Booking statuses explained
Pending, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled and No-show — what each one means and does.
Every appointment in Booked carries one of five statuses. The status tells your team where the appointment stands, decides whether that time is still blocked out, and for three of the five decides what the customer is emailed. It is not the same as whether they have paid — that is a separate badge, covered at the end.
What each status means
There are five statuses and you cannot add your own. Each one shows as a coloured pill in the Status column on Bookings. In the Diary, blocks are coloured by the state they are in — the key above the grid reads Booked, Paid in full, Video, Flagged, No-show risk, No payment needed and Cancelled — so cancelled blocks turn grey and no-shows turn red. A pending booking has no colour of its own: click it and the popover says Awaiting approval, with a Confirm button.
| Status | What it means | Holds the slot? | Customer is emailed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pending | Booked, but waiting for someone to approve it. This is how new online bookings arrive unless you change the setting below. | Yes | Booking pending |
| Confirmed | Approved and going ahead. Walk-ins are created straight into this status. | Yes | Booking approved |
| Completed | The appointment happened. Housekeeping for you — the customer never sees it. | Yes | Nothing |
| Cancelled | Called off, by you or by the customer. Kept in the list so you keep the history. | No — the time frees up | Booking cancelled |
| No-show | Booked in, never turned up. Keeps the appointment on the record rather than pretending it never existed. | Yes | Nothing |
Cancelled is the only status that gives the time back. Booked's availability ignores cancelled appointments, so the moment you save one as cancelled, that slot is offered again on your booking form. Every other status — including Pending — keeps blocking the time.
An unapproved booking blocks its slot exactly like a confirmed one, so a pile of pending requests quietly removes availability. Booked tells you when there are any: the Dashboard lists “3 bookings waiting for approval” under Needs you, with a Review button to the list; the bell at the top of every screen carries the count; and on Bookings the Need confirming tile narrows the list to them.
Where the status shows on the Bookings list
Open Bookings. The Status column carries the pill, and the Any status dropdown in the toolbar filters the whole list down to one status.
Bookings
| Time | Customer | Service | Staff | Status | Payment | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday 28 September Today | ||||||
| 09:30 45 min BK-00938-1 | Finn Nakamura ×3 07413 314030 | Hepatitis A Vaccination Walk-in | Priya Sharma Meridian Pharmacy — Ma… | CONFIRMED | PAID | £65.00 |
| 10:25 20 min BK-00928-1 | Tom Ahmed 07700 883815 | Yellow Fever Vaccination | Aisha Bello Meridian Pharmacy — Le… | PENDING | UNPAID | £85.00 |
| 11:00 30 min BK-00931-1 | Grace Whitfield 07811 223344 | Blood pressure check | Hannah Green Meridian Pharmacy — Ma… | CANCELLED | NOTHING DUE | £0.00 |
| 13:45 30 min BK-00953-1 | Zain Malik 07555 010203 | Travel Health Consultation | Tom Wright Meridian Pharmacy — Liv… | NO-SHOW | PAID | £25.00 |
The Bookings list on All, with a status pill on every row.
- 1The status filter — Any status narrows the list to one status at a time. It works with the search box and the Upcoming / Past / All switch, so all of them must match.
- 2The status pill — the appointment’s current state. Click the row to open the booking and change it.
- 3The payment pill — a second, separate pill for money: Paid, Deposit, Unpaid, Refunded, Chargeback, or Nothing due when there is no price. There is no filter by payment.
Changing a status
You can set the status in three places. All three save the same way and send the same customer email.
- From the booking itselfOpen the appointment from Bookings and use the Status dropdown in the Price and status card, beside Price, Payment and the Walk-in switch. Press Save booking.
- From the booking’s Quick actionsIn the right-hand column, Confirm booking (on a pending one), Mark completed, Mark no-show and Cancel booking each save straight away, with no confirmation.
- From the DiaryClick the appointment. The popover has Confirm on a pending booking and No-show on the rest, and both save at once. For any other status press Reschedule (or turn on Quick edit and click the block), pick the status in the side panel, and press Save changes.
BK-00953-1 Travel Health Consultation · 13:45–14:15 · Tom Wright · Meridian Pharmacy — Liverpool
Paid in fullChanging a status from the Diary: No-show on the popover (1), or the Status row in the quick-edit panel (2).
