Add a booking yourself

Take a booking over the phone or at the counter.

Not every appointment starts on your website. Someone rings up about a travel clinic, or walks in for a flu jab. You can create that appointment yourself, and Booked applies the same availability checks the public form uses.

Two ways to start a booking

Go to Booked › Bookings. Two toolbar buttons create an appointment. Both open the same editor and differ only in what is filled in for you.

• 1Walk-in — for someone in front of you. Opens the editor with today's date, the time rounded to the nearest 15 minutes, status Confirmed and the Walk-in toggle on. You still pick the customer and service.
• 2+ Add booking — a blank editor headed New booking, for a phone call.

You can also start from the schedule: Booked › Calendar › Add booking uses whichever date the calendar shows. Better still, hover an empty patch of the Day or Week grid, click the floating + and choose Appointment — that fills in the date, the time and the staff member whose column you hovered. The + appears only when Quick edit is off, never in Month view.

Choose the customer

The Customer section sits at the top of the editor. The picker reads Choose a customer until you pick one, and lists everyone you have as name (email), so you can tell two Priya Sharmas apart.

It only offers customers who already exist; it will not create one. If the person on the phone is new, go to Booked › Customers, use Add customer, then come back. Their name, email and phone are copied onto the appointment when you save, so the booking still reads correctly if that record is later edited or removed.

Fill in the Service section

Almost everything else lives under the heading Service — price, status, payment and the walk-in toggle included. Look there first if a field seems to be missing.

• 1Customer * — one of only two things you must fill in; the other is date and start time. Leave it blank and saving fails with "Please choose a customer."
• 2Service — starts on "— Select —". Choosing one fills in price and length from that service; both stay editable. Leave it blank and the appointment is 30 minutes with no service rules.
• 3Price — in your store currency. Overtype it for a discount or a top-up.
• 4Status — Pending, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled or No-show. New bookings arrive Pending unless Auto-approve new bookings is on.
• 5Payment — Unpaid or Paid (cash / in person).
• 6Walk-in — puts a "Walk-in" label on the calendar block.

Location and Employee are optional, but fill them in: the time picker cannot check availability without one, and an unassigned appointment lands in an "Unassigned" column in Day view.

Set the date and start time

The Appointment section is where availability is enforced. Date opens a Monday-first calendar with closed days greyed; Start time then lists the slots that fit, stepped by your Time slot interval (15 minutes by default).

• 1A greyed day — titled "Closed". The greying follows the chosen employee's and location's schedules, so changing the employee changes which days are open.
• 2A taken slot — struck through, the clash named on hover ("Booked: Oliver Ball — Travel health consultation"). A slot is taken when it overlaps another non-cancelled booking for the same member of staff.
• 3Outside working hours (override) — the amber warning when overrides are allowed. Without them the popover reads "Closed this day." or "No times available."
• 4Length (minutes) — from the service, editable, capped at 24 hours. You never type an end time; it is start time plus length.

A slot is offered only if it fits the employee's working hours and the location's opening hours that day, plus the service's after-appointment buffer. An empty list usually means no employee or location is set — the button then reads "Pick a date & employee first". For a phone booking that must happen on a closed Sunday, turn on Allow staff to override availability in Settings › Booking rules: closed days become selectable with a fallback 08:00–20:00 window, and taken slots become clickable.

Take or record the payment

There is no card reader in the editor. Card payments arrive from the public form and are matched back by Sync payments. What you get here is a way to record money taken in person: set Payment to Paid (cash / in person).

That records the state but no amount, so the Payment section shows Amount paid as an em-dash and Method as "Recorded manually". On the list it wears the same green Paid badge as a card payment — open the booking and read Method to tell them apart. A plain unpaid booking has no Payment section; it appears once money is attached, and the dropdown then becomes a locked pill with a tick.

What the customer is sent

Saving sends exactly one message, and the Status decides which.

Save a phone booking you have already agreed as Confirmed, so the customer is emailed straight away. Leave it Pending only if a colleague must check it. Edit or switch off these templates in Booked › Customisation › Notifications.

After you save

Press Save booking — top right or bottom right, same thing. The sub-line under the title changes from "Bookings" to the booking's own reference, such as GB-00042, and the appointment appears on the calendar in its service colour.

• Notes and Documents unlock only now, and notes are staff-only. Anything sensitive — an ID scan, a health form — belongs under Eligibility & secure documents, because files in Documents get an ordinary, guessable web address.
• Cancel, bottom left, means "discard my edits and go back". It does not cancel the appointment — for that, set Status to Cancelled and save.
• A custom Length survives only here. Dragging the appointment on the calendar, or setting its status from the popup, quietly resets it to the service default.