In some organizations, bookings made through the Member Portal may require admin approval based on the booking policy. Such bookings are marked as tentative. If tentative bookings are left unattended, they become lapsed bookings. This article explains what lapsed bookings are and how to prevent them.
What are lapsed bookings?
Tentative bookings require admin approval before they can be confirmed. If they are not approved, they still occupy the resource's time slot in the Booking Schedule. Once the allotted time expires, the tentative bookings become past bookings, and members can perform no further actions.
Key points about lapsed bookings:
Members cannot cancel or update lapsed bookings.
Booking fees for lapsed bookings are not applied.
In the Admin Portal, lapsed bookings are displayed as Lapsed under the member's profile in Community > Members.
Example of a past booking:
Lapsed booking in the Admin Portal:
How to prevent lapsed bookings?
Admins can prevent lapsed bookings by setting up automatic cancellations for tentative bookings.
Go to Settings > Platform Modules > Bookings & Calendar.
In the Automatic tentative booking cancellation field, enter the number of hours before the start time when tentative bookings should be automatically canceled.
For example, setting the field to "1" will automatically cancel unapproved tentative bookings one hour before the scheduled start time.
Note: If the Automatic tentative booking cancellation field is empty, automatic cancellation will not occur.