Academy › Build › Bookings and orders

Running over time: what you deduct from the balance

Set a time block and a rounding rule that stays the same no matter who handles the appointment, and that, with individual clients, never rounds up the time worked, so what you deduct from the package is clear just by looking at what you write down.

By Yodai · Published on September 6, 2026 · Updated on October 12, 2026

When you sell hour packages, sooner or later an appointment runs longer than planned. The massage was supposed to last an hour. It ran two minutes over because the client came in with a knot that wouldn't let up. When you finish and go to log the deduction on your package tracking sheet, you have to decide: does it take sixty-two minutes off the balance, seventy-five, or the sixty she paid for?

If you improvise the answer every time, each client's balance ends up calculated by a different standard depending on the day and who handled the appointment. And the day someone compares two similar appointments with different deductions, they're going to ask why.

The unit comes from a written rule, not from whatever feels right that day

When the job takes less time than expected, the temptation is to charge a minimum fee. With an individual client, the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users considers it an unfair term to charge for services that weren't actually used, and the exception is billing separately for a cost that's unavoidably tied to starting the service, when it isn't already built into the price and matches the service actually provided. Some trades have their own rule: technicians who repair appliances at the customer's home can bill a minimum of fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes, depending on the appliance, when the problem is simple and takes them less time than that. This is the other side of the same problem: what happens when the job runs past the time you charged for. And here you need a fixed rule, written down before you sell the package: deduct the exact minute, or set a deduction unit, the block.

The block is the smallest unit the balance moves in: fifteen minutes, half an hour, a full hour. It's not how long the service takes, it's the rule that turns real minutes into something you subtract from a number. Without that rule written down somewhere, every provider rounds by their own judgment: one rounds up fifteen minutes, another rounds up half an hour for the same gap, and a client comparing two similar appointments ends up seeing two different deductions with no explanation. With an individual client, on top of that, package terms that leave the deduction up to whoever handles the appointment run into that same law, which in its Article 85 considers unfair "clauses that tie any aspect of the contract to the will of the business." You need to explain the rule before the client buys the package: Article 60 of that law requires giving the client clear, understandable information about the contract's financial terms. And if someone ever disputes their balance, there's no way to defend a number that was decided on the spot.

Always round up, or round to the nearest

Once you've set the block, there's a second decision: when the job doesn't land exactly on a multiple of the block, do you always round up, or round to the nearest, sometimes up and sometimes down? It's not a technical question, it's the one that determines how much each extra minute costs the client and how fast their package runs out.

With an individual client, the law has already answered: its Article 87 considers unfair "terms that provide for rounding up the time used," and an unfair term is void and treated as if it were never included. With that client, the rules that don't run afoul of that law are two: deduct the real time, minute by minute, or round down, deducting only full blocks and not charging for minutes that don't add up to another one. That law protects people buying for themselves: if your client is a company or a professional hiring you for their business, they're not a consumer under that law, and rounding is something the two of you agree on, preferably in writing.

The grace margin: the minutes that don't trigger the next block

If you work for businesses and you've agreed to always round up, there's one case that rule handles badly if you apply it to the letter: the job that runs one minute, just one, past a block boundary and jumps to the next full block. With thirty-minute blocks, going one minute past the hour deducts ninety full minutes. That's not a rule, that's a penalty for a stopwatch. With an individual client this problem doesn't come up, because you don't round up with them.

The answer isn't to drop rounding up, it's to give it some room before it kicks in. A grace window of two or three minutes, counted from the end of the block, that doesn't count as overtime. If the block is thirty minutes and the job takes thirty-two, it doesn't jump to the next block; if it takes thirty-five, it does. You set the exact length of the grace window, but it should be small: just enough that a few extra minutes from a delay or from finishing the job right don't trigger the next block. That grace window is also what you'll point to if a client ever asks why a thirty-two-minute appointment didn't cost them the next block: because the grace window was already in place before minute thirty-two came around.

A small block for a short job, a big one only if the job is big too

The chart above is why the block size isn't picked at random: it has to be small relative to how long the typical job takes. If you round up, with a business client, a large block turns rounding from an adjustment into a surcharge the client notices: a one-hour block on a forty-minute job isn't a unit of measurement, it's half a service given away to the business at every appointment. If you round down, with an individual client, the large block works against you: that same forty-minute job doesn't fill a single block and nothing gets deducted.

The practical rule: if the jobs usually run thirty to ninety minutes, a fifteen-minute block barely shows up. If they run two to four hours, a half-hour block works just as well and it's also easier to read on your package tracking sheet. Move up to full one-hour blocks only when the typical job already takes several hours, like a remodel or a move. At that scale, fifteen minutes one way or the other doesn't change anything, and it only complicates the math. Think about the trades you already know: a forty-minute manicure, a one-hour tutoring session, a two-hour maintenance checkup. The right block is different for each one because the typical job is different too.

The block and the rounding rule are already set; what can still drain your balance without it being your time is materials and travel.