
• Start a little generous. You can shorten the gap later once you know how it goes.

If your form covers very different kinds of hire, one gap applies to every booking on that form. The help describes the gap as a setting on the form, and it does not describe different gaps for different bookings. If a wedding needs far more turnaround than a meeting, consider whether those should be separate forms. The help says you typically create one form per distinct service.

Check how the gap meets the booking rules

Booking rules are checked together with inventory availability when a customer tries to confirm. A booking is accepted only if it meets the notice and advance limits, does not fall inside another booking's buffer, and has an available unit. If it fails, the customer is asked to pick a different time.

So the gap is enforced when the booking is confirmed, not just by hiding times on screen.

Gaps sit alongside the other settings on the same tab:

• Min Booking Notice (hours) stops last-minute bookings your team cannot prepare for.
• Max Advance Booking (days) limits how far ahead customers can book.

Make sure start and end times are clear

A gap works from the booking's start and end times, so those need to be right. On the form's Basic Info tab you can set Bookings start at and Bookings end at. Without them, a booking can start whenever the customer happened to open the form, rounded up. With them, every booking runs from your hours, for example in at 2pm and out at 10am.

Where the customer chooses a time themselves, their answer stands. If you run a full-day hall hire with a Day picker, setting your hours means the gap is measured from the times you intended, not from midnight.

Editing bookings and the gap

If you change a booking yourself using Edit Booking, opening hours, blocked times and what is already booked still apply. A change that would double-book an item is still refused. The help centre does not say in detail how gaps are treated on staff edits, so check a test booking on your own form before you rely on it.

Test it before customers do

1. Make a test booking on your form.
2. Open the form as a customer would and try to book the slot straight after it.
3. Check that the times inside your gap are not offered, or that you are asked to pick a different time.
4. Adjust the minutes if the result is not what you wanted.

Once it behaves as expected, you can stop working out by hand whether a booking leaves you enough time.