Automatic booking or Booking with approval

When you work in Automatic booking mode, the Customer makes a booking and it’s automatically created in your calendar with no further action required. See a demo

In Booking with approval mode, you get to review and approve each booking request before it’s scheduled. See a demo

In this article, you’ll learn about the two different modes and when to use them.

Automatic Booking Mode

When should I use Automatic booking?

It’s good to use Automatic booking mode when you’re scheduling the same type of appointments, such as customer appointments, advisory sessions, or interviews. Automatic booking saves you a great deal of time, as everything happens automatically and your calendar just fills up with appointments.

Note

When you’re you haven’t connected a calendar and a Customer makes a booking, it’s automatically created in the Activity stream and a scheduling confirmation is sent to all relevant Users. You can manually add the event to your calendar directly from the confirmation email.

Working with single sessions or session packages

The booking can be for a single session or for multiple sessions. You can select the exact number of sessions by going to Booking pages in the bar on the left → click relevant Booking page → Scheduling options section and using the Single or multiple sessions option. For example, if the Customer must book 10 sessions, they will not be able to submit 9 or 11 sessions. Learn more about Session packages

Note

If your Booking page is associated with Event types (recommended), the Scheduling options section will be located under each Event type.

Meeting duration and meeting increments

When you work in Automatic booking mode, all time settings are in 5-minute increments. This means an appointment can be as short as 5 minutes. In contrast, when using Booking with approval, you are limited to 15-minute increments.

Booking with approval mode

To set Booking with approval mode, go to Booking pages in the bar on the left → click your Booking page → Scheduling options section.

Note

If your Booking page is associated with Event types, the Scheduling options section will be set at the Event type level. Learn more

When you select Booking with approval mode, you set the number of times your Customers must suggest. The more times you ask your Customers to suggest, the more flexibility you’ll have when you pick the final time. Once a Customer submits their booking, you’ll be notified to review the suggested times and approve the booking request. Booking with approval mode works in 15-minute increments. If you need shorter increments, Automatic booking works in 5-minute increments.

Booking with approval mode is available in all plans. It differs from Automatic booking mode, where scheduling happens automatically.

Note

When a Customer selects a few times on your Booking page, these requested times will not block your availability yet, since they have not been scheduled. When you approve the final time, it will become busy time and block your availability during that time slot.

When there’s a high degree of variability in your schedule, Booking with approval mode gives you the control over the time that you select for the booking. It’s good to use this mode in the following cases:

• When you want to approve each request before it’s scheduled.
• When you don’t have many meeting requests.
• When you have a high degree of variability in the types of your meeting requests.