Manual booking approval: don't lose requests while you're away

A salon owner recently reached out to us with a problem. They'd gone away for a few days, and when they came back, the booking requests that had arrived while they were gone had vanished. Not because the clients had changed their minds — but because the system's time limit had run out, and the requests were auto-cancelled before they'd even seen them.

This isn't a one-off. If you run on manual approval, it's worth a couple of minutes to set it up properly — otherwise the very setting meant to protect you can quietly work against you.

What is manual approval, and why use it?

There are two ways to take an online booking. In automatic mode the client instantly gets a confirmed slot — it drops straight into your calendar, done. In manual approval mode, a booking starts out as just a request: the client proposes a time, and you decide whether to accept or decline it.

For many salons, that control is exactly the point. It's useful when:

• your capacity fluctuates and you don't want everything landing in the calendar unchecked;
• certain treatments need a quick word with the client first (timing, a condition check);
• you'd like to glance over a new client's request before locking it in.

So manual approval isn't a drawback — it's often a sign of professionalism. There's just one part of it that few people set up deliberately.

The hidden trap: the approval time limit

When a client sends a request, it can't sit there unanswered forever — at least not by default. Most systems (ours included) have an approval time limit: if you don't respond within that window, the request is automatically cancelled.

There's logic to it. Clients don't enjoy being left in limbo for days, and an expiring request frees the slot up for someone else. The typical setting is 24, 48, or 72 hours.

But think about what happens when you:

• travel for a few days with no signal, or simply switch off;
• get sick and don't touch your phone for a while;
• hit a long weekend and only come back on Monday.

In those cases even a 72-hour window can fall short. The requests quietly expire, and you come back without ever knowing about the clients who tried to book. On their end, they just see "cancelled" — when really you just didn't get there in time.

The fix: choose the "Unlimited" time limit

That exact piece of feedback is why we added a new option: alongside 24/48/72 hours, the approval time limit now also offers "Unlimited."

Set it, and requests . They wait until you approve or decline them — whether three days or two weeks pass in the meantime. You come back from vacation, and every request is still there, untouched.