When members book a room and don't show up, that space is unavailable to everyone else for the duration of their stay. The check-in requirement fixes this: members must confirm they've arrived within a set window, or their booking is canceled, and the room opens back up.
The setting lives inside Booking Policies, so you can apply it selectively; for example, to meeting rooms but not to phone booths, or only to specific policy groups.
Turn on the check-in requirement
Go to Settings > Calendar > Calendar & Bookings.
Scroll down to the Booking Policies section.
Click an existing policy, or click Add Policy to create a new one.
Select Require Check-in.
Set how many minutes after the booking's start to cancel it if the member doesn't check in. The default is 5 minutes. The maximum is 60 minutes.
If you require booking check-in, Send booking reminders will always be turned on, and members will be notified by email before their booking starts. You can configure how many minutes in advance the reminder goes out. The maximum is 360 minutes (6 hours).
Check-in timing scenarios
The examples here use the following settings:
Booking: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Reminder sent: 20 minutes before start (9:40 AM)
Auto-cancellation: 10 minutes after start (10:10 AM)
Booking created at | Confirmation email | Reminder sent | Auto-canceled at 10:10 AM |
9:30 AM | 9:30 AM | 9:40 AM | Yes, if no check-in |
9:50 AM | 9:50 AM | Not sent — reminder time has passed | Yes, if no check-in |
10:05 AM or later | At creation time | Not sent | No — booking created after cancellation window |
9:30 AM, rescheduled to tomorrow, 10:00 AM | At creation and at update | Tomorrow at 9:40 AM | No cancellation today; tomorrow's settings apply |