Set Bay Buffer Time
Buffer time is the gap held between one vehicle leaving a bay and the next arriving. It covers moving the outbound vehicle off the lift, staging the inbound one, and finishing the paperwork.
Who can do this: Location Managers, Org Admins and Account Owners.
Setting it
The setting applies to every bay at the location.
Choosing a value
Time your actual changeover, twice, on a normal day. Use that.
| Your work | Typical buffer |
|---|---|
| Rapid / express — drive on, drive off | 5–10 min |
| Mechanical — lift down, vehicle out, next one in | 10–15 min |
| Body and collision — vehicles moved by hand, floor cleared | 15–30 min |
| Paint booth — cleaning and settling between vehicles | Whatever your process requires |
Both errors cost you. A rapid-service shop with a two-minute changeover and a fifteen-minute buffer is throwing away real capacity across every bay, every day. A collision shop with a five-minute buffer is planning a day that cannot physically happen, and it will show up as everything running late for no visible reason.
What buffer does to the plan
BayWise treats the buffer as part of the bay’s occupancy. You never have to reserve it yourself.
The visible effect is small deliberate gaps between vehicles on the calendar views. Those gaps are not idle time — they are the changeover you are actually performing.
A bay showing Changeover on the board is in that gap: the previous vehicle has left and the next cannot start yet.
Signs your buffer is wrong
| Symptom | Likely cause |
|---|---|
| Vehicles arrive before the last one has left | Buffer shorter than your real changeover |
| Bay utilisation looks low but the shop feels busy | Buffer longer than your real changeover |
| Rapid bays finish the day with fewer cars than they used to do | Buffer too long for short jobs |
| Technicians constantly waiting for a bay to clear | Buffer too short |
Bay utilisation in analytics is the number to watch after a change.
Common questions
Can I set a different buffer per bay? The buffer is set for the location. If one bay genuinely needs much longer — a booth, for instance — build that time into the service durations for the work that runs there.
Does the buffer apply to the first vehicle of the day? No. It is the gap between vehicles.
Does it apply between stages of the same vehicle in the same bay? No. The vehicle has not left.
Is buffer time counted as bay utilisation? No — utilisation measures active work. That is why an over-long buffer makes a busy shop look underused.