More in Bookings and calendar
- Accept or decline a booking request
- Block time on your calendar
- Cancel a booking
- Find booking details
- Instant Book vs booking requests
- Manage blocked time
- Manage booking requests
- Reschedule a booking
- Set your cancellation policy
- Understand booking request deadlines
- Understand booking statuses
- Understand how bookings work
- Use the calendar
- View booking history
- When guests cancel or respond to a reschedule
Understand booking request deadlines
A booking request doesn't wait forever. Each one comes with a deadline, and if you don't accept or decline it in time, it expires.
In this article
Where to see the deadline
| Where | What you see |
|---|---|
| Bookings list | A compact countdown on each request, such as 5h 12m left. Hover over it to see Respond by and the exact time. |
| Booking details | A live Time left to respond countdown in hours, minutes and seconds. |
| Booking Metadata | Request received and Respond by times. |
Times are shown in your studio's timezone. The countdown is highlighted when less than an hour remains.
When the time runs out
- The countdown changes to Response time expired.
- The booking's status becomes Expired, and it moves to the History tab.
- Its details page shows Response time expired and when the request lapsed.
- You can no longer accept or decline it.
How long you have to respond
The deadline depends on how far ahead the booking starts, counted from when the request comes in:
| The booking starts… | You have until… |
|---|---|
| More than 12 hours after the request | 12 hours after the request. |
| Between 2 and 12 hours after the request | 2 hours before the booking starts, but never less than 30 minutes after the request. |
| Less than 2 hours after the request | 30 minutes after the request, or the start time if that comes first. |
Guests can't send a request for a slot that starts less than 15 minutes away. They're asked to pick a later slot.
What the guest gets back
If a paid request expires, or you decline it, the guest's payment is refunded in full automatically, back through Paystack to the payment they made. You don't need to do anything.