Bookings

Related docs: Services | Sessions | Packages | Online booking | Booking analytics

What is a booking?

A booking is any reserved place: a one-to-one booking with one of your resources, or a seat in a session. Customers book online from your storefront, and you can book for them.

Each booking has a reference, a customer, a service, a time, a party size and a status.

Your calendar

Calendar shows the day or the week with a column for each resource, or a List of everything booked. Sessions appear beside bookings with how many places are taken. Under the filters, the dates you are viewing and Today sit on the left and Day, Week and List on the right, in the same place whichever view is open.

Bookings lists every booking by day, with its time, customer, services, resource, status and billing. A booking of more than one service shows the first and how many more, such as Lawn Mowing +1; open it to see each one with its own times. The reference appears while you search, so you can match a code a customer reads out.

Your location's dashboard also shows Today: what is under way now, what is up next, bookings that are late to start, and how full today's sessions are. Needs you lists bookings waiting to be confirmed, among what else needs your attention.

Creating a booking

1. Choose Create booking
2. Start with the customer: search by name, email or phone. If they are not there, choose Create customer at the foot of the list, and what you searched for is already filled in
3. Choose the service and pricing option
4. Choose a time and, if you like, a resource. Any available lets Paydough pick
5. Set the party size
6. Add notes: Customer notes (visible to customer), and Internal notes they cannot see
7. Choose Create booking, or Create booking & invoice to bill it straight away

A summary fills in as you go: the service, the time and the price.

If the customer holds a package that covers the service, a package credit is used for it. Turn on Charge for this booking to bill it instead. See Packages.

Booking status

A booking is always one of Pending, Confirmed, Arrived, Started, Cancelled, Completed, No-show.

Move a booking along with the buttons on it:

• Confirm: for a pending booking. On one awaiting its deposit, it keeps the booking without the deposit, which stays owed on the invoice
• Mark arrived and Start: on the day, both optional
• Mark completed
• Mark no-show: once the start time has passed
• Undo arrival and Undo start: if you pressed one by mistake
• Mark as attended: if a no-show did turn up after all

Bookings still confirmed when they end are completed for you.

Billing a booking

Each booking shows its Billing:

• Needs invoice: nothing has billed it yet. Raise an invoice from the booking
• Invoiced: it is on an invoice
• Nothing to bill: a package credit covered it, or it is free. In the bookings list, one a package credit paid for reads Package credit

A booking cancelled or marked as a no-show before it was invoiced has nothing to bill, and raising an invoice for it says so.

Waive billing closes a booking off without raising an invoice, for goodwill or complimentary work. Nothing is ever charged for it.

When the booking's invoice still owes money and the customer saved a card with your business, Charge card on file takes what is left from it, after naming the card and the amount. See Invoices.

Changing a booking

Rescheduling

Choose Reschedule to move a one-to-one booking to another time. You can also change its length for this visit: Length starts at the booking's current length, and clearing it goes back to the length the service sets for the booking's party. The price follows who the booking moves to, so moving it to another resource can change it; the sheet says so.

Once a booking's start time has passed, only your staff can move or cancel it. The customer's booking tells them to contact you instead.

For a service delivered at the customer's address, change where you are going from the booking's address. Pick one of the customer's saved addresses, which is saved straight away without saving any other change you have made, or choose New address to enter another. A customer with no saved addresses has Edit beside the address instead.

Some bookings cannot be moved in place:

• A seat in a session runs at a set time. Change the party size from the booking, or cancel it and book another session
• A booking on a resource combination has to be cancelled and booked again
• A booking already under way, cancelled or completed is fixed

Party size

Edit the party size from the booking. If a party paid for more seats than it now needs, Return payment for released seats refunds the difference to the card it was paid with, or returns it as account credit where it was not paid by card.

Cancelling a booking

Choose Cancel booking and give a reason. The customer sees the reason on their booking, so keep private remarks in the internal notes.

Inside the service's late cancellation window, you choose whether to apply its policy:

• Charge the cancellation fee takes the late cancellation fee. Anything already paid stays as account credit with your business rather than going back to the card
• If a package credit paid for the booking, charging the fee uses the credit up. Leave the fee off and the credit comes back

Outside the window, or with the fee off, what was paid goes back to the card, and the invoice is voided if nothing is left owing.

Every cancellation records who made it: the customer, your staff, or Paydough when a recurring booking, service or resource ended, or when an online booking's deposit was not paid in time.

No-shows

Choose Mark no-show once the start time has passed. Depending on the service, Paydough:

• Charges the service's no-show fee
• Uses up the package credit that paid for it
• Reverses the billing and returns what was paid as account credit

The confirmation tells you exactly what will happen first. Mark as attended reverses it.

Reminders and calendars

Customers are emailed when they book, or once the deposit is paid for an online booking that waited for it, and reminded within 24 hours of a confirmed booking. Changes and cancellations are emailed too.

Each booking has Add to calendar for the customer. Staff members can connect their own Google Calendar from their profile, and the bookings and sessions they work are added to it. The sync only adds to Google: changes made in Google do not come back.

Recurring bookings

A recurring booking books a customer into a one-to-one service on a schedule, such as every Tuesday at 10:00 with the same trainer.

1. Go to Recurring bookings and choose Create recurring booking
2. Choose the customer and service, and a resource or Any available
3. Choose the first start: the date, then the Time. Type into the time list to narrow it, so 19 shows 19:00 to 19:45
4. Set Ends on, or leave it at No end date to repeat indefinitely
5. Set Repeat every and its Period, such as every 2 weeks
6. Create it

Before you create it, the form lists the first dates it will book under Repeats on. Paydough makes each booking ahead of time. The first start must fall within the service's Bookable from and Bookable until. A date when no resource is free, that falls outside working hours or the hours the service is bookable, that the location is closed on, or that has no address for a service that needs one, gets no booking: the recurring booking says how many dates have none, and View dates lists them under Bookings not made for you to book by hand. The series tries those dates again each night. While your plan doesn't include Bookings, it makes no new bookings.

Changing the schedule cancels upcoming bookings that are off the new schedule, tells the customer and refunds any already paid. Changing the resource or the address moves the upcoming bookings and tells the customer; any the new resource can't take stay where they are, listed under Bookings not moved for you to move or cancel. Cancel recurring booking cancels every upcoming booking in the series and stops new ones. Past bookings are kept.

The walk-in queue

For one-to-one services served on the day, such as a busy restaurant or barber, customers can join a queue instead of picking a time. They join from your storefront when nothing is free soon, or you add them with Add a walk-in. A first visit can be created there too, with Create customer at the foot of the customer list.

Queue shows everyone waiting, longest first, with their party and how long they have waited.

• Notify tells a party it's their turn by text message. They have 10 minutes to reach the front desk
• Seat books them in from the queue
• Change party keeps their place whatever the party size
• Remove from the queue takes them out without telling them

The queue closes when no service is being served, and places expire at the end of the trading day. While it is closed, Queue says when the next service takes it, or lists the hours each service takes it. A location with no one-to-one services has no queue at all.

How busy you are

Booking analytics shows how many bookings each location takes, how often customers turn up, and how many sessions you run.