Tentative bookings in Venue Manager allow you to set fixed hold periods for new bookings, giving guests a specific time to make their payment. If they miss the deadline, the booking is automatically canceled, making room for other sales.
Why use tentative bookings
- Saves time by eliminating the need to manually track unpaid payment requests and invoices when guests change their minds.
- Boosts revenue by reducing the risk of lost sales due to unpaid bookings and unused capacity.
- Improves the guest experience by offering flexible payment options.
What to expect
- Default settings for new bookings in Venue Manager: Set up to either reserve or hold bookings tentatively for a set period, or allow staff to decide for each booking. These don't impact POS or online bookings.
- Flexibility: You can override default settings for each booking you create.
- Alerts: Get alerts for bookings about to be canceled in the activity center (eg 24 HRS before).
- Automatic cancellation: If payment isn't received within the set time, the booking is canceled, and guests are notified by email.
- Tentative status: When a booking is tentatively held, it's labeled as Tentative.
- Guest notifications: Guests are notified of the hold period in payment link requests sent by SMS or email. They also get order confirmation emails once payment is made, and emails informing them of tentative booking cancellations if they don't pay by the deadline.
Key terms
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Hold booking | Temporarily reserve a booking until payment or ticket redemption occurs, with automatic cancellation if payment isn't received. |
| Reserve booking | Confirm a booking indefinitely, regardless of payment status. |
| Tentative booking | A booking temporarily held until payment, item redemption, or hold period expiration. |
| Hold period | The time guests have to make a payment before a tentative booking is canceled. |
| Tentative | Indicates temporarily held bookings. |
| Draft | Indicates bookings in progress. |
| Confirmed | Applied to all reserved bookings. |
| Canceled | Marks canceled bookings, freeing up capacity. |
Configure default settings for new bookings
You can decide whether the default option for creating new bookings in Venue Manager is to automatically reserve or tentatively hold bookings by default. Regardless of your choice, you can easily override it when creating new bookings. There's also an option to have staff choose each time.
- From Venue Manager, go to Settings > Account > Venue settings.
- Select Unlock to make changes.
- Scroll to Default settings for new bookings in Venue Manager.
- Choose the default option when creating new bookings in Venue Manager:
- Reserve bookings by default: Automatically confirms bookings without placing them on hold, regardless of payment status. They remain reserved unless manually canceled. This is the default setting for all bookings.
- Hold bookings tentatively by default: Select this option to set tentative hold periods in hours, days, or weeks. If full payment isn't received within the defined timeframe, bookings are canceled.
To override the default when creating a new booking, simply select the downward arrow next to the default option to access additional choices.
- Reserve bookings by default: Automatically confirms bookings without placing them on hold, regardless of payment status. They remain reserved unless manually canceled. This is the default setting for all bookings.
- Prompt staff every time: Enabling this option offers more flexibility but adds an extra step. After adding items to a booking, a popup appears, asking you to choose between reserving the booking or holding it tentatively for a fixed time. The default action in the popup matches your selection above.
- Select Save.
Activity center notifications before cancelation
The activity center notifies you and your team before tentative bookings are canceled. Default alerts are set to 24 hours before a cancelation.
You can customize these notifications to control when your team receives alerts and select which staff roles (system or custom) get notified.
To adjust these settings, from Venue Manager, go to Settings > Notifications.
Guest payment link SMS and emails for tentative bookings
Guest payment request links sent for tentative bookings by SMS and email notify guests when they must pay by to reserve their booking.
SMS/text message example
Here is an example of the text message a guest receives, notifying them when they need to pay by to reserve their booking.
Email example
Here is an example email that a guest receives, showing the payment deadline for their booking.
It includes an Order section to show the guest exactly what they are paying for, providing context and credibility, and a Security note to reassure guests that their data is secure.
Guest tentative booking cancelation emails
Guests are also notified by email when tentative bookings are canceled if they miss the deadline for payment.
Edit hold periods
If no payment has been made against a booking, including partial payments such as deposits, you can extend the time set for automatic cancelation or reserve the booking.
- From Venue Manager, go to the booking.
- From the options menu (3 dots) in the top right, select Edit hold period.
- Edit the hold period or reserve the booking. Then select Update.
Report on canceled bookings & hold periods
Use the Payment Links report to monitor the booking status of payment links and invoices for tentative bookings.
From Venue Manager, go to Reports > Payment Links report.
- Use the date filter and booking status filter at the top of the page to see any bookings that have been canceled for the time period selected.
- Use the hold period expiry column to see when hold periods for tentative bookings are set to expire if payment isn't received.