Booking has two halves: events (the services customers can book and when) and appointments (what has actually been booked). Customers book at /booking without an account.
Events create the slots
Each event has weekly hours, a duration, a buffer, a minimum notice and a booking window. Slots are worked out from those and then reduced by blocked dates and existing appointments. An event slot takes exactly one booking: there is no group size, no location or meeting-link field, and no approval step.
How a booking becomes confirmed
- Free event: confirmed the moment the customer submits.
- Paid event, online payment: the customer goes to the gateway; the slot is held as Waiting for Payment for 15 minutes. Paying confirms it; if the time runs out the system cancels it and frees the slot.
- Paid event, bank transfer (if your site offers it): the customer submits a tracking code and/or receipt, and the slot is held for 72 hours until you press Confirm payment received.
- Staff-created: a free event is confirmed at once; a paid event starts as Draft and Send Payment Link moves it to Waiting for Payment.
Paid bookings create a paid invoice and an accounting entry automatically once the payment is confirmed. Free bookings create neither.
What customers receive
The guest gets email (and text, if you turned booking SMS on and have a free-text line) when a booking is confirmed, reminded, cancelled, rescheduled, or needs payment. Reminders go out 24 hours and 1 hour before the start for confirmed appointments only; these times are fixed. A booking made inside those windows never gets the missed reminder. A guest with only a mobile number gets no email.
Every email carries a signed link to manage the booking. It lets the guest cancel or reschedule without an account, and expires one hour after the start or 30 days after it was issued, whichever is first. An event can set a Cancellation Cutoff in hours: inside that window the guest can no longer cancel online, though they can still reschedule.
Round robin
An event with several assignees gives each new booking to the person with the fewest upcoming bookings, not to "the next in turn". Ties go to the lowest user id. Availability belongs to the event, so two providers cannot be booked in parallel on one event.
Staff alerts
Admins get a bell notification for new bookings, guest and system cancellations, reschedules, payments and bookings that need review, and the New bookings email goes to everyone holding the manage-appointments permission (editable under Email recipients). Cancellations you make yourself, and system cancellations from payment timeouts, produce no bell alert.
Attendance is your call
Nothing marks a customer as attended automatically. A confirmed appointment is only flagged Needs review a couple of hours after it ends (see Booking settings); you then mark it Completed or No-show yourself.
Relation to CRM
When an appointment is confirmed it is linked to a CRM contact and customer with the same email or phone, and a meeting is logged on them. Nothing is created if there is no match.
Where to look
Events: what can be booked. Appointments: what was booked. Settings: contact rules, texts and attendance review.