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. On the Calendar, only two of them change how an appointment looks: cancelled blocks turn grey and no-shows turn red, while everything else keeps its service colour.
| 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. Your Dashboard tells you when there are any — "3 bookings are waiting for approval." with a Review button straight to the list, and an Awaiting approval tile below it.
Where the status shows on the Bookings list
Open Booked › Bookings. The Status column carries the pill, and the chips along the top filter the whole list down to one status.
Every appointment — click one to view or edit it.
| When | Customer | Service | Employee | Status | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-02 09:15 | Oliver Ball | Travel vaccination | Priya Sharma | Pending | £45.00 |
| 2026-08-28 11:00 | Emily Carter | Flu vaccination | Priya Sharma | Confirmed Paid | £18.00 |
| 2026-08-26 14:30 | Jane Smith | Yellow fever vaccination | Priya Sharma | Confirmed Deposit paid | £85.00 |
| 2026-08-25 16:00 | Daniel Okafor | Blood pressure check | — | Cancelled | £15.00 |
| 2026-08-24 10:45 | Sadia Rahman | Ear microsuction | Priya Sharma | No-show | £55.00 |
| 2026-08-24 09:30 | Michael Grant | Flu vaccination | Priya Sharma | Completed Paid | £18.00 |
The Bookings list, filtered to All, with a status pill on every row.
- 1Filter chips — All, Pending, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled, No-show. They are single-select: clicking one replaces the filter rather than adding to it. The chip and the search box work together, so both have to match.
- 2The status pill — the appointment's current state. Click the row to open the booking and change it.
- 3The payment badge — a second, separate badge for money: Paid, Deposit paid, Refunded or Chargeback. An unpaid booking shows nothing here, and there is no chip to 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, find the section headed Service, and use the Status dropdown. It sits with Price, Payment and the Walk-in toggle, which is not where most people look for it. Press Save booking.
- From the calendar popupOn Calendar, click an appointment and pick one of the five chips under Set status. This saves the moment you click — there is no confirmation step.
- From the quick-edit panelTurn on Quick edit on the calendar, click an appointment, change Status and press Save changes.
The appointment popup on the Calendar, with the five status chips.
- 1Current status — shown beside the customer's name so you can read it at a glance.
- 2Set status — clicking a chip saves immediately and fires the matching customer email. There is no "are you sure", so treat Cancelled here with care.
- 3Delete — a different thing entirely. It removes the appointment permanently and tells the customer nothing. See below.
The Cancel button at the bottom of the booking editor discards your edits and goes back — it does not cancel the appointment. And if you have given a booking a custom Length (minutes), changing its status from the calendar popup or the quick-edit panel resets that length to the service's default. Set the status from the full booking editor when the length matters, and re-check it afterwards.
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 Customisation › Notifications. They are switched on when Booked is installed, 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.
Configure how Booked works.
Settings › Booking rules, with auto-approve switched on.
- 1The Bookings tab — the settings rail runs down the left-hand side of the panel. Booking rules are the first card.
- 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. Press Save settings.
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 Booking approved email goes out. That is why a customer paying a deposit usually receives two emails — one when they book, one when the payment lands.
Sync payments, on the Bookings toolbar, does the same tidying-up for any card payment that never got recorded against its booking: a booking still sitting at Pending is moved to Confirmed. That one is silent — no email is sent, so the customer may never have been told their appointment is confirmed.
Cancelling, no-shows and deleting
Cancelling and deleting look similar and behave very differently. Cancelling keeps the appointment, tells the customer, frees the slot 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. Analytics works out its Cancellation rate tile, and the no-show 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.