Make Your Private Session Offers Available for Online Booking

You can make your private session offers available online so that customers can request appointments based on your availability. This setup allows customers to choose a suitable time while you stay in control by reviewing and confirming each request. It’s especially useful if your schedule depends on teacher/trainer availability, room occupancy, or flexible planning.

Currently, private sessions are booked via booking requests (with approval). A direct booking option will be available in future updates.

In this article, you’ll learn how to set up booking requests and how to manage incoming requests in your calendar.

✨ Key Benefits at a Glance

Stay in control by approving every booking
Offer flexible scheduling without adding fixed time slots to your schedule beforehand
Avoid conflicts with teachers/trainers or rooms
Let customers request sessions based on real availability

📋 Before You Start

Before configuring booking requests:

Make sure the Private Sessions extension is enabled
Make sure you have already set up at least one private session offer

→ See: How to create and manage private session offers

🧑‍💻 Configure Online Booking for Private Sessions

In order to allow online booking (requests) for private sessions, you need to do 2 things:

Activate the “Available online” option for the related private session offers and define the booking rules
Share the private session offer - either via a booking widget or the sharing option

Follow these steps in your private session offer setup:

Set up your Private Session Offer for online availability

You can set up all that is necessary on the Private session offer:

1. Choose How the Offer Is Available Online

In the Online registration rules section, choose how your offer should appear:

Available online → Customers can request bookings
Visible only → Customers can see the offer but cannot book it online
Internal only → Only visible in Manager

👉 To enable booking requests, select “Available online”

2. Set the Online Registration Period

Define when customers are allowed to send booking requests.

You can choose:

Registration always possible
→ Customers can request sessions at any time (default: at least 24 hours in advance)
Individual online registration period
→ Define a time window

💡 Example:
If you set:

From 7 days before
Until 24 hours before

Customers can only request sessions within that time frame — not earlier than 7 days ahead and not later than 24 hours before the start time.

3. Define Booking Availability

Choose how availability is applied to this offer:

Default availability → Uses your default setup that you can define in your Private session extension settings in the Market
Custom availability → Define specific timeframes for this offer

👉 This determines when customers can request sessions.

If you want to understand how availability and time slots are calculated:
→ See: How private session availability works

4. Set Appointment Start Times

Define how frequently sessions can start. This controls the starting time slots shown to customers.

Every hour
Every 30 minutes
Every 15 minutes

Setting	Starting time options

💡 Tips:

For maximum flexibility, choose every 15 minutes
For more structured schedules, align this with your session duration (e.g. hourly sessions → hourly start times)

5. Add Buffer Time (Optional)

Buffer time adds a gap after each session.

This blocks an assigned teacher/trainer and/or room for additional time after the session.

Use this to:

Avoid back-to-back bookings
Allow time for preparation, cleanup, or breaks

💡 Example:
A 60-minute session with a 15-minute buffer means the teacher/trainer and/or room is occupied for 75 minutes.

👉 Note:
Buffer time only affects spacing between bookings — not availability itself.

💡 Example:
A 60-minute session can still start at 11:00 within a 09:00–12:00 window, even with buffer time, as long as the session ends by 12:00 and there is not another session starting at 12:00..

6. Choose Payment Options

Decide how customers should pay:

Online payment only
Online payment or pay later

If you allow pay later:

Customers can complete the booking request without paying online
Payment is handled later (e.g. on-site)

💡 Tip:
“Pay later” is useful for:

First-time customers
Offers where commitment happens after confirmation

7. Booking Requests (Current Setup)

Booking requests require manual approval.

The option “Require approval for online bookings” is enabled by default
Customers submit a request → you confirm or decline it

You have 24 hours to approve or decline booking requests.

💡 Note:
A direct booking option (without approval) is planned for future updates. To see the current limitations of the BETA version, please look at this article.

Share Your Private Session Offer

Once your offer is set up, you can make it accessible to customers:

Add it to your Activities widget (e.g. alongside your other specials like workshops or events, or create a widget just for your Private session offers on its own)
Share a direct offer or availability link (get the links via the three dots (⋯) in your Private Session Offers overview)

→ See: Customizing your Activities widget

This allows customers to easily discover and request private sessions from your website or campaigns.

👀 What Customers Can See and Do

When customers access your private session (e.g. via your Activities widget or a shared link):

They see available dates and time slots
They can (optionally) select a teacher/trainer
They go through the checkout process
They submit a booking request
They are informed that their request will be approved or declined within 24 hours

🔄 Manage Private Session Bookings

Once customers start booking private sessions, you can manage them directly in your calendar.

🗂️ Manage Booking Requests (Current Setup)

Once customers start sending booking requests, you can manage them directly in your Private Session calendar.

Where to find requests

Booking requests appear directly in your calendar
They are visually distinguished from confirmed appointments
You can use the “Requests only” toggle to focus on open requests

You’ll also be notified about new requests via:

A notification badge in the sidebar
The dashboard to-dos, linking you directly to open requests
Email notifications, so you don’t miss incoming requests

💡 Tip: you can define the email inbox to which you want to receive the notifications to via the private session extension settings in the Market.

What information you see

When opening a booking request, you can view:

Customer name
Requested date and time
Selected or suggested teacher/trainer
Assigned or suggested room
A countdown showing how much time is left to respond

💡 Tip:
If no teacher/trainer or room is selected, the system suggests one — you can always adjust it before confirming.

How to respond to requests

You can:

Accept the request
→ The booking is confirmed and all participants are notified via email
Edit and accept the request
→ Adjust details (e.g. teacher/trainer, room, or time) before confirming
Decline the request
→ The customer is informed via email (you can add a message)

Important timing

You have 24 hours to respond to each booking request
If no action is taken, the request expires automatically
Expired requests are removed from your calendar and cannot be answered anymore
Customers are notified if their request expires

💡 Tip – When to Use Booking Requests

Booking requests are especially useful if:

You want to avoid double bookings across teachers/trainers or rooms
You have more complex scheduling setups (e.g. multiple teachers/trainers, rooms, or combinations)
You need to coordinate schedules manually before confirming
You want to screen or prioritise requests before accepting them

⚡ Direct Booking (Coming Soon)

A direct booking option (without approval) will be introduced in future updates.

Once available, you will be able to:

Allow customers to book private sessions instantly
Skip the approval step
Manage bookings directly in your calendar

🔗 Related Articles

How to create and manage private session offers
→ Learn how to set up your private session offers before configuring online booking
How private session availability works
→ Understand how available time slots are calculated and what affects them
Customizing your Activities widget
→ Learn how to display your private sessions on your website alongside other offerings