The waiting list
When a day is full, customers can join a waiting list, and each cancelled or moved slot is offered to the longest-waiting person it suits.
A fully booked day doesn’t have to be a dead end. With the waiting list on, your booking form offers to take a customer’s details whenever the day they pick has no free times. When an appointment is later cancelled or moved, Booked emails the longest-waiting person whose wishes fit, with a link that books them in with one tap. Nobody is booked in without saying yes, and each slot goes to one person at a time.
Switch it on
The waiting list is off until you turn it on.
- Open Settings › Waiting listIt sits under Taking bookings in the settings rail.
- Turn on Offer a waiting list when nothing is freeIt saves the moment you flip it. The pill beside The list changes to On and the rest of the screen appears.
- Check the three numbersEach saves as you leave the field, so there is no need to press Save.
- Decide whether to text as wellText them as well as emailing can only be switched on once Booked SMS is live.
A “join the waiting list” option appears on your booking form only when a day has no free times.
Each number saves as you leave the field.
Then it passes to the next person waiting.
To the same person, then leave them be.
On the list with nothing suitable coming up.
Settings › Waiting list with the list switched on and texts not yet set up.
- 1Waiting list — under Taking bookings in the settings rail. The line underneath reads On or Off.
- 2Offer a waiting list when nothing is free — the master switch. The other cards only appear while it is on.
- 3Hold the slot for — how long the link in an offer keeps working, in minutes.
- 4Offer at most — how many offers one person can receive before Booked stops offering them slots.
- 5Drop people after — how many days after joining an entry lapses.
- 6Text them as well as emailing — greyed out until texts are switched on under Emails & texts. When it is on, only people who gave a mobile number get a text.
| Setting | Default | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Hold the slot for | 60 minutes | 5 to 1,440 minutes (one day) |
| Offer at most | 4 times | 1 to 20 |
| Drop people after | 60 days | 1 to 365 |
| Text them as well as emailing | Off | Needs Booked SMS |
Type a number outside the range and Booked uses the nearest limit instead. The When a slot frees up card on the same screen spells out what your numbers mean. To send offers by text, set up Booked SMS first.
You can also switch the list on from Features, and its Set up button opens a shorter version of these settings. There, Offer each slot to up to … people, one after another changes the same number as Offer at most, which Booked counts per person, not per slot. Settings › Waiting list is the clearer place to change it.
What your customer sees
On the time step of your booking form a customer picks a date. If that day has no free times — full, closed or too soon to book — the option to join the list appears under the usual message, folded away until they ask for it.
Cancellations happen most days. Tell us when suits and we will email you the moment something opens up — first come, first served.
A full day on the booking form, with the waiting-list form opened.
- 1The empty day — the join option only appears under a day with no free times. Folded, it reads “Nothing suitable? We will let you know if something frees up.” with a Join the waiting list button.
- 2Your name, Email and Mobile — a name and a working email are required. Mobile is optional. Offers are only texted if you switch that on, and then as well as the email, not instead of it.
- 3From and Until — the earliest and latest dates they would take. Either can be left blank.
- 4Days that suit — leave all seven off for any day of the week.
- 5Time of day — Mornings means a start before 12:00. Afternoons means 12:00 or later, evenings included.
- 6Add me to the list — adds them and swaps the form for “You are on the list”. No thanks folds it away again.
Joining sends them the Joined the waiting list email, so they know it worked: what they are waiting for, the times that suit them written out (“Tuesdays and Thursdays, afternoons, between Thu 1 Oct and Sat 31 Oct”, or “Any time”), and a reminder that nothing is booked yet. Its text version starts switched off. Your team gets New on the waiting list at the same time, with their contact details and the times that suit them; see Team alerts.
The entry also records the service, branch and member of staff they had already chosen, and how many people are coming. Joining is free and needs no account. When they press Add me to the list, they may also see:
- Already waiting. The same email joining again for the same service updates their entry rather than adding a second one: “We have updated what you are waiting for. If something comes up, you will hear from us.” No email goes to them or your team for an update.
- Blocked. Someone you have blocked from booking sees “We cannot add you to the list at the moment. Please contact us.”
- Too many tries. More than six attempts a minute from one connection gets “Too many requests. Give it a minute.”
The join option is part of the Dropdown date picker, the default under Booking form › Layout › Date picker. Calendar grid, Week and Next free never show it, and nor does a Short form. See the booking form layout.
What sets off an offer
An offer goes out the moment a booked slot comes free in one of these ways:
- You cancel it. Setting a booking’s status to Cancelled in Booked.
- You move it. Changing its time in the booking, or dragging it to a new time in the Diary. The old time is offered.
- The customer cancels it from their customer account, if you let them.
- The customer moves it from their customer account. The old time is offered.
These don’t send an offer: deleting a booking outright, or time freeing up any other way, such as longer opening hours. A slot that starts within about two hours isn’t offered either, and nor is one that is no longer free by the time Booked looks — a booking moved to a time overlapping its old one, say.
