Booking Approval Workflow
Control who books your sessions by enabling booking approval â review, approve, or reject booking requests before they are confirmed.
Review Bookings Before They Are Confirmed
By default, members can book sessions instantly as long as spots are available. However, some situations require more control â perhaps you want to screen attendees, manage group dynamics, or ensure members have the right skill level. The booking approval workflow lets you review every booking request before it is confirmed, giving you full control over who attends your sessions.
Enabling Booking Approval
Booking approval is controlled by the Require Confirmation setting in your workspace booking configuration. When enabled, all new bookings go through a manual approval step instead of being confirmed automatically.
Open Booking Settings
Navigate to your workspace dashboard and open Booking Settings (or Flexible Booking Settings if you have advanced options enabled).
Enable "Require Confirmation"
Toggle the Require Confirmation switch to on. This activates the approval workflow for all sessions in this workspace.
Save your settings
Confirm your changes. From now on, all new booking requests will require your manual approval before being confirmed.
The Approval Workflow
When a member requests to book a session and booking approval is enabled, the following workflow takes place:
Managing Pending Requests
All pending booking requests are visible in your workspace dashboard. You can access them from the notifications panel or the dedicated pending bookings section. Each request shows:
Auto-Timeout for Unanswered Requests
To prevent members from being left waiting indefinitely, Booqd applies an automatic timeout to unanswered booking requests. If you do not approve or reject a request within the configured time window, the request is automatically cancelled and the member is notified. This ensures a fair experience for members and prevents forgotten requests from blocking session spots.
The Client Experience
Understanding what your members see helps you manage expectations. Here is the experience from the member perspective when booking approval is enabled:
Booking request submitted â The member taps "Book" and sees a confirmation that their request has been submitted. The booking status shows as Pending.
Waiting for approval â The member can see the pending status in their bookings list. They cannot attend the session until it is approved.
Approval notification â When you approve the request, the member receives a push notification and/or email confirming their booking. The status changes to Confirmed.
Rejection notification â If you reject the request, the member is notified that their booking was not approved. They can try to book a different session.
Timeout notification â If the request times out without a response, the member is notified that the request expired and encouraged to try booking again.
Approval vs. Instant Booking
| Feature | Instant Booking | Approval Required |
|---|---|---|
| Booking confirmed immediately | ||
| Instructor reviews each request | ||
| Member sees "Pending" status | ||
| Automatic timeout for unanswered requests | ||
| Best for open or public sessions | ||
| Best for curated or private sessions | ||
| Notification sent to instructor on booking |
When to Use Booking Approval
Currently, each booking request must be approved or rejected individually. This ensures you review each request carefully. Batch approval may be added in a future update.
If you approve enough requests to fill all spots, any remaining pending requests will need to be rejected manually. The session capacity is checked at the time of approval, not at the time of the request.
Booking approval is currently a workspace-wide setting. You cannot enable or disable it per session. If you need instant booking for some sessions and approval for others, consider using separate workspaces.
If waitlisting is enabled alongside booking approval, waitlisted members are moved to the pending approval queue when a spot opens up. You still need to approve them before the booking is confirmed.