Session visibility & bookability
Every session slot you generate carries visibility and bookability settings that decide who sees the slot in your booking calendar, who can book it, and what they see before it opens. This page explains what each setting means for the customer, what a change does to bookings that already exist, and how to check the result from the customer's side.
These settings live on each generated slot, not on the session type as a whole — that is why the Generate dialog offers Apply to selected, to stamp the same settings onto a batch of existing slots at once. Apply to selected replaces all of these settings on every selected slot — including slots that already have bookings — with what the Generate dialog shows. You find them under Visibility & bookability in both the Generate and Edit a session dialogs: Visibility, Bookability and Display.
A slot reaches the booking calendar only once it is active: a Planned slot is never listed, whatever its visibility (see Scheduler).
What customers see
| Setting | Listed in the booking calendar | What the customer sees | Can book online |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public, Bookable now | Yes | The session with name, picture, price and free spots | Yes, until it is full |
| Hidden | No | Nothing | No |
| Private | Yes | A locked Private card: "This time is reserved and not available for booking." No name, picture or price | No — only through the session's direct link, or a group link (see below) |
| Restricted, customer in an eligible group | Yes | The session with a Member session cue | Yes |
| Restricted, customer not eligible or not signed in | Yes | A locked Members only card: "This time is available to members only." No name or price | No |
| Not bookable | Yes | The session's name and time, no free spots, no booking button | No |
| Bookable from date or Bookable days before, before the open date | Yes | A Coming soon card: "Booking opens soon — check back later." No name, picture or price | No — except early-access members |
| Early-access member, before the open date | Yes | The session with an Early access cue | Yes |
A customer who is already booked into a slot always sees it in full — including a Hidden, Private or Restricted one — so their own booking never disappears from view.
The four visibility levels
- Public — the default. The slot is listed in the booking calendar and bookable according to its bookability mode.
- Hidden — the slot is removed from the booking calendar entirely. The booking app never receives it. Use this for internal or offline sessions you still want on your own scheduler.
- Private — the slot is listed but always locked, shown with a padlock and a generic Private card (with the hint "This time is reserved and not available for booking.") rather than the real session name. Customers cannot book it through the public calendar or checkout at all. Instead, share the direct link / QR code from the Edit a session dialog: each invited person signs in with their email address and takes one of the session's places, free of charge online. You can also add an organiser with several places and share their group link. Use Private for a slot reserved for one specific client or group — see Run a group or corporate class.
- Restricted — the slot is listed for everyone. Customers in an eligible group (see below) see the real session with a member cue and can book it; everyone else — including visitors who are not signed in — sees a locked "Members only" card with no name and no price, and cannot book it. A Restricted slot only restricts once your organisation has a group membership field and the slot has at least one eligible group; without either, it is listed and bookable like a Public slot.
Bookability
The Bookability field has four values:
- Bookable now — bookable immediately (default).
- Not bookable — visible but never bookable (for example, a session shown for information only, or a class you have stopped selling).
- Bookable from date — reveals a date field. Before that date the slot is not bookable for the public; it opens automatically at midnight (your organisation's time zone) on that date. No operator action is needed at the open date.
- Bookable days before — asks for a number of days in Opens this many days before. The slot opens at midnight that many days before its own date, so a weekly series opens one week at a time. The hint under the field shows the date it resolves to (Opens on …), and the calendar badge shows it too.
A slot set to Bookable from date without a date, or to Bookable days before without a number, is not bookable for anyone until you fill it in.
"Coming soon" and the Display setting
On the booking site, a slot whose open date (Bookable from date or Bookable days before) still lies ahead is shown as a Coming soon card — no session name, no picture, no price, no spot count — to everyone except early-access members. Once the date passes, the card resolves itself: the real details appear and the slot becomes bookable, with no manual step.
The Display field (Full details or Coming soon (masked)) does not change what customers see. It only marks the slot in your own scheduler: a slot set to Coming soon (masked) is drawn dimmed while it also shows a visibility or bookability badge — until its open date, or, without an open date, until you change it. A Public, Bookable now slot is not marked at all. Customers see the Coming soon card whenever the open date is ahead, whichever Display value you choose.
Capacity, minimum and how far ahead
- Capacity — each slot has its own Slot capacity, which you change per date in Edit a session. Customers see the free spots; a slot with no free place shows Full. Places held for a client, reservations still in checkout and waitlist entries count as taken.
- Minimum — the session resource's Min capacity is informational: the booking site shows "min N participants" and the scheduler flags a session still below it. Nothing happens automatically; go flow does not cancel a session that stays below its minimum.
