Bookings confirmed even payment is not completed?
So, when you use the payment module or the new FluentCart integration, and the checkout is abandoned…
I’m seeing that the booking is anyway being confirmed.
Support told me this is the default behavior. And I am thinking of setting those booking as “confirmation needed” by the admin.
But, is there any workaround prior to any update that can fix this?
How are you addressing this?
I’ve been expecting this integration for so long, and it’s incredible! But this behavior left us like 🫥: “No bueno”
Any feedback is welcome!
Jorge de los Reyes i wanted to switch to the FCart Integration tomorrow, to ditch the Booking Stripe Integration, which doesn't work with a 100% Coupon, but it seems i would only trade downsides....damn
Manuel Müller Support told me a possible workaround is: <\<you can utilize the feature "Mark booking as cancelled automatically after". This allows pending bookings to be automatically cancelled if payment remains incomplete for a specified period.>>
- However, I’m not sure this setting is actually checking if the order is paid. But just a 10’ after, mark as cancelled automation.
🫤
Hopefully the team can come with an update to put the booking on pending until the order ID is paid or something alike.
Having to manually confirm bookings could be a pain in the neck tbh!
Jorge de los Reyes i mean, there's a "if customer does not complete payment...." notice, it should check automatically, right?
What confuses me is the: "Support told me this is the default behavior." Why the heck should it be default behavior, that a booking is confirmed, when no payment was made? I mean, i shouldn't even have your infos, when you abandon my booking form, correct?
Manuel Müller Yeah, that’s exactly my point, Manuel.
From a business perspective, “confirmed without payment” makes zero sense (especially for busy schedules or limited-slot services)
But given how the current mechanics work (10-minute confirmed → auto-cancel if unpaid), the only real safeguard right now is testing that flow end-to-end and adjusting the cancellation window.
I’m also pushing for a proper “Pending until payment is completed” status.
That would solve double-bookings, unwanted confirmation emails, and all the friction with abandoned checkouts.
If you test it before me, let me know your findings. I’ll do the same on my end.
Hopefully the team ships an update soon: this integration has huge potential, it just needs that last bit of logic aligned with real-world use.
Update: https://fluentbooking.com/docs/global-email-settings/
According to support’s explanation, apparently it will be working as intended: booking will be on confirmed status for 10 minutes.
Then, it will be set to cancel if the order is not payed.
I’ll have to test this by myself Manuel Müller : let me know if you test that too!
Anyways, I’ve asked for a setting for not confirming anything until payment so as to avoid concurrent booking problems for busy schedules and all the headache of email confirmations and so… that could be triggered with no actual service pending
I would think of this in terms of ticket sales. on any decent site selling tickets to a big concert or venue, the seat is not actually yours until you finish the purchase. they keep you in a screen the communicates this clearly and give you some reasonable time to make up your mind and complete the transaction.
- pick your seat
- visible countdown clock starts
- maybe an option to extend your time while you "ask the boss" 😁
- if you don't step up and pay, no seat for you
Jeff Sadly, our case is not selling tickets. But services 🫠
We just don’t want to bother our consultants with “hey, new booking scheduled check the form” +“hey, it’s canceled”.
😓
With high volume, this could be quite problematic!
Jorge de los Reyes I was thinking the countdown timer might be a good solution to the issue, but I guess I didn't understand the issue then.
Jeff Let me break it down more clearly:
Use case:
- You’re a consultant.
- You use a paid Fluent Booking calendar.
- A client picks a date, fills in all the service details, and gets redirected to checkout… but never completes the payment.
What happens meanwhile:
- You receive the booking confirmation.
- The slot is blocked in your calendar.
- Automations fire: you get the customer info, the case details, internal notifications, plus your calendar is marked as busy.
- You start preparing for the service.
Then, 10 minutes later…
You get an email saying the booking was canceled because the payment never happened.
And here’s an accurate historical photo of the consultant 🤣
It could cause great headaches basically...
Jorge de los Reyes 😆 Been there.
Charlotte D 🤣 Ahh… they really do call them “heroes”, don’t they?
