Find and manage bookings

Search, filter and open any appointment you have ever taken.

Every appointment you have ever taken — booked online, added over the phone, or rung in at the counter — sits on one screen. Here is how to find the one you want and change it.

The Bookings list and its toolbar

Clicking anywhere on a row opens that appointment. The one exception is the actions column on the right, which holds the open arrow and the delete bin.

• 1Search — name, service or staff, filtered as you type.
• 2Upcoming, Past, All — the list opens on Upcoming, which starts with today. Past is everything before today, newest first; All is both.
• 3Any status — narrow to one status at a time: Pending, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled or No-show.
• 4Sort — Soonest first, Latest first, Price: high to low, Price: low to high, Customer A–Z. The column headings are not clickable, so this dropdown is the sort control. Above the toolbar, four tiles count today, the next seven days, what needs confirming and what is still to pay. Need confirming is the one you can tap: it narrows the list to pending bookings.
• 5Walk-in — a new booking set to today, the current time and Confirmed, with the Walk-in mark on it. With Take payment switched on, and for anyone allowed to take payment, it opens the walk-in window and their bill instead; see Walk-in and Sync payments below.
• 6Add booking — an empty New booking. Its times are checked against the diary, as the online form’s are, unless Let staff override availability is on.

Search, filter and sort

Search matches the customer name, the date, the start time, the status word, the service, the employee and the location. Because dates are stored as 2026-08-27, typing "2026-08" pulls up a whole month.

What it misses matters too. It ignores the booking reference, the customer's email or phone number, the price and any note — pasting GB-00042 returns nothing. To reach a booking that was paid online by its reference, open Payments under System, search for it there and click it in the Appointment column.

Search, the Upcoming / Past / All switch and the status dropdown combine, and all must match. There is no filter for money: you cannot list unpaid bookings, only read the payment pill on each row.

Reading a row

Sorted by date, rows sit under a heading for their day — Monday 28 September, with Today or Tomorrow marked and a count of that day’s bookings. Sort by price or by name and the first column is headed When instead, with the date printed in each row as 2026-09-28. Times are always 24-hour: the Time format setting in Settings › Region & currency only affects the customer-facing booking form and the front-end account page. The admin list, the Diary and the booking editor stay on 24-hour time.

• 1Time — the start time, the length, and the reference used on payments and in emails. Rows are grouped under their day, with Today marked.
• 2Customer — the name, with ×3 for a group, and the phone number beneath (the email when there is no phone). Under the Service sit its tags: Walk-in for one taken at the counter, Visit 2 of 3 on a course, Video for a video consultation, and a green Here once they have been checked in at the desk. Staff carries the branch underneath.
• 3Status and payment — the status pill, then a second pill for money: Paid, Deposit, Unpaid, Refunded, Chargeback, or Nothing due when there is no price. Click anywhere on the row to open the booking.

Cash you recorded by hand shows exactly the same Paid badge as a card payment. To tell them apart, open the booking and read Method — "Booked Payments — card" or "Recorded manually".

Opening a booking: what the editor shows

Click a row and the editor replaces the list. It is one page of cards, none of them folded away: Customer (People for a group), Appointment, Price and status, and Payment once money is involved. Down the right-hand side sit Quick actions, Notes, Documents, Questions & secure documents, Messages sent and the Activity log. Saving keeps the booking open: “Saved. The booking stays open here.”

• 1Title and reference — the reference, the customer, and a line of facts: date, time, length, status, whether it is paid, whether it was a walk-in, and how many people. View customer jumps to their record.
• 2People — who booked it, with a shortcut to their account, and for a group everyone who is coming.
• 3Appointment — service, branch and who, then the date, the length and the day’s times. You never type an end time; it comes from the start plus the length.
• 4Price and status — the price, the status dropdown, the payment state and the Walk-in switch. If you are hunting for the status dropdown, this is it. A Payment card appears beneath once money is taken, with Refund payment for a card payment.
• 5Quick actions — one click each, saved straight away: Confirm booking on a pending one, mark completed or no-show, Check in when they arrive, cancel, call the customer, open their account, copy the reference, refund, or block them from booking. Email customer is the exception: it opens a window to write to them, below. A status button also saves anything else you have changed on the page. Beneath it sit Notes, Documents, Questions & secure documents, Messages sent and the Activity log.

Each save sends one message at most, picking the most important change: a status change wins, then a new date or time ("Booking rescheduled"), then a change of service, employee, location or price ("Booking changed"). Editing only the length, a note or a document sends nothing.

No Payment section means nothing has been charged — it appears only once money is taken or recorded. When it is there the figures are read-only: to change them you refund. Refund payment asks first — “Refund £65.00 to Finn Nakamura?” — and always returns the full amount. It is only there for owners and for colleagues with the Refunds permission, as well as Bookings at Edit; anyone else is refused with “Giving money back needs the Refunds permission. Ask the account owner.” For part of it use the payment’s Refund on the Payments screen, and the booking catches up by itself — though a partial refund never flips a booking to Refunded. Every refund emails the customer the Booking refunded message with the amount, but no refund changes the status, so cancel the appointment as well if it is off.

