What is a buffer window? (Buffer Between Rentals)

A buffer window is the amount of time Renta blocks an item from being booked again right after it's returned. It gives you time to clean, refuel, or inspect equipment before the next renter picks it up, without you having to manually mark the item unavailable.

Where to find it

Fleet → open an item → Availability tab (step 3 of 6). Look for Buffer Hours.

Buffer Between Rentals, Advance Notice, and Same-Day Booking on the Availability tab

How it works

• Minimum Rental — the shortest booking allowed, with an hours/days switch. If your pricing uses fixed time slots, the box is grayed out with the note "Minimum rental length is set by the time slots above — turn on flexible pickup & dropoff times or hourly pricing to edit it again."
• Maximum Rental — the longest booking allowed; leave blank ("No limit") for no limit.
• Overnight rentals — Use shop default, Allow overnight, or Return nightly. See Overnight rentals.
• Notice Hours — how many hours before the rental start a booking must be made. Defaults to 24 on a new item.
• Buffer Hours — hours blocked after a booking's return time before the item can be booked again. Defaults to 2 on a new item. Whole numbers, 0 or more.
• Same-Day Booking — the "Allow same-day booking" switch. Off by default.
• Home shop (shown as Pickup Location if you have only one location) — where the item is kept. With two or more shops, choose one shop, or "All shops (bookable anywhere)". Customers can only book an item at its home shop. Bundles are bookable wherever their contents are, so for a bundle this only sets default pickup hours.
• Inventory — how many of the item you have.

Units that are set to a different shop. A unit follows its item's home shop unless you set it to a shop on its own unit page. Below the Home shop field, a saved item lists the units that follow the home shop and the units set to another shop (each name is a link to that unit). Changing the home shop does not move those units. Click Make all N follow the home shop (or Make it follow the home shop for one unit) and confirm to send them back; each move is recorded in the unit's transfer history.

Example

If a jet ski returns at 2:00 PM and its Buffer Hours is set to 1, the next booking on that same jet ski can't start until 3:00 PM. Renta blocks that hour automatically — you don't need to update availability by hand.

Good to know

• Notice Hours and Same-Day Booking can cancel each other out. If Notice Hours is 24 or more, no same-day booking can ever meet that notice window, so leaving Same-Day Booking turned on does nothing in practice — customers will never actually be able to book today. If you want same-day bookings to work, lower Notice Hours below 24. Renta's admin now shows a warning when it detects this combination on an item, because it has caused real items to look permanently sold out to same-day visitors.
• The buffer applies per item, not per unit — see Item variants: color, size, and other options if you track multiple physical units of the same item, since each unit gets its own buffer countdown from its own return.
• Buffer, Minimum/Maximum Rental, and Notice Hours all live together in a template, so a category template can pre-fill sensible defaults for a whole group of items — see Reusable item templates.