How do I manage and report on abandoned or incomplete bookings (pre-bookings)?

Learn how to manage, report on, and be notified of abandoned or incomplete Customer bookings, including understanding incomplete bookings from the Customer's perspective.

Accessing the features mentioned in this article

What more do I need to use this feature?

• Admin or restricted permissions to View all Reports, Export Data, and Manage Notifications.
  
  

Which Checkfront version supports this feature - classic items, classic products, or both?

• This feature is available in both our classic version using classic items (Inventory > Items) and our classic version using classic products (Inventory > Products).  → Learn more about products

After a Customer submits the booking form, they are directed to the payment page. The system then creates the booking with a temporary Pre-booking status and holds the booking inventory until payment is complete. 

A Pre-booking is a temporary, internal system status that cannot be applied manually.

Inventory within a Pre-Booking is held for 15 minutes. The inventory is released if the booking is not completed before the hold time expires. The Customer has the option to extend the hold time when prompted.

Should payment not be completed, the system considers the booking abandoned or incomplete and stays in the Pre-booking status.

There is no option to adjust the default Pre-Booking hold time.

Pre-bookings are held in the system for 30 days.  Account Activity report (Reports > Account Activity) entries showing the Pre-booking event are permanent.

This gives you time to reconcile your reports and our Support team time to troubleshoot missing payments.

Within these 30 days, Staff can access Pre-bookings to change their status or add payment as needed. 

If your Ecommerce settings do not require payment to complete a booking, the booking status is automatically set to the default Customer Status in the Configuration area (Manage > Setup > Configuration). Bookings created through the Checkfront API bypass the Pre-booking status and are set to the default Staff Status selected in the Configuration area (Manage > Setup > Configuration).

While Customers do not see the internal Pre-booking, they can cancel a booking after arriving on the payment page (and before completing payment) by clicking the Back button.

They are returned to the booking page, where they can select Clear and then Confirm? to confirm the selection.

A Pre-booking cleared by a Customer converts the booking's status from Pre-booking to Void in the system.

The following reporting tools allow you to filter results by the Pre-booking status:

• Booking Calendar
• Booking Index
• Daily List
• Daily Manifest

By default, reports exclude Pre-bookings, but you can include them by selecting the option from the Status filter.

You can also view and export the Account Activity report to view Pre-booking entries.

Learn more about reporting here: Getting Started with Reporting: FAQ

You can schedule and receive notifications for bookings that have been abandoned without payment, e.g. Schedule a notification to be sent 24 hours after pre-booking. Follow these steps.

1. Create or edit an existing notification in the Notifications area (Manage > Notifications).
2. Select Pre-booking for the Booking Status.
3. Choose the Scheduled option under the Deliver setting and set up the desired timeframe, e.g. 1 day after booking creation date.
4. Finish up the notification configuration by choosing the subject, recipients, inventory, and email content that works best for you.
5. After you have finished setting up the notification, click Save.

Learn more about how to set up email notifications here: Introduction to email notifications