There may be times when you have an appointment type that is longer or shorter than time intervals available on the system. For example, your clinic may be laid out in 30 minute intervals but you may have a 20 minute or 40 minute appointment. You can choose how the system handles this situation with the 'Automatically Adjust Appointment Length' check box.

Go to Maintenance, Appointment, Appointment Diary Configuration to change this setting.

If the checkbox is ticked: 

When you book an appointment that is different in length to the slot you are booking it into, you will get a warning that the appointment isn't of optimal length, then the system will take some time from the following appointment slot in order to block the correct amount of time out of the clinic. Or if the appointment is shorter, it will leave a smaller slot of time available to be booked.

If the checkbox is unticked:

When you book an appointment that is different in length to the slot you are booking it into, you will still get a warning that the appointment is not of optimal length, but the system will only block out the original time slot. So if you booked a 40 minute appointment into a 30 minute slot, only 30 minutes would be blocked out for that appointment. The slot would also turn pink to notify you that you have less time to complete the appointment than was intended.