Taking bookings

Two ways a booking starts

Staff can create a booking on a family's behalf from the admin console — useful for phone enquiries, walk-ins and families who don't want to use an app. Parents can also book themselves, choosing their child, the batch and the dates.

Both routes create the same kind of booking and both respect capacity and age limits. The difference is who's doing the clicking and how payment is collected.

When a session is full

If a batch has no places left on the dates requested, what happens next depends on how the package is configured. If waitlists are enabled, the booking is created with a waitlisted status and the family is told they're in the queue. If waitlists are off, the booking is refused and the family is told the centre is full on that date.

Why a booking might be refused

• The batch is full on one or more of the requested dates, and waitlists aren't enabled.
• The child already has a live booking that overlaps those dates in the same batch — Bookingo won't book the same child twice into the same session.
• The child falls outside the batch's age range.
• The requested dates aren't days the batch actually runs.

Bookings spanning multiple children

A family booking several children onto the same programme creates a booking per child, grouped together so they're invoiced and managed as one. Sibling discounts, where configured, apply across the group.