Bookings
Reservations and the booking lifecycle
Find, make, approve, move and cancel bookings; what each status means; and what a booking record shows to whom.
On this page
Reservations is where you find a booking and act on it. Each booking moves through a short lifecycle, and the actions you see are the ones that make sense for where it is now.
- See every booking
- View Bookings
- Make, approve, move and cancel
- Manage Bookings
- Your own bookings
- anyone booked on one can open it, without View Bookings
Find a booking#
Choose a period — Coming up, Today, This week or Past 30 days — and, if you like, one booking type. The top of the page is a ribbon showing where the period’s bookings stand; select a stage to filter to it. Below is an agenda by day, with each customer’s standing.
Search looks at names, references and booking types in the period. Bookings are also in global search for anyone with View Bookings.
Make a booking#
Start a new booking#
Choose New reservation on the Overview or Reservations. The button uses your words — New appointment, New stay.
Pick what is being booked#
Choose the booking type. With only one type, this step is skipped.
Pick the time and the customer#
Bookings offers only times a suitable resource is open and free. Add places for a class, guests for a stay, and answer the type’s questions. Choose an existing contact or enter a new one.
Book#
If the type needs approval, the booking waits for it; otherwise it is confirmed.
If someone takes the time while you are choosing, Bookings refuses the booking plainly rather than double-booking. Pick another time.
The lifecycle#
| Status | What it means | What can happen next |
|---|---|---|
| Being booked | A time is held while someone finishes booking. Holds last 10 minutes and are never announced | Confirmed, or released |
| Waiting for approval | The booking type needs approval | Approve, Decline, Move |
| Confirmed | It is happening | Mark arrived, Mark completed, Did not come, Move, Cancel booking |
| Arrived | The customer is here | Mark completed |
| Completed | It happened | — |
| Did not come | A no-show; the time is released | — |
| Cancelled | Cancelled or declined; the time is released | — |
A meeting by video or phone can be completed straight from Confirmed, because nobody arrives. Each kind of business reads the lifecycle in its own words — a hotel’s is Booked → Checked in → Checked out; a consultation’s is Booked → Prepared → Met → Resolved. See Experiences.
Moving a booking#
Move offers the times that are free for the same booking type. A pending or confirmed booking can be moved; the old time is released and the calendar is updated. Customers can be limited in how close to the start they may change their own booking; your team never is.
Approvals#
A booking waiting for approval appears in the Inbox of the people who can approve it, with Approve and Decline buttons that act on the booking itself. A customer cancelling or moving their own booking arrives as an information item.
The booking record#
Open any booking to see its lifecycle track and, depending on who you are:
- Details — the type, time, resource, reference and customer.
- What they told us — answers to the booking type’s questions. If a required answer is missing you see Intake is not complete.
- Where it happens — the meeting link, phone number or address, with Join the meeting and Copy link.
- The price — total and deposit, for people with Finance access.
- What happened — the booking’s full history.
- Connected records — the contact and anything else linked to it.
What each person sees is set by their access, not by the page; see Settings and access. Someone who only shares a calendar with the person booked sees “You can see when this happens because it is on a calendar you share.”
Automations#
Seven booking events can start an automation: created, approved, rescheduled, cancelled, checked in, completed and did not come. Each carries the booking’s reference, type, status, times and contact, never the customer’s name.