When a service requires approval, member bookings arrive as requests that the practitioner, owner, or manager confirms or declines.
Prerequisites
Each appointment type has a "Requires approval" setting (on by default). When it's on, a member booking is created as a request with status "Pending approval" instead of being confirmed immediately. No credit or payment is taken at request time. Multiple members can request the same slot — the first approval wins it.
Practitioners see requests in the instructor portal under "My Appointments" — pending requests appear in the Upcoming list with Approve and Decline buttons. Owners and managers see them on the dashboard Appointments page, Bookings tab, by selecting the "Requests" status filter. While a request is waiting it also comes to you: the dashboard Activity feed shows an alert, "1 appointment request waiting", that opens the Appointments page; the Bookings tab carries a count, the page opens on that tab, and the requests are listed first under "Waiting for your answer" with Approve and Decline. The practitioner's Today page shows "1 appointment request waiting — Review".
Click "Approve". The system re-checks the slot is still free, then confirms the booking and emails the member. On credit-based studios with a paid service, one credit is deducted at this point. If the slot was taken by another confirmed booking in the meantime, you'll see "This time slot is no longer available" and the request stays pending.
Click "Decline". You can enter an optional reason, which is included in the email sent to the member. The request moves to Declined and the slot is freed for others.
A request that sits unanswered is followed up automatically, and the follow-up races two clocks: how long the request has waited, and how close the appointment now is.
On the dashboard Appointments page, Bookings tab, the "Unanswered request follow-up" card controls the expiry step: turn it off entirely, or change how many hours before the start time an unanswered request expires. A request made later than that is not expired at once: it gets half of the time that was left when it was made (booked 12 hours ahead, it expires 6 hours before the start).
The practitioner is reminded after about a day OR once the appointment is within twelve hours, whichever comes first. Owners and booking managers are emailed after about two days OR once the appointment is within three hours and the practitioner has already been nudged. The second clock is what catches a last-minute booking — a request made five hours before the slot would never have waited a day, so nothing would have fired before the appointment came and went. If it is still unanswered shortly before the appointment's start time (24 hours by default), the request expires on its own: the member receives an apology explaining it couldn't be confirmed, with a link to book another time or practitioner, and the practitioner is told it expired. You are emailed as well — one message listing everything that expired in that sweep, so nobody quietly loses a booking because a practitioner never replied. That email separates two cases: requests closed shortly before their start time (the client has been apologised to and given a booking link) and requests whose time had already passed with no answer at all. The second group is never emailed — an apology about a time that has already gone by reads as noise — so a call from you is the only thing that reaches them. Nothing is ever charged for an expired request, and an expired request counts separately from a declined one.
Turning expiry off means a late request is never killed for being late; a request whose appointment time has actually passed is still closed quietly, so your Requests list stays a list of things you can still act on, and you are still told which clients heard nothing. The card appears for every studio using appointments, not just travel visits.