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
- Your store's time zone: The zone used for the times in order emails and for booking deadlines. It can be set with bookings off
- 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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Sellers in different time zones
If your sellers work in different time zones, turn on Let sellers set their own time zone under the session time zone. Each seller then picks their zone under Settings in their dashboard. Their booking deadlines, payout release and calendar invites follow it, and customers see that seller's times as entered, with the zone named ("Times are in Pacific Time") when it differs from yours. Times are never converted: the customer goes where the session happens. Sellers who don't pick a zone use the marketplace zone, and each booking keeps the zone it was made in, so a seller changing theirs later never moves existing bookings.
Marketplace time zone: Mountain Time
Coach Anna
No time zone set
Select Time for September 24, 2026
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM
$35
Deadlines, payouts and invites: Mountain Time
Coach Ben
Picked Pacific Time
Select Time for September 24, 2026
Times are in Pacific Time
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM
$35
Deadlines, payouts and invites: Pacific Time
Both lessons show 9:00 AM, the time the coach entered. The label only appears when the coach's zone differs from the marketplace's.
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.
Booking terms
Ask customers to agree to your terms on every booking, for example a liability waiver for sports lessons or a rental agreement for equipment. Turn on Require booking terms, give the terms a name (“Liability waiver”), and either link to them or paste the text. The link wins when both are filled in. Pasted text opens in a window on the booking form. If you switch it on before adding a link or text, customers are not asked anything until you do (the settings page warns you).
Every booking form then ends with a required checkbox, “I agree to the Liability waiver”, and the customer cannot send the request or pay until it is ticked. This covers single bookings, several sessions booked together, per-service appointments, free bookings and pay-in-person bookings.
Each booking keeps a copy of the terms exactly as the customer accepted them, with the date. You see it in the bookings list, the seller sees it on the booking card, and the customer sees it in My Bookings. The booking request and payment emails to both sides mention it too, and the booking.created webhook carries it as termsAcceptance.
How booking terms work
1 · You set it once
Booking terms
Name
Or paste the text
2 · Ticked on every booking
Can't send until it is ticked
3 · Kept on the booking
Swimming Lessons - All Levels
Jamie R. · Pending
Tue, Oct 6, 2026 at 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM
✓ Liability waiver accepted on Tue, Sep 29, 2026
Click the name to read the exact version this customer accepted.
One setting, one tick per booking, and a copy of what was accepted on every booking.
Editing the terms later
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.
Payout after completion
Off by default. Turn it on to hold the seller's share of a paid booking until the session is over: the customer confirms or reports a problem, and the payout is released automatically after a waiting period you choose. How the money moves is on Booking Payments & Payouts.