Here are just a couple of additional nightmare scenarios:
B2C booking: booking is still in the cart & potential/client gets an appointment confirmation before completing checkout (eg. still considering whether to make the payment). Once they see the appointment 'confirmed' they don't go back to the payment page. No sale. 🙄 More downhill consequences - customer tries to show up for 'confirmed' appointment but as there's not one, no-one from the business side shows up. Now we have customer-service issues & business reputation issues to deal with. And if that person leaves a public review after the experience... 😬😬😬
B2B booking: at volume, these humans receive so much email daily - most with similar subject lines (this confirmed/that confirmed) - that it would be very easy for them to mistake an errant confirmation email, whether or not subsequently revoked by another email, to mean something is handled and they just move on quickly to the next thing.
In the specific example that I've used previously in this thread, we're retired litigators (attorneys) offering mediation services to other attorneys (so B2B). It's a business going well for us. But industry-wide it desperately needs more & better automations. And it has some rigid behaviors in-grained that can only be changed slowly. And if, during the timeline of improving the processes with tech, we mess up the litigation deadlines of other attorneys...there are disastrous consequences. Both for our business and for theirs.
Charlotte D I love this feedback.
Because, in fact, both as a lawyer and business consultant I see this... everywhere!
Fortunately, the scenario is evolving. But tools need to be at the same level.
Patches are not going to be suitable for industries like legal, finance and so...
Jorge de los Reyes So much that has to be undone in multiple systems when things like that happen. And if it's not undone immediately, it can wreck an entire business process in a week or less. So, a human then has to be tasked with watching & confirming each step. So then what's the point of the automations - the human team member could just do that data entry by hand with more reliability.
And now I'm off to make chili on a cool wet Texas day. 🌶️✌🏼
Hey Jorge de los Reyes, Looks like this needs fixing. Tagging Raiyan Marzan to keep track and come up with a fix.
Nazir Himel thank you Nazir! That will be awesome so as to keep this kind of service-based workflows efficient 😄 👏
Oh no - this is not good news. Sending any confirmation for an appointment that’s not actually confirmed is, without exaggeration, a total nightmare. High volume. Low volume. Whatever. With 25+ years in the service business I can confidently say that the ways in which this goes wrong on both the customer and on the business end are so numerous that 🤯 I’m having a hard time putting words to my thoughts.
We’re on the verge of launching a new combined FB/FF booking system with custom notifications rolling through Flowmattic. This is stage 1, where the invoicing and payment are not tied into the booking.
We’re ultimately looking to achieve a fully integrated system with billing - such that along with booking confirmations, the necessary contacts also receive automated invoices payable by a custom link. I’ve planned the final solution as: FBooking -> probably still embedded in FForms -> FluentCart (with the future invoicing feature).
This system supports a high volume B2B service, and the same clients book the services multiple times a month, often multiple times the same week. In this environment, we really, really need as much of the process as possible to be automated. And there can be zero false/unnecessary email notifications.
Also, from the customer side this booking process has industry-established practices that we can’t just change for technology’s sake. If we tried, it would only introduce friction and confusion into a system that we’re actually trying to improve with tech - not further wreck.
I already have a couple of long days ahead testing custom FBooking notifications and then testing the new FBooking update. If my testing helps me form additional thoughts pertinent to this thread I’ll add them here.
Charlotte D Thank you for your feedback! I agree 100% that this should be something automatic.
Again, service-based businesses need some love here with the fluent ecosystem!
Not only here with booking, but with FluentCart too!
Fortunately, the team is so responsive, and we are here debating and commenting this precisely so as to raise a flag here with this.
Hopefully the team reads this.
I'd also suggest to point this out too with support - so as not to be the only one asking for a better approach than auto-cancellations 🙈
Jorge de los Reyes Yes, scaling services has so many challenges. And SAAS solutions demand adherence to their process without regard to - much of anything except their own bottom line. 😵💫 I’d love more WP tech to support service business so that we can customize our processes like we customize websites.
And I think we can implement tech to change and improve established industry work flows - but I mostly prefer the gentle approach: meet the customers where they are and solve their pain points incrementally. Which requires more flexible tech.
Charlotte D Absolutely.
There's a big market for add-ons that could cover this.
I am thinking about Nelson (From Surely WP), who created a really nice add-on for service-based businesses.
It allows you to track signing and acceptance of terms, direct messaging, