How do I postpone a booking?

Admin permissions or restricted permissions to Modify Bookings.
The Statuses feature is available to both those using items (Inventory > Items), a key feature of our classic version of Checkfront, and those using products (Inventory > Products), a key feature of our newest version of Checkfront.

New to Checkfront - Products ✨

Products (Inventory > Products) is the successor feature to (Inventory > Items) and is available in our newest version of Checkfront.

Not yet on our newest version and interested in upgrading? Please contact our Technical Support team for more information.

Discover more product-related help articles here: Products (New).

Overview

Do you need to postpone a booking to a later date or indefinitely? The best way to do this is to create a custom status that does not lock inventory and then associate the postponed bookings with that status. This frees up the associated inventory but retains the booking and existing payments for rescheduling at a later date.

At a high level, these are the four steps involved. Detailed steps are provided below.

Create New Status
Change Status of Booking
Report on Postponed Bookings
Reschedule Bookings

Create New Status

Statuses

First, you will need to create a new Status.

Go to Manage and then Layout within the top menu.
Find the quick +Add button at the bottom-left of your list of Statuses. Clicking +Add will open the new Status modal.
Give the Status a Name that conveys its purpose, such as POSTPONED.
The Status ID field will automatically populate with an abbreviated version of the Name, for example, POSTP. You can edit the Status ID or leave the suggested value in place.
Finally, deselect the Lock checkbox next to the new Status. This will free up any inventory associated with bookings if they are assigned this Status.

Feel free to change the colour of the Status, if so desired!

Learn more about configuring Statuses here:

Introduction to booking statuses

Change Status of Booking

Go to the Reports menu at the top of the page and select Booking Index.
Find the booking you would like to postpone and click on the Booking ID to edit.
From the Booking Invoice, select the Status drop-down menu. The current Status might be Paid or Deposit.
From the Status menu, select your new Status, for example: POSTPONED. This will free up the inventory associated with the booking immediately.

Learn more about Booking Details and the Booking Invoice here:

Booking Details: Introduction

Report on Postponed Bookings

Booking Index Postponed When the time comes to reschedule the booking, you can find the bookings via the Booking Index.

Go to Reports > Booking Index.
Select your custom Status, for example, POSTPONED, within the Status drop-down menu.
All bookings listed will be those with your custom Status. You can further filter or sort the records to find the bookings you would like to reschedule.

Learn more about Booking Details the Booking Index here:

Booking Index: Introduction

Reschedule Bookings

Change Invoice

From the Booking Index (Reports > Booking Index), click on the Booking ID for the booking you want to change.
From the Booking Invoice, click Edit at the top of the page.
Next, click the Change button for the product/item you need to reschedule.
From the Change Item modal, move the booking to new dates by either changing the Item or the Date.
Return to the Invoice tab and update the Status of the Invoice from POSTPONED to the appropriate Status, for example, DEPOSIT or PAID. This will depend on whether any amounts have changed and are still outstanding or numbers have remained unchanged.
Finally, collect payment or process a refund for any amounts that might be owing!