The Booking Lifecycle
Every booking in BookingFlow follows the same lifecycle: created, possibly held, confirmed, checked in, checked out — or cancelled along the way. This page explains the states and where each kind of booking comes from.
Statuses
You'll see these status chips on the Bookings page and throughout the app:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Hold | A guest started checkout in your booking portal but hasn't paid yet. Holds hold the inventory for a short time; stale holds are hidden automatically. |
| Confirmed | The booking is real — manual bookings and completed online payments are confirmed immediately. |
| Cancelled | The booking was cancelled. Cancelled bookings free their allocation back up. |
| Checked in | Shown when a confirmed guest has arrived and you've checked them in. It's an overlay on the underlying status, not a separate state. |
| Provisional | Bookings created by the voice assistant start as provisional — they arrive with dates and party size, and you complete the details in the app. |
Where bookings come from (sources)
Every booking records its source, shown as a chip:
- Website — booked through your own booking portal
- Pitchup — synced automatically once you connect Pitchup
- Airbnb — created from Airbnb confirmation emails once you connect Airbnb
- Manual — added by you in the app
- Voice — created by talking to the voice assistant
How inventory is protected
Allocation — how many units of each accommodation type you can sell each night — is the backbone of the lifecycle:
- A booking decrements the allocation for every night it covers.
- When the last unit for a night is taken, that night/type becomes unavailable — the portal won't sell it and the Calendar shows it as full.
- Cancelling a booking frees the allocation for every night it held.
Early checkout also frees the nights the guest no longer needs and recalculates the cost — the two always stay in sync.
What happens when a booking is confirmed
The moment a portal booking flips to confirmed:
- The guest is emailed "Reservation confirmed for {your park}" with the accommodation, dates, check-in/check-out times and total cost
- Every user of your BookingFlow account is emailed a reservation notification
- A New Booking notification appears in the app
Check-in and check-out
Check-in and check-out are quick actions available from the Dashboard, the bookings list, the Calendar dialogs and the Pitch Map:
- Check In marks the guest as arrived. If they have no pitch yet, BookingFlow sends you to the pitch map to assign one first — see Check-in and check-out.
- Check Out marks the departure done and clears their pitch.
- Early Checkout — when a guest leaves before their scheduled departure, BookingFlow shortens the stay, recalculates the cost, frees the unused nights' allocation and unassigns the pitch.
See Check-in and check-out for the step-by-step.