To choose who gets it, Booked goes down the list for that service, longest-waiting first, and stops at the first person it fits: the same branch and member of staff if they named one, a date between their From and Until, one of their days, the right part of the day, and a group no bigger than the freed booking. Anyone already holding an offer, or who has had their Offer at most number, is skipped. If nobody fits, nothing is sent.
The offer, and taking it
The offer is the A time has come up template, in the Waiting list group under Messages › Email templates, so you can change its wording or switch it off like any other message. Its subject reads “A Flu vaccination appointment has come up — Meridian Pharmacy”. If Text them as well as emailing is on and they gave a mobile, they also get the text version, “Meridian Pharmacy: A Flu vaccination appointment has come up on Tuesday 6 October 2026 at 14:30. Take it here:” and the link, charged like any other Booked SMS. Each one is logged in Messages › Sent.
Booked only offers a time it can tell someone about. With the A time has come up email switched off, nobody on the list is offered anything unless the offer can go by text instead: Text them as well as emailing on for the list, and the template’s text version switched on. Otherwise the freed time is simply open to whoever books it next.
Hi Grace,
Time availableGood news: a time you were waiting for has come free. It’s yours if you want it.
This offer is for the next 60 minutes. After that it goes to the next person waiting, and you stay on the list for the next one.
Meridian Pharmacy
0161 496 0000
An appointment has come free. It is yours if you want it.
If you would rather not, just close this — you stay on the list for the next one.
The A time has come up email as Booked sends it, and the page its button opens.
- 1Take this appointment — a button in your brand colour. It opens a page on your own website with nothing on it but the offer.
- 2The hold — quotes your Hold the slot for setting.
- 3The slot — the date and time, the service and the branch.
- 4Yes, book me in — books it there and then. The page changes to “Booked” and “We have sent you a confirmation. See you then.”
Pressing Yes, book me in makes the booking and sends your usual Booking approved message, and your team gets a New booking alert that says “Took a time from the waiting list”. Their entry moves to Booked in. Two things about the booking it creates:
- Confirmed, at full price, unpaid. It is saved as Confirmed even if you approve bookings by hand. There is no card step and no form questions. The note on the settings screen says the usual deposit rules apply, but no deposit is taken.
- Not linked to a customer record. It carries the name, email and mobile from the entry. Open the booking and choose them in the Customer field if you want it in their history.
When the slot has gone
The hold is a time limit on the link, not a reservation. While an offer is live the slot stays open on your booking form and in your Diary, so a customer online or one of your team can still book it. Whoever books first gets it.
| What happened | What the person offered sees | Their entry |
|---|---|---|
| Someone booked it before they pressed Yes, book me in | “Somebody booked that one a moment before you. You are still on the list.” | Back to Waiting |
| The hold ran out | The link opens a page headed That one has gone, which says somebody else has taken it — even when nobody has | Back to Waiting, place kept |
| They took it, then open the link again | The same That one has gone page, although their booking stands | Booked in |
When a hold runs out, Booked passes the slot to the next person who fits, as long as it is still free and more than about two hours away. It looks for ended holds every 15 minutes, so the next offer can follow up to a quarter of an hour later. WordPress runs these checks when someone visits your site, so on a very quiet site it can take longer.
See who is waiting
The Who is waiting card at the bottom of Settings › Waiting list is the list itself, longest-waiting first. At a glance, on the same screen, keeps the counts.
offered 1 time
At a glance and Who is waiting, on Settings › Waiting list: three people waiting, oldest first.
- 1At a glance — how many people are waiting, how many hold a live offer, and how many have been booked in from the list.
- 2The status filter — Waiting, Offered a slot, Booked in, Lapsed and Removed, each with its count.
- 3What suits them — their dates, days and part of the day on one line. Anything that comes up means they set no preferences.
- 4Status — where they are now. Once they have had an offer, a line underneath counts them — here “offered 1 time” — against your Offer at most.
- 5Remove — takes them off the list and moves the row to Removed. Lapsed and Removed rows show Put back on instead.
Live offers also show on your Dashboard: Needs you lists “1 waiting-list offer live” with a See button that brings you here, and the Today card counts them too. A customer’s record has no waiting-list section, but the waiting-list emails sent to their address, the join email and any offers, appear in its Messages sent card, and Erase their data deletes their entries.
Removing someone while their offer is live cancels their link, and that slot isn’t passed on to anyone else. Put back on keeps the day they first joined and the offers they have had, so a Lapsed entry lapses again at the next check, and anyone who used up their offers is still never offered one.
Limits worth knowing
- Lapsing counts from the day they joined. An Until date in the past doesn’t remove anyone; they just stop matching until Drop people after lapses them.
- Groups must fit. Someone waiting for three people is only offered a freed booking that was for three or more.
- Very long lists. Each freed slot is checked against the 100 longest-waiting people for that service, and the screen shows up to 200 per status.
- Switching it off pauses it. No one can join, no new offers go out and nobody lapses, but entries stay put. The Who is waiting card is hidden until you switch it back on, and an offer already sent can still be taken until its hold ends.