Manage my booking

Every booking confirmation carries a Manage your booking button. It opens a private page for that one booking:

• the bookable, date, time, tickets and extras, whether it's confirmed, cancelled or waiting for payment, and the order number for paid bookings
• Add to calendar (.ics) and Add to Google Calendar (the calendar event leaves out the private link, since calendars are often shared: it points people to their confirmation email instead)
• a QR code of the page, to open it on another device
• Change the time and Cancel, if you allow them (below)

The page never shows answers to your questions, the waiver signature, or anyone's name or email. Anyone with the link can open it, so it's never listed in search engines or kept by the site's cache.

Free reservations get the button in their confirmation email. Paid bookings get it in WooCommerce's order emails to the customer (Processing, Completed and On hold), on the order confirmation page and under the order in My account. It's never in the emails you get.

Cancel links in confirmations sent before this page existed still work: they open the booking's page.

The link stops working 30 days after the session ends, so an old email that gets forwarded doesn't open the booking for good. After that, it shows the same "Open your booking" page as a mistyped link, and My account, order emails and order pages no longer show a Manage button for that booking. Links for upcoming bookings keep working.

Changes & Cancellations

Set these per bookable under Booking → Changes & Cancellations.

• Let people change or cancel online: on by default. People can move to another session of the same bookable, with the same tickets and price, or cancel. Off, the page shows the booking and how to contact you.
• Changes close (hours before a session): 24 by default. The page says the exact time changes close, for example "Fri, Oct 11, 10:00 am (Chicago time)". After that, it explains that changes have closed and shows the phone number and email from your footer's contact information. Free reservations can still be cancelled right up to the start, so the spot can go to someone else.
• When someone cancels a paid booking:
  • Free the spot; staff decide about a refund (default). The order gets a note, you get an email, and you refund from the order if you decide to.
  • Free the spot; no refund. People are told before they confirm that they won't get their money back.
  • Free the spot and refund in full. Refunds the booking line automatically when the payment method supports refunds (most card gateways). For other payment methods, such as cheque or bank transfer, it works like staff decide.

A move only goes through if the new session has room for all of the booking's spots, and the old spot is released in the same step. The booking window, the booking cutoff and your closed days apply, as they do to new bookings. While bookings are paused, people can cancel but can't move.

After a change, the customer gets an email and you get one too. For paid bookings, the order gets a note, and a move updates the date and time on the order line.

Bookings in My account

With WooCommerce, customers' My account has a Bookings tab after Orders. It lists:

• Upcoming: soonest first, including a session that's in progress
• Past: most recent first, 10 at a time, with Older bookings for the rest

Each booking shows the bookable (linked to its page), the date and time, tickets and extras, its status, the order number (linked to the order) and a Manage button that opens the booking's private page. While people can still change a booking online, it says until when, for example "Change or cancel online until Fri, Oct 11, 10:00 am (Chicago time)". Changes and cancellations happen on the booking's page, with the same rules as above. Someone with no bookings sees "No bookings yet." and a Book now button to your shop.

Which bookings someone sees:

• Paid bookings on orders placed while logged in to that account. Orders placed as a guest don't appear, even when the billing email matches.
• Free reservations once the person opens the Manage your booking link from their confirmation email while logged in. The booking's page then says "Saved to your account". Free reservations are never matched by email alone: anyone can create a shop account with any email address, so only the person who got the confirmation can add it to their account.

Cart items that weren't paid for, and orders whose payment never came through, aren't listed.

While WooCommerce Bookings is active, this tab stays off: WooCommerce Bookings has its own Bookings tab. It appears once WooCommerce Bookings is deactivated, with no need to resave permalinks.

Without WooCommerce there's no My account: people manage free reservations through the link in their confirmation email.