Incomplete Bookings

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Introduction

The Incomplete Bookings feature captures online bookings that clients start but don’t complete - giving your team a chance to follow up and convert those interrupted bookings into confirmed appointments. When a client who is signed in with their verified phone number adds a service on your booking page and leaves before booking, their selection is saved as a draft booking, with the step they stopped at. You’ll see it in the Waitlist panel under the Incomplete tab, plus an alert card on the dashboard so nothing slips through the cracks. Each client’s record also lists the bookings they started online, and which ones they finished.

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Key features

• Authenticated Capture Only: Incomplete bookings are only captured from clients who have verified their phone number. Anonymous visitors are never tracked - respecting privacy and avoiding unreachable leads.
• 10-Minute Review Session: When a client reaches the Review step, a 10-minute countdown starts to nudge them to finish. This is a client-side urgency timer - the slot is not reserved for them, and another client could book it in the meantime (the first confirm to arrive wins). If the 10 minutes elapse without completion, the booking is treated as incomplete.
• Dashboard KPI Card: An amber alert card surfaces on your dashboard whenever there are incomplete bookings awaiting follow-up. Hidden when the count is zero or you don’t have permission.
• Waitlist Side Panel: The scheduler’s Waitlist panel groups the Waitlist and Incomplete tabs together - same operational category, one place to manage pending intent.
• One Draft per Client: A client only ever has one active draft at a time. If they return and start a new booking, the existing draft is updated - never duplicated.
• Automatic 72-Hour Cleanup: Drafts leave the Incomplete tab automatically 72 hours after the client’s last activity - no manual housekeeping needed. The client’s record keeps them for 180 days after they end.
• Automatic Reminder (Opt-In): Enable the Incomplete booking reminder in Automated messages to send an SMS and/or email automatically once the draft is treated as abandoned, with a one-tap resume link. It goes only to clients who reached the Review step: someone who left while choosing services or a time is listed for you to follow up by hand, as they may only have been checking prices.
• Online Booking Attempts on the Client Record: A client’s Overview tab lists the latest bookings they started online, and whether each one was booked.
• Manual Follow-Up Actions: From the Waitlist, you can call or email the client directly, book the appointment on their behalf, re-send the reminder, or dismiss the entry.
• Reminder-Once Rule: The automatic reminder fires once per draft. If the client comes back, reaches the Review step again and leaves, they’ll get a fresh reminder. They won’t be spammed while a reminder is already in flight.

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How it works

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What triggers a capture?

A draft booking is recorded when all of the following are true:

1. The client is signed in to the online booking page (verified phone via OTP).
2. They’ve added at least one service.
3. They haven’t completed the booking yet.

The draft is saved again at each later step, so it always shows how far they got. A new client signs in on the way to the Review & Book step, so their draft starts there. Anonymous visitors are never captured. Someone who signed up is still in your Clients list, though: see Who appears in your Clients list.

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Who appears in your Clients list

Signing up on your booking page and adding a service happen at different times, so your Clients list and the Incomplete tab don’t always match:

• Someone new who signs up on your booking page with their name and mobile number is added to your Clients list straight away, even if they leave before the Review step and never book. The exception is a sign-up whose email address is already on a client record: they’re asked to connect that record first (next point).
• Someone already on your list who signs up with the mobile number on their client record is matched to that record, so no duplicate is created. If only their email address matches, they’re asked to connect the record with a code sent to the email address on it, because an email address entered at sign-up isn’t proof on its own. If they skip it, they get a new client record once they need one (by the Review step at the latest), and when the names are the same or nearly so, the two records show on the Possible duplicates tab: merge them once you’re sure it’s the same person, as the merged record keeps their online booking login.
• The Incomplete tab only lists people who were signed in and added at least one service. Each of them is already in your Clients list, and dismissing their incomplete booking doesn’t remove them.
• A visitor who never signs up or signs in appears in neither.

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What happens when the review session expires?

The 10-minute countdown starts as soon as the client lands on Review. Client-side (online booking page):

• An amber banner shows the countdown at the top of the Review step (“Finish booking in 9:42”).
• At 2 minutes remaining, the banner turns red to create urgency.
• At 0:00, the client is prompted to pick a new time (their previous choice may still be available, or may have been taken by another client in the meantime).

Business-side (your scheduler):

• Nothing shows while the client is still booking. The draft isn’t visible to the business until 10 minutes pass with no new choices - there’s no point signalling “pending action” when the client is still in the middle of booking.
• After 10 minutes with no activity, the draft appears in the Waitlist panel’s Incomplete tab with an amber badge count. This is the same for a client who stopped on the Review step and one who stopped earlier.
• A client who got as far as paying a deposit or saving a card doesn’t wait that out. Their booking held the time for 30 minutes, so the moment that hold ends the draft appears straight away - they’ve already had their half hour and walked away.
• The Dashboard KPI card updates with the new count, on the same rule.
• If Incomplete booking reminder is enabled and the client reached the Review step, they receive one SMS and/or email with a resume link at the same moment. A client who stopped earlier gets nothing unless you tap Send reminder.