Taking payment from a booking

With Take payment switched on in System › Features, a booking’s Quick actions gain a green button for the money still owed on it, such as Take payment · £40.00. It is there for owners and for colleagues whose Take payment access is at Edit, on any saved booking that is not cancelled. A booking that owes nothing still has it, reading just Take payment, so you can open the bill to add to it.

The amount comes from the bill rather than the Price field alone: another service, an item or a discount added to the bill all count, and so does everything already paid, online or at the desk. Pressing the button opens that bill over the editor, headed Take payment with the customer’s name.

• 1Take payment · £40.00 — in green, with what the bill says is still owed. When nothing is owed it reads just Take payment.
• 2The bill — the appointment’s own price, then anything you add with Service, Custom item or Discount, and on the right how they are paying: Card on file when they have one saved, Cash or Card machine. Close it and the booking refreshes, still open in the editor.

From the bill you take the money by card on file, cash or your card machine, all at once or in parts, and a customer with an email address gets a receipt. All of it is in Take payment.

Checking a customer in

With Check-in switched on in System › Features, Quick actions also gain a green Check in, under Mark completed, for anyone whose Bookings or Diary access is at Edit. Press it when they arrive: "Checked in. Their diary shows they are here." The button becomes Here since 10:32 · undo, the row on the Bookings list gets a green Here tag, and every open Diary marks the appointment within half a minute. The status does not change, the customer is sent nothing, and the Activity log records who pressed it. A no-show who turns up goes back to Confirmed; a cancelled booking cannot be checked in. See Check people in when they arrive.

Emailing the customer

Email customer, under Quick actions, opens a window addressed to the email address on the booking — the button only appears when the booking has one. Nothing is sent until you press Send email.

• Start from. A blank email, or one of your own templates from Messages › Email templates › Your own templates. Picking one fills in the subject and the email. If you have already typed something, Booked asks first — “Start again from this? What you have written so far will be replaced.” — and Cancel keeps your words.
• Subject and Email. The same editor as your templates, with booking details shown as tags; they are filled in from this booking when it goes. What you change here is for this email only, and the template stays as it is. Send email stays greyed out until the subject has something in it.
• Preview. The email exactly as the customer will see it, filled in with this booking’s details and dressed in your email design. Back to editing returns you to the words.
• Send email. It goes to the customer, and is recorded three times: in the booking’s Messages sent as Email from you, under Messages › Sent in the Written by you kind, and in the Activity log as “Staff emailed the customer” with its subject. If your mail server refuses it, the window says so and nothing is added to the Activity log; the attempt is listed as Failed, with the reason.
• Use my own email app instead. At the foot of the window, this opens a new message to them in your own mail app. Booked does not see or record what you send that way.

Booked adds nothing to an email you write this way — no video link or payment summary unless you put it in — and there is no text version. To save wording you send often, such as “your results are ready”, see your own templates. The whole window is walked through in emailing a customer from a booking.

Walk-in and Sync payments

Walk-in is for the person already in front of you: today's date, the current time rounded to the nearest quarter hour, status Confirmed, toggle on. The rounding is always 15 minutes whatever your slot interval is, and it rounds forward as well as back — 14:38 becomes 14:45.

1. Press Walk-inThe editor opens pre-filled. Nothing is saved yet.
2. Choose the customerThe picker searches by name and email. The one field you cannot leave empty.
3. Pick the serviceThat fills in the price and length, both still editable. With no service, the appointment is 30 minutes.
4. Check the time, then Save bookingA date and start time are required. Notes and documents appear once the booking exists.

Card payments taken online are matched to their bookings for you, quietly, whenever you open this screen: the Payment card shows the state, the amount and the method. The round-arrow button beside Walk-in is Sync payments, which runs the same matching on demand — safe to press as often as you like. It sets the state and amount, moves a paid but still-pending booking to Confirmed, and flags disputes. When it finds a payment the booking had not heard about, because the customer’s browser never reported it, it also sends what was waiting for that payment: the confirmation, the receipt and your New booking alert, once only, and only while the appointment is still to come.

What the list does not do

• No date filter. Every booking you have ever taken loads when the screen opens and is filtered in your browser — instant search, but a long history can be slow to open. The table shows 60 at a time; Show 60 more at the foot adds the next batch.
• No bulk changes. Bookings are approved, cancelled and deleted one at a time.
• Filters do not survive a refresh. Reloading brings you back to Bookings but forgets your search, filters, sort, and which booking was open.
• Back does not step back. Booked is one WordPress page: use the editor's back arrow, or the sidebar.