- 1No-show — on the popover that opens when you click a block: Open booking, Reschedule, Customer and No-show, plus Confirm on a pending booking. No-show marks it the moment you click, with no confirmation. On a no-show the button becomes Not a no-show, which sets it back to Confirmed — and sends the Booking approved email.
- 2Status — a dropdown in the quick-edit panel, reached with Reschedule, or by clicking a block while Quick edit is on. Pick Pending, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled or No-show and press Save changes; the matching customer email goes out.
- 3Full editor — the same dropdown lives under Price and status in the booking editor, beside Mark completed, Mark no-show and Cancel booking in its Quick actions.
The Cancel button at the bottom of the booking editor discards your edits and goes back — it does not cancel the appointment. And if a booking has a length of its own — typed by hand, or the longer appointment of a group booking — the popover’s Confirm and No-show buttons reset it to the service’s default. The quick-edit panel and the full editor keep it, so use one of those when the length matters.
Only one email goes out per save, chosen by priority: a status change wins over a time change, which wins over everything else. So if you reschedule an appointment and confirm it in the same edit, the customer gets Booking approved and never hears that the time moved. Make those two changes as two separate saves.
Those three messages are ordinary templates, living in Messages › Email templates. The emails are switched on when Booked is installed (their text versions, under Text messages, start off), but if someone has turned one off, that status change stops telling the customer anything.
Whether new bookings arrive Pending or Confirmed
By default a booking taken on your website arrives as Pending and waits for you. If you would rather trust the diary and confirm everything on the spot, turn on auto-approve in Settings › Booking rules.
How far ahead people can book, how fine the slots are, and what happens the moment a booking lands.
Settings › Booking rules, with auto-approve switched on.
- 1Booking rules — under Taking bookings in the settings rail. The switch sits in the Taking a booking card, beside the least notice you take and the time slot interval.
- 2Auto-approve new bookings — off by default. Off, a new online booking lands as Pending and gets the Booking pending email. On, it lands as Confirmed and gets Booking approved instead. A booking with a card step is the exception, below. Press Save. It only decides online bookings: one you add yourself starts on Pending whatever the switch says, and a walk-in on Confirmed.
Two things override that setting. A booking whose health screening came back Flagged for review always arrives Pending, however auto-approve is set, so you get the chance to read the answers first. (An answer that makes someone ineligible is a different matter — that booking is refused on the spot and never reaches your diary at all.) And paying online confirms a booking whatever the setting says: as soon as the card clears the appointment becomes Confirmed, and the customer gets Booking approved followed by their Payment receipt. Nothing is emailed before that. When the form has a card step, the booking holds its slot from the moment it is made, but its emails wait for the money, so a customer paying a deposit gets one confirmation, not a Booking pending and then an approval. Someone who gives up at the card step is never told they are booked.
A card payment taken online is recorded on its booking for you, and a booking still sitting at Pending when the money arrives is moved on without anyone pressing anything.
Cancelling, no-shows and deleting
Cancelling and deleting look similar and behave very differently. Cancelling keeps the appointment, tells the customer, frees the slot — offering it to anyone on your waiting list — and removes the event from a connected Google or Microsoft calendar. Deleting does none of that except remove the row.
There is no trash and no undo, no email is sent, and the appointment stays on a connected Google or Microsoft calendar. If a customer needs telling, set the status to Cancelled and save first — then leave it cancelled. Insights works out its Cancelled tile, and the “did not turn up” figure underneath it, from the bookings you still have, so a deleted one does not count as anything.
Because cancelling frees the slot straight away, someone else can book that time within seconds. If you cancel by mistake, check the diary before you promise the customer their original time back.
Use No-show rather than Cancelled when someone did not arrive. It sends nothing, keeps the appointment where it was, and shows red on the calendar so the gap in your day stays visible. Because Completed and No-show send no message, a connected Google or Microsoft calendar is not updated for either. Cancelled bookings are also the only ones left out of the daily digest email — pending and no-show appointments still appear on it.
Status and payment are separate
Changing a status never moves money, and refunding money never changes the status. A refunded appointment stays Confirmed and carries on occupying its slot until you cancel it yourself. Equally, marking an appointment Completed does not take payment, and cancelling does not issue a refund — refund from the booking's Payment section, then set the status.
One last quirk: the Activity log at the bottom of a booking records every status change, but prints the internal wording rather than the label — "Changed status: pending → no_show". Same thing, written the way Booked stores it.