Drop-off timing controls

Three settings decide the shape of a drop-off day, and they live in the same panel. Get them working together and your day fills tightly without you touching the calendar; get one wrong and customers see too few times or awkward gaps.

All three are in Booking Windows & Limits, and each does one job.

Open in app: Booking Settings

Know what each of the three knobs does

• Earliest drop-off — how early before their service a customer may drop off. Wide settings let people drop in the morning and wait; tight settings keep drop-off close to the service. See Earliest drop-off.
• Time slot interval — the spacing of the drop-off times customers are offered. Set to 15 minutes, they see 9:00, 9:15, 9:30; set to 30, they see 9:00, 9:30. A wider interval gives a tidier, less crowded booking page.
• Buffer time between appointments — an automatic gap reserved after every service for cleanup, notes, or a reset. It's the only setting that deliberately holds time open between services.

They're independent — changing one doesn't move the others — but together they determine which drop-off times appear and how tightly the actual services pack.

Understand fill-first packing

Seglo packs services fill-first: it uses every available minute. The service start is not rounded up to your time-slot interval — the next service starts the moment the previous one (plus any buffer) ends.

So after a service that ends at 9:10, the next service can start at 9:10 — it is not pushed to 9:15 just because your interval is 15 minutes. The time-slot interval only spaces out the drop-off times customers see; it never forces a gap into your actual working day. The only intentional gap is the buffer you set.

Work through an example

Say your day looks like this:

• You open at 9:00.
• There's already a booking running 9:00–9:10.
• Buffer between appointments is set to none (0 minutes).
• A customer books a 60-minute service with Earliest drop-off set to Any time after we open.

Here's what happens:

1. The customer can drop off from 9:00, because the window allows any time after open.
2. Your existing service finishes at 9:10. With no buffer, the next service can start immediately.
3. Seglo schedules the 60-minute service to start fill-first at 9:10, not 9:15.
4. The customer sees their drop-off time with Est. ready by 10:10 underneath.

If the customer chose to drop at 9:00, the pet waits ten minutes for its turn — that gap is the hold, and it's expected. Turn the buffer up to 15 minutes and the same service would start at 9:25 (9:10 end + 15 buffer), giving an Est. ready by 10:25 instead.

Tune for tighter or looser days

• Want a denser day? Keep the buffer low and the time-slot interval small, so services butt up against each other and customers see plenty of drop-off options.
• Want breathing room? Raise the buffer — every service gets a guaranteed gap after it.
• Booking page feels cluttered with odd times? Widen the time-slot interval; it declutters the customer's view without changing how tightly you actually work.

Tips

• Only the buffer creates real gaps. Interval and drop-off window shape what customers see and when they arrive — they never force idle time into your schedule.
• Fill-first means the interval won't waste minutes. A service ending at 9:10 leads straight into the next one at 9:10.
• Nothing here changes existing bookings. Adjust a setting and only future bookings follow it.

Related

• Earliest drop-off — the drop-off window itself.
• Drop-off scheduling — the underlying model and the ready-time estimate.
• Drop-off booking FAQ — fixes for common surprises.
• Appointment settings — the full booking-settings reference.