Booking settings and confirmations: control how online booking behaves

Open Booking settings in the sidebar to control how your public booking page behaves for clients. Changes apply immediately to new visitors. For the page's address and how to share or embed it, see Your public booking page.

How new bookings get confirmed

The Booking confirmation section decides what happens the moment a client books online.

With Require manual approval off (the default), new bookings are confirmed automatically as they come in.
Turn it on, and bookings arrive as pending approval instead - a staff member confirms each one from the Appointments calendar. Pending bookings are never called confirmed: clients get a "request received" message and email until approved.

What clients see on the booking page

Under Display & workers, you control how services and specialists are presented:

Hide all prices removes prices from the whole booking flow.
Show service descriptions displays each service's description alongside its name.
Collapse categories by default only applies once categories are turned on in Services and catalog.
Specialist name format picks how staff names appear - full name, first name with last initial, or first name only - with a live preview underneath.
Hide specialists initially starts the picker on "Any specialist" instead of a named list.
Booking step order lets clients pick a specialist before a service instead of the default.

Booking form languages picks which languages the booking form offers; English is always on as the guaranteed fallback.

Cancellation and rescheduling

Under Cancellation policy, two switches decide what clients can do after booking: Clients can cancel their booking and Clients can reschedule their booking. Turn either off and that button disappears from the client's booking page and manage-appointment link; the change then goes through the clinic.

Verifying client contact details

Client verification cuts down on spam bookings and no-shows by confirming a client actually owns the contact they book with. Choose Off, Email verification, or SMS verification.

With verification on, clients enter a 6-digit code sent to their email or phone before the booking goes through. They can request it again after 60 seconds with Resend code, or fix a typo with Change contact details.

SMS verification codes are real SMS, so they work once your clinic has a plan bought through checkout (a trial started at checkout counts too), which switches SMS on, and they are billed to your clinic the same way as any other SMS, unless covered by a free allowance or bonus (see SMS messages for the price). If Tervita can't send SMS for your clinic, the booking page emails the code to the client instead, so bookings still go through - but that client's number stays unconfirmed and won't get SMS reminders.

How far ahead clients can book

The Availability & pricing section has three settings. Here is what each one does on the booking page today:

Booking window (days, 60 by default) decides which specialists appear on the specialist step: only people with at least one free slot within that many days from today are listed. It does not stop a client from paging the calendar further ahead - later dates are bookable wherever the specialist has hours.
Minimum notice (hours) and Time-slot interval are saved with your settings, but the booking page does not apply them yet. Clients can book any free slot that has not started yet. Start times come from the specialist's hours: a half-hour grid from the start of those hours, plus times right next to existing bookings and the last start that ends exactly at the end of the hours. A start that would leave a gap too short for any of your services is hidden.

To keep a buffer before bookings, use the per-service Booking availability panel in Services and catalog: Minimum lead time (days) makes the service bookable only from that many days ahead, and Bookable from opens it from a fixed date. Both are checked when the booking is made. To keep far dates closed, simply leave them without hours in Schedules.

Taking payment at booking

The Payments section is where you connect Stripe or Montonio and decide how much of the price a client pays online while booking. It has its own article: Online prepayment.

Good to know

The quick Manage booking links right after booking (Reschedule, Edit, Cancel booking) only work in that same session. To actually change or cancel later, clients use the link in their confirmation email or SMS - valid for 30 days.
Disabling cancel or reschedule is enforced for the client even if they already have their management link open.
Confirmation emails use your own edited template from Client reminders if you've set one up, otherwise a built-in default is sent.