Booking settings
The store-wide controls behind every booking on your marketplace, under Store Settings → Booking.
Quick answer
The settings
- Enable Bookings: Allow booking-based purchases
- Auto-Approve: Automatically approve booking requests
- 12-Hour Time: Show booking times to customers as AM/PM instead of 24-hour
- Time zone your sessions take place in: The zone used for booking deadlines
- Cancellation Policy: Define your cancellation terms
- Notification Emails: Email addresses to notify for new bookings
Approval or instant booking
This one decision changes when your customers are charged, so it is worth being deliberate about it.
- Auto-Approve off (the default): a customer requests a slot and nothing is charged. The seller approves, the customer receives a payment link, and the booking is confirmed once paid. Best where the seller needs to vet the job, the location or the customer first.
- Auto-Approve on: the customer goes straight to checkout and the booking is confirmed on payment. Best for standardised sessions where any customer is fine and speed matters.
Where the customer is charged
Auto-Approve off
DefaultCustomer requests a slot
Nothing charged
Seller approves
Slot is held
Customer pays
$200 taken here
Booking confirmed
Auto-Approve on
InstantCustomer picks a slot
Straight to checkout
Customer pays
$200 taken here
Booking confirmed
No seller step
With approval on, the slot is held from the moment the seller accepts, but the money does not arrive until the customer follows the payment link.
Unpaid approved bookings are not cancelled automatically
Session time zone
Slot times are stored as plain clock times, so we need to know where those times apply. Set this to where the sessions actually happen, not where you are: you might run the marketplace from one country while your instructors teach in another. It decides which of today's slots still count as upcoming, when advance-notice rules kick in, and the deadline for customer reschedule requests. Leave it unset and everything is measured against our server clock (UTC), which is what happened before this setting existed.
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Cancellation policy
This is text shown to customers when they book. It is not enforced: cancelling a paid booking always refunds it in full, no matter what the policy says or how close to the session it is. To keep a late-cancellation fee, issue a partial refund from the booking instead of cancelling it. See refunds and cancellations.
What your policy says vs what happens
Shown to the customer at booking
“Cancel at least 24 hours before the start time for a full refund.”
You press Cancel
Full refund, always. Even one hour before the session. Your commission goes back too.
The 24 hours is not enforced
You issue a partial refund
Refund $150 of a $200 booking and the $50 late-cancellation fee stays, split as usual.
This is how you keep a fee
The policy is text, not a rule. If you want it enforced, use a partial refund rather than Cancel.
Notification emails
Add the addresses that should hear about new bookings on your marketplace. Sellers and customers are emailed automatically at every step regardless of this setting; these are the extra copies for you and your team. Every booking email can be reworded under Email Translations.
See every booking email
Customer reschedule requests
Off by default. Turn it on and customers can ask to move a booking up to a deadline you choose, with the seller approving or declining. It has its own page: Rescheduling.