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What the client sees

If the reminder is enabled and the client has the matching channel preference, they’ll receive a message like:

“Hi Sarah, it looks like you didn’t finish booking your hair cut at Bella Hair Co. Tap to pick up where you left off: [resume link]”

Tapping the link takes them back to the Review step with all their selections restored (services, team member, date, time, notes). They can finish in one or two taps. If they hadn’t picked a time yet, or that day has passed, they land on the time step with their services already chosen (or on choosing a team member first, if they hadn’t chosen one and your booking page asks for one).

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Why only signed-in clients?

Incomplete booking recovery requires a way to reach the client. Anonymous visitors leave no contact trail, so there’s no ethical way to follow up. Requiring a verified phone number before capture means:

• Every lead in your Waitlist is reachable.
• No spam risk - the client has already consented to being contacted during phone verification.
• The draft holds only what the client chose on your booking page (services, team member, time and any note), so your team has what it needs to follow up.

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Step-by-step usage instructions

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Viewing incomplete bookings

1. From the Dashboard, if there are incomplete bookings, you’ll see an amber alert card with the count.
2. Click Review → to jump straight to the Waitlist panel, or
3. Navigate to the Scheduler and click the Waitlist button.
4. Switch to the Incomplete tab - the amber badge shows how many drafts are waiting.

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Reading an incomplete booking card

Each card shows:

• Client name (tap to call, tap to email)
• Selected services with any variant names
• Requested date and time (if the client chose one)
• Assigned team member (if the client chose one, or “Any team member”)
• Last activity timestamp - shows how long ago they last interacted
• Reminder status - if a reminder has already been sent, you’ll see when
• How far they got - Stopped at services or Stopped at time when the client left before the Review step, Stopped at review when they reached it, Stopped at payment when the client reached the deposit and their time was held while they paid, or Stopped at card when they reached the card form under the Card on file policy

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Taking action

From each card, you have four options: Book for client - Opens the appointment-create flow prefilled with the client, the selected services, the team member (if the client chose one), and the requested date and start time. Services the client had selected are resolved against your current catalogue - anything removed or archived is silently skipped so you can review before saving. Use this when you’ve spoken to the client and want to confirm the booking on their behalf. Once you save an appointment for one of the services they chose, the incomplete booking leaves the list and shows as Booked on the client’s record. Send reminder (or Send again) - Sends the reminder with a resume link straight away. The email goes to any client with an email on file, even when the reminder’s Email switch in Automated messages is off. A text goes only while the reminder’s SMS switch is on, so it never uses SMS credit on a channel you’ve switched off. A channel the client has muted is skipped. The button’s hover text says which channels it will use, and it’s disabled only if the client has no contact channel on file. The toast message confirms which channels actually went out, or explains why none did (e.g. the client has muted all notification channels). Dismiss - Removes the entry from your Waitlist without contacting the client. Use for drafts you don’t want to pursue (e.g. known test accounts, clients you’ve already spoken to offline). Call / Email - Tap the phone number or email address on the card to open your phone’s dialler or default mail app.

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Enabling automatic reminders

By default, the automatic reminder is off to avoid surprising businesses with unwanted client messages. To enable:

1. Go to Settings → Automated messages
2. Scroll to the Reminders group
3. Click Incomplete booking reminder
4. Toggle Email and/or SMS on
5. (Optional) Customise the template - the default uses {{FirstName}}, {{ServiceName}}, {{BusinessName}}, and {{ResumeBookingLink}}.

The reminder goes out the moment the draft is treated as abandoned: 10 minutes after the client’s last activity on the Review step, or straight away if their 30-minute payment or card hold has ended. Timing is fixed, with no offset to configure, because it follows the same clock the client was watching. It never goes automatically to a client who stopped before the Review step: use Send reminder on their card if you’d like to follow up.

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Online booking attempts on the client record

Open a client and stay on the Overview tab to see their latest online booking attempts, newest first. Each one shows the services they added, when, the time they picked (if they picked one) and how it ended:

• Booked, when the client booked it or your team booked them for a service it named (for example with Book for client). It links to the appointment, except where the client had stopped at payment or card
• A Stopped at badge (such as Stopped at time) when it wasn’t booked, with a Follow up link while it’s still on the Incomplete tab, or not booked once it has ended: they never came back, chose to start again or joined your waitlist instead, or your team dismissed it

Use it to see which services a returning client looked at without booking. Attempts are kept for 180 days after they end, and only attempts made while the client was signed in are listed.

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Permissions

Viewing and managing incomplete bookings uses the existing Manage Waitlist permission - the same permission that controls the waitlist, because the two are operationally identical (both surface pending intent that hasn’t converted). If you can see the Waitlist tab, you can see and action Incomplete Bookings, and see a client’s online booking attempts on their record. No new permission setup is needed.

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Frequently asked questions

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Related

• Waitlist - Track clients waiting for specific services or time slots
• Automated messages - Configure the Incomplete booking reminder template and channels
• Booking page - Set how your online booking page looks