Instant booking or booking requests: which should your business use?

Use instant booking for routine services with a fixed length and price, where any customer who picks a free time is someone you'd see. Use booking requests, where you approve each booking first, for jobs you need to check before saying yes: first consultations, large or unusual jobs, and customers who have missed appointments before. A good default is instant booking, with requests only for the few services that need a check.

What's the difference?

With instant booking, a customer picks a free time and the appointment is confirmed straight away. They get a confirmation, the time disappears from your booking page and it's in your calendar.

With a booking request, the customer picks a time and asks for it. You look at it and approve or decline. Until you do, the customer is waiting for an answer.

What do you gain from instant booking?

Customers can book at 23:00 on a Sunday and know where they stand. Nobody has to wait for you to reply, and you don't have to reply to anyone. For services where every booking looks much the same, such as a haircut, a standard wash or a lesson, there's little to check, so a request only adds a step.

The risk is a booking you would have turned down, such as the wrong service for the job or a customer outside your area. Good service descriptions and clear booking rules prevent many of these before they happen.

What do you gain from booking requests?

You decide who gets the time. That helps when a booking needs preparation, when the job could be much bigger than it looks, or when you want to talk to a new customer first.

The cost is speed. A customer waiting for an answer may book someone else in the meantime, so requests only work if you answer quickly. Decide on a rule you can keep, for example "within a few hours during working days", and say it on your booking page.

When should a booking need your approval?

Requests make sense for:

• First consultations or quotes, where you want to know what the customer needs before you commit time.
• Large or unusual jobs, such as a full correction on a car in poor condition or a long colour appointment.
• Services that need preparation, like ordering parts or products for one customer.
• Customers with a history of no-shows, who can still book but have to wait for a yes.

For everything else, instant booking usually works better because nobody waits.

How do you get the benefits of both?

You don't have to choose for the whole business. Set requests on the few services that need them and leave the rest instant. A few booking rules also catch a lot of what you'd otherwise check by hand:

• Minimum notice, so nobody books you for 20 minutes from now.
• How far ahead people can book, so your calendar doesn't fill months out before you know your plans.
• Online cancellation and rescheduling cutoffs, so late changes come to you directly.
• Clear service descriptions, so customers pick the right thing.

How Okayset handles booking approval

In Okayset every booking is instant unless you choose otherwise. To check bookings for a service first, edit it under Services and tick Approve each booking. Every online booking for that service then becomes a request.

Under Settings › Booking rules › No-show protection you can also set a limit, for example two or more no-shows. A customer who has reached it can still pick a time, but their booking becomes a request.

While a request waits:

• the time is reserved for that customer, so nobody else can take it;
• the customer gets an email saying you'll confirm personally, and no reminder is sent until you approve;
• you get an email and see the request under Requests, with a count in the menu, and on the day itself it's marked in your morning agenda.

Approve sends the customer the normal confirmation, and their reminder follows as usual. Decline frees the time and sends a kind email with your note, if you add one, and a link to pick another time. Both settings are on every plan; the full details are in fewer no-shows: confirmations, requests and the morning agenda.

Minimum notice, how far ahead people can book and the cancellation cutoffs are under Settings › Booking rules, explained in booking rules and cancellation policy. Whichever way a booking comes in, Okayset's server checks your hours, buffers and existing appointments before saving it, so two customers can't get the same time. Everything else Okayset does is on the features page.