Definitions
Auto-confirm
Autoâconfirm, also known as Instant book, is a feature you can enable for each booking type. It allows clients to book online without waiting for your manual approval, as long as they meet the rules and conditions youâve set.
Enquiries
Enquiries are bookings submitted through the booking widget, but unlike autoâconfirmed bookings, they require you to manually approve or decline them.
đNote: By disabling auto-confirm, the bookings will come as enquiries.
Enable or disable auto-confirmed bookings
Enable auto-confirm
To enable auto-confirm to a booking type you have to:
Click Settings, click Sites and select your site.
Click Booking types and select your booking type.
Scroll down to Auto-confirm rules and click Add another.
Fill in all the rules and click Save.
đNote: You can set up multiple autoâconfirm rules by specific dates or by days of the week, but make sure they donât overlap.
For auto-confirm to work, you need to allocate tables to the booking type. If the tables are missing from the booking type, the booking will come as an enquiry.
Ensure that tables have a Max people value set, which defines the largest group size the table can accommodate.
Join tables to accommodate larger party sizes and include these configurations in the booking type. For example, joining two tables can allow up to eight guests to auto-confirm.
Verify that the tables have sufficient capacity for the maximum party size you want to auto-confirm. For instance, if the Lunch booking type only includes tables with a maximum capacity of four, bookings for five or more guests will not auto-confirm.
đ¤Tip: To accept only autoâconfirmed bookings, the minimum and maximum guest values in your autoâconfirm rules must match the minimum and maximum enquiry size defined in the booking typeâs availability.
Disable auto-confirm
To disable auto-confirm, you can:
Add zero value to the Min guests and Max guests and click Save.
Remove the auto-confirm rule by clicking the red X and click Save.
Troubleshooting Common Issues
Invalid Rules
If an auto-confirm rule is not working as expected, ensure that relevant days are selected in the Auto-confirm rules section. If no days are ticked, the rule will be invalid and wonât apply.
Other things to check:
Specify the minimum and maximum guest counts and set arrival times to Any times in the auto-confirm rules.
Enable the option to Still take enquiries for bookings if no available areas found to allow manual confirmation when necessary.
Resolving Conflicting Date Periods
When overlapping or consecutive date periods conflict, the system applies the first matching period.
To block a specific date while maintaining availability around it:
Create or adjust an override for the period before the blocked date with the desired availability settings.
Add a specific override to block the target date for the booking type.
Create or adjust an override for the period after the blocked date with the desired availability settings.
By structuring overrides into before, blocked-day, or after segments, you can avoid conflicts and ensure the booking widget enforces the block on the exact date while keeping surrounding dates available.
Venue and table-level settings
You can also:
Check for venue-wide Limit arrivals rules that may cap arrivals at certain times.
Verify table-level overrides to ensure tables are bookable from the desired times. For example, update Bookable from times to allow earlier bookings.
Test if Auto-confirm is working
You can test if auto-confirm is working or not if you:
Use the Test booking type rules tool.
Make a test booking on your website.
Test the system after every configuration change to ensure that bookings are auto-confirming as expected.