- How far ahead — slots further in the future than the session resource's Reservations possible (in days) are not listed at all. See Resource details.
Restricted eligibility and eligible groups
Organisation prerequisite: the eligible-groups and early-access controls only appear once your organisation has designated a client field as the group membership field (Group membership field in the organisation settings). That field's options — for example a Membership Tier field with values Bronze / Silver / Gold — become the selectable groups. Until a field is designated, choosing Restricted shows an info hint instead of the selector ("No group membership field is set for this organisation…"), and the slot is not restricted at all. Configure the field first in your organisation settings.
With that in place, a Restricted slot exposes an Eligible groups selector. Only customers whose membership field puts them in a selected group can book the slot; everyone else sees the locked "Members only" card. A customer's group is read from their client record when they are signed in, so a change to that field applies from their next visit.
Early access vs. early-bird price — not the same thing
Two different features share the word "early-bird". Keep them apart:
- Early access (this page) — lets an eligible sub-group book ahead of the public open date. It is a visibility/timing control that lives on the slot's Restricted settings.
- Early-bird price — a separate pricing feature in the booking calendar that offers a discounted price for a limited time. It has its own fields and badges — see Run a promotion or discount code.
Early access changes when a customer can book; early-bird price changes what they pay. A slot can use either, both, or neither.
Early-access tiers
Early-access tiers appear only when a slot is Restricted and opens on a date (Bookable from date or Bookable days before), and only while the Promotions module is switched on. Each tier has its own group list in Early-access groups (which can differ from the base eligible groups) and a lead in Early-access lead (days) — a tier member can book that many days before the public open date. New tiers default their lead to your organisation's configured default; use Add early-access tier for more, and remove any but the last. A tier with no groups is dropped on save.
To the customer, an early-access member sees the session as fully bookable, with an Early access cue, while everyone else still sees the "Coming soon" card — no action needed beyond being signed in as an eligible member.
Tiers you have saved stay in force when the editor is hidden: switching the Promotions module off, or changing the slot's visibility away from Restricted, hides the tier rows but keeps the early access. To end early access, clear the tier's groups while the slot is still Restricted, save, and only then change the visibility.
Worked example
A gym has a client field Membership Tier designated as the group membership field, with options Bronze, Silver, Gold. A popular class opens to the public on 1 September. The operator configures one slot:
- Visibility: Restricted
- Eligible groups: Bronze, Silver, Gold
- Bookability: Bookable from date, 1 September
- Early-access tier: Gold members, 7-day lead
What each customer sees:
- A Gold member — sees the real class with an Early access cue and can book from 25 August (7 days early).
- A Bronze or Silver member — is eligible but has no early-access tier, so sees "Coming soon" until 1 September, then books like the public.
- A non-member, or anyone not signed in — sees "Coming soon" until 1 September, then a locked "Members only" card with no name or price, and can never book it.
What a change does to existing bookings
Visibility, bookability and capacity changes act on who can find and book the slot from now on. They never cancel or move a booking that already exists:
- Customers already booked keep their place and still see the session in full.
- A customer who is part-way through checkout is stopped at payment if the slot is no longer bookable for them; they are not charged.
- People registering through an organiser's group link are not stopped by Not bookable or an open date that is still ahead — the organiser already holds their places — but a Restricted slot still admits only eligible people.
- You cannot lower Slot capacity below the places already booked; to reduce a session further, cancel participants first.
To stop further sales without cancelling anyone, set Not bookable. To cancel the session itself, see Edit a session; when a problem affects several sessions, see Handle a disruption.
Check what your customers see
Do this after any change you care about, before you announce the session.
You need: the booking page's customer link (see Set up online booking), and two test clients with email addresses you can read — one whose group membership field holds an eligible option, one without it.
- Save the session and wait until the cloud icon in the top bar shows everything is synced.
- Not signed in: open the booking page in a private browser window and go to the session's week. Compare what you see with the table above.
- Eligible client: sign in on the booking site with the first test client's email address and the one-time code they receive (see Online booking checkout). Open the same week.
- Non-member: sign out, or use a second private window, and repeat with the second test client.
When the result is not what you expect:
- The slot is missing for everyone — it is Hidden, still Planned, further ahead than Reservations possible, or its session resource is not selected on this booking page.
- A Restricted slot is bookable for everyone — no group membership field is set, or no eligible group is selected on the slot.
- The eligible client sees "Members only" — check the group membership field on their client record and that the change has synced.
- A slot still shows "Coming soon" after its date — the open date is in your organisation's time zone; reload the page after midnight there.