Taking Booking Requests
Some things you can't sell on autopilot. A private group, a charter, a workshop that needs the right guide, gear that has to be checked before it goes out - you want to see who's asking before you commit.
Request to book does exactly that. The customer either picks one of your scheduled times or asks for the date and start time they want. Card details are optional, depending on your payment setup. Nothing is charged or confirmed when the request is sent. It lands in your Requests inbox, and the time or items are held while you decide. Approve it to confirm the booking and follow your payment rules, or decline it to release the hold.
Everything else works the way it always does. A request is just a booking you haven't said yes to yet, so your pricing, extras, waivers, confirmation emails and reports all behave exactly as they do for an instant booking.
When to use it
| Use Instant booking when… | Use Request to book when… |
|---|---|
| Anyone who fits can come | You want to see who's asking first |
| You always have staff for it | You need to check a guide is free |
| The price is the price | A big group might need a conversation |
| It runs whatever the numbers | You'd rather not run it for two people |
You set this per experience and per rental item, so you can sell your daily departures and everyday gear instantly and still take requests for the rest.
Turning it on
For an experience:
- Go to Experiences and open the experience (or click Add Experience for a new one).
- Go to step 3 - Additional Information.
- Open Advanced settings.
- Under How customers book, choose Request to book.
- Choose which times customers can request:
- Times from my schedule lets them choose one of the sessions you add.
- Customer chooses a date and time lets them ask for any start time, so you do not need to add sessions first.
- Save.
For a rental item, it's the same control:
- Go to Rentals → Products and click the edit icon on the item.
- Go to step 3 - Additional Information and open Advanced settings.
- Under How customers book, choose Request to book, then Update Product.
Switching an existing item
You don't need the edit form to change an experience or item you already sell. Open it, and on the Details tab find How customers book in the settings column on the right. Click Book instantly or Request to book. It saves straight away.
For an experience, switching from Book instantly to Request to book uses scheduled dates and times. To let customers choose their own request time, use the edit form above.
A bundle becomes a request as soon as any item in it is set this way.
That's the whole setup. Requests appears in your Bookings menu as soon as one experience or item is set this way, and disappears again if you turn them all back to instant - so a shop that never takes requests never sees the feature.
What the customer sees
On your booking page, a rental item set this way carries a Request to book tag beside its price:
The experience or item page and checkout label it Request to book and show your reply window. The payment summary explains what happens after approval: a saved-card charge, a payment link, or payment collected later.
For a flexible experience, the customer chooses a date and start time on the experience page. The end time comes from the experience's duration.
The start times on offer fall on the hour and half hour, inside your opening hours for that day, so the booking ends by closing time. Days you are closed, closures and anything inside your booking notice show no times. A location with opening hours of its own uses those instead. If you have not set opening hours, the list runs from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Set them under Opening hours.
They pick their time and party, or their dates and items, as normal. The checkout button says Send request. If your setup saves a card, they enter it at the payment step and see that it will only be charged after approval. The amount follows your deposit or full-payment rules. A request without a saved card goes through without this step.
They can add a message with the request - "it's my dad's 70th", "two of us are slow walkers" - which is often the thing that tells you whether to say yes.
They get an email straight away confirming you have their request, and their own page they can open any time to see where it stands.
Something booked by request can't share a cart with something that books instantly. If a customer tries, they're asked to book the two separately.
If you'd rather not take card details up front, switch Take a card when someone asks off in settings. Customers then ask without entering a card. If you accept online payments and an amount is due, approval emails them a payment link. Otherwise, the booking is confirmed and you collect payment as usual. See Settings below.
Answering a request
Requests waiting on you are in Bookings → Requests. The badge on the menu item is how many are still waiting.
Each row shows how long you have left to answer, what was asked for, how many people and what it's worth. The three buttons on the right are approve (green tick), decline (red cross) and open the booking (eye).
The tabs across the top split them up:
- Waiting on you - nobody has answered these yet. This is your queue.
- Waiting on customer - you offered a different time and they haven't replied.
- Approved - you said yes and they became real bookings.
- Declined - you said no.
- Lapsed - nobody answered in time and the time was released.
You can also answer from the booking itself. Open any request and the card sits at the top of the page:
It shows the time and the party (or, for rentals, the items and the pickup and return), anything the customer wrote, and whether a card is on file.
Approve
Approving does everything a normal booking does, in one tap:
- the booking is confirmed and the time is taken properly;
- payment follows your setup: the saved card is charged, a payment link is emailed if an amount is due online, or you collect payment later;
- the customer gets their confirmation email;
- waiver requests go out - deliberately not before now, because nobody should be asked to sign for something that might not happen.
Your deposit or full-payment rules determine the amount collected on approval. If nothing is due at this point, approval takes no payment. If a saved-card charge cannot complete, the booking still goes through as confirmed and unpaid, and the customer is emailed a payment link instead. You get an email telling you the automatic charge didn't work, so you're never left wondering whether you were paid.
If it needs a guide, pick one in Assign a guide before you approve, or leave it on Any free guide and EquipDash picks one who is free and qualified at that time. When the customer chose their own start time, nobody is put on it until you approve, so the request always reaches you. If nobody can run it, approving stops and says so - free a guide up or offer a different time.
Decline
Declining charges nothing and frees the time immediately. You can add a short message, and tick a few of your open times to suggest in the email - it commits you to nothing, it just gives them somewhere to go.
Offer a different time
Suggest another time is the middle path: you can't do what they asked, but you can do Thursday.
For an experience that uses your schedule, search your open times and pick one. For a flexible experience, choose the new date and start time directly, from the same times your customers see. Add a note if you like, then send it. The customer gets an email with one button to accept. If a card was saved, it stays uncharged until they accept. Saying yes confirms the booking and follows the same payment rules as approval.
While you're waiting, the request moves to Waiting on customer so it stops nagging you about something you've already answered.
Offer different dates (rentals)
For a rental request the button is Suggest other dates. Pick a new pickup and return, add a note if you like, and send it. We check the items are free on those dates and work out the price for them, so the customer sees the right total before they say yes.
If nobody answers in time
Every request is on a clock, and the clock is the whole point - a time held forever is a time you can't sell.
- If you don't answer before the deadline, the request closes itself, the time goes back on sale, and the customer gets an apology. Nothing is charged.
- If you offered a different time and the customer doesn't take it, the same thing happens - the hold runs out and the time is released. The email tells them the time was held as long as it could be, rather than blaming you for being slow.
You're nudged by email half way through the window, so a request rarely lapses without you having seen it twice.
The deadline also never outlives the departure itself. If someone asks for a time that starts in six hours and you normally take 24 hours to answer, you get the six hours (minus your minimum booking notice), not the 24 - otherwise the request would expire after the activity had already run.
Settings
The request settings have their own page: Settings → Booking requests, at the bottom of Selling & operations. One set of choices covers your rentals and your experiences, so you set them once.
- Reply within - how long you have to answer. Customers are told this number, and it's also how long the time is held for them. Four hours through to three days.
- Hold an offer for - when you offer a different time or different dates, how long they're held while you wait for their answer. This is a separate clock on purpose: a shop that answers within four hours might still want to give the customer a whole day to reply.
- Take a card when someone asks - on by default. The card is saved but not charged, so nothing shows on their statement until you say yes, and a decline never needs a refund. Switch it off and approval emails a payment link if you accept online payments and an amount is due. If you don't take card payments online at all, requests still come in, with no card, and approving books them without a payment link, so you collect payment the way you normally do.
Who gets told lists the team members who get the email when a request comes in, which is everyone allowed to answer one (see Who can approve).
The emails
Six emails cover the whole lifecycle, and every one of them is yours to reword under Settings → Email templates → Booking requests:
| Goes to | When | |
|---|---|---|
| New Request | your team | Someone asks |
| Request Received | the customer | Straight away, so they know it arrived |
| Request Approved | the customer | You said yes |
| Another Time Offered | the customer | You suggested a different time |
| Request Declined | the customer | You said no |
| Request Not Answered | the customer | The time ran out |
Each one has its own subject, opening and closing lines, and merge tags like {experience_name}, {request_date} and {request_answer_by}. Leave them alone and they send perfectly good wording out of the box.
On your phone
Requests are in the EquipDash mobile app too, so you can answer one from the dock instead of going back to the desk.
- When something is waiting, a link appears on your Dashboard. When nothing is, it stays out of your way.
- The Requests screen has the same three tabs and approve/decline on each card.
- A flexible request also has Offer another time, with date and start-time fields.
- Opening a booking that is a request shows the same controls at the top.
Declining on the phone asks for a message the same way the portal does, so the customer hears it in your words.
Who can approve
Answering a request is its own permission, separate from seeing them.
- Bookings → View lets a team member open the Requests inbox and see what's waiting.
- Bookings → Approve or decline booking requests is what actually lets them answer.
That split means front-desk staff can see the queue building up without being able to commit the business to running something. Admins and Managers have both by default. Change it per person under Settings → Team.
Common questions
Does a request hold the time, or can someone else book it? It holds it. From the moment the request arrives until you answer, that time is not sold to anyone else. That's the point - otherwise you could approve four requests against three slots.
Is the customer charged anything while they wait? No. If you collect card details, the card is saved without a charge or payment hold. Requests without a saved card work too. Approval follows your payment rules, and a decline never needs a refund.
Can I take requests for rentals too? Yes. Open the item and set How customers book to Request to book on its Details tab. See Switching an existing item.
What if I want to see the request in my calendar? Requests appear as an unconfirmed booking, so you can see the time is spoken for without mistaking it for a sale.
Can I try a request before I go live? Yes. Switch to test mode under Settings → Payments, then send a request from your booking page with a Stripe test card. It shows in Requests with a TEST tag, so you can approve or decline it. Approving charges only the test card. Test requests are left out of the count beside Requests in the menu and out of your reports.
Can Dash AI handle these? Yes. You can ask Dash to list what's waiting, read one out, approve it, decline it, or offer another time or other dates. Dash can also switch an experience or item to request to book, and change your request settings. The same rules and the same permission apply. See Dash AI.
Related
- Creating an experience
- Adding a rental item
- Experience schedules
- Quotes - for when the price isn't agreed, rather than the yes
- Email templates