Do you need to temporarily stop Customers from making new bookings while continuing to manage upcoming bookings? Keep the affected products active, either make selected products Staff Only, or disable the entire Customer-facing reserve page.
Avoid deactivating products or applying product closures solely to hide them from Customers. A deactivated product or a closed date/time slot may not be selectable when staff edits an existing booking.
Avoid deactivating products or applying product closures solely to hide them from Customers. A deactivated product or a closed date/time slot may not be selectable when staff edits an existing booking.
Accessing the features mentioned in this article
Before making these changes, confirm that you have:
- Admin permissions to manage inventory and Booking Page settings, or the applicable restricted Staff permissions.
- Access to Products (Inventory > Products) if using the Staff Only option. Product booking visibility is not available for classic items.
Choosing the right option
If you want to… |
Use… |
|---|---|
Stop Customers from booking selected products only |
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Stop all Customer bookings from the hosted Booking Page and embedded widgets |
Disable the customer-facing reserve page
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Making selected products Staff Only
Use this option when selected products must remain available to Staff but should no longer be bookable by Customers.
- Go to Inventory > Products.
- Select the product you want to update.
- Open the Details tab.
- Under Booking Visibility, select Staff Only.
- Click Save.
- Repeat these steps for each affected product.
- Test your hosted Booking Page and embedded widget to confirm that the products are no longer bookable by Customers.
The products remain active and bookable from the Staff side. Changing product visibility does not automatically change or cancel existing bookings.
Disabling the customer-facing reserve page
Use this account-wide option to pause all Customer bookings without removing the Booking Widget from your website.
- Open the Booking Page settings (Manage > Layout > Booking Page).
- Scroll to Advanced Settings.
- Select Disable customer-facing reserve page.
- Click Save.
- Test the hosted Booking Page and embedded widgets. They should no longer display booking options.
This setting disables both the hosted Customer Booking Page and website-embedded Booking Widgets. Staff can still make manual bookings, and bookings through the Checkfront API remain possible.
Confirming that existing bookings can be edited
After applying your chosen setting:
- Open an existing upcoming booking.
- Select Edit.
- Confirm that Staff can change the required product, date, or timeslot.
- Save the booking only after confirming the revised details and pricing.
If a product or timeslot is unavailable during the edit, confirm that the product is active and does not have a closure that affects the selected date or time.
Resuming Customer bookings
- For a Staff Only product, return to its Booking Visibility setting, select Everyone (also listed as Guests and Staff), then save.
- For an account-wide pause, clear Disable customer-facing reserve page, save, and test the hosted page and widgets.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Will these changes cancel or alter existing bookings?
- No. Editing a product does not automatically adjust existing bookings.
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Can Customers book a staff-only product?
- No. Staff-only products are bookable from the Staff side.
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Should I use the Upsell visibility setting instead?
- No. Upsell products remain bookable by customers as add-ons to parent products at checkout.
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Does disabling the customer-facing reserve page stop API bookings?
- No. Staff and API bookings remain possible.
- No. Staff and API bookings remain possible.