By default a visitor who picks a free time is booked straight away. For anything you want to vet first, a consultation you may not be able to take, a room you share with someone else, a booking type can be set to wait for your answer instead.
Switching it on
- Go to HappenBoard → Bookings → Booking types and open the one you want to gate.
- In the Scheduling panel, switch on Requires approval.
- Save the booking type.
It applies from that moment on. Bookings already recorded keep the status they were given, so switching it on does not retroactively unconfirm anything. The rest of the panel is covered in creating a booking type.
What the visitor sees
The booking page behaves exactly as before: the calendar, the free times, the name and email fields. What changes is what happens after Confirm booking.
The booking is recorded as a request rather than a confirmation, and no confirmation email goes out yet. That email is deliberately withheld, because telling someone their appointment is booked before you have agreed to it is the one thing this feature exists to prevent.
The slot is held while you decide
This is the part worth understanding. A pending request occupies its slot: nobody else is offered that time while it sits in your queue. That is on purpose, so a request you approve an hour later is still yours to give and does not collide with someone who booked in the meantime.
The practical consequence is that requests you leave unanswered keep good times off your calendar. Work the queue.
Answering a request
Go to HappenBoard → Bookings. Requests arrive in their own Requests tab, alongside All bookings, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled and No-show. Both answers work on a single row or on a selection.
- Approve request confirms the booking, sends the confirmation email that was withheld, with its calendar invite attached, and schedules the reminders.
- Decline request cancels it and frees the slot. The customer receives the cancellation email they would expect from any other cancellation.
Either answer can only be given once. A request that has already been approved or declined is no longer waiting, and a second attempt is refused with This booking is not waiting for approval rather than re-sending the confirmation and re-arming the reminders for one appointment.
Neither answer asks you for a message. If you are declining and the reason matters, email the person yourself.
Bookings you enter yourself
A booking you record from the admin, for someone who phoned, skips the queue and is confirmed immediately, even on a booking type that requires approval. Asking you to approve your own booking would be pointless, and it would tell the customer on the phone that you will confirm by email when you just confirmed in person.
Everything else about that booking is unchanged: the slot is still re-validated against your availability and existing bookings, so an operator-entered appointment cannot double-book a host.
Approval and online payment do not mix
A booking type that requires approval never asks for payment up front, even with HappenBoard Pro configured to charge online. Taking money for a slot you might then decline is a refund waiting to happen, so the two flows stay separate.
A price on an approval-gated booking type still displays, and you collect it as you normally would. See creating a booking type for how the price field works.
Letting customers cancel
Once approved, a booking behaves like any other. The customer can cancel from the link in their confirmation email, up to the Cancel cutoff (min) set on the booking type. Past that point the link stops working and they have to ask you, which is what the cutoff is for on a service you have to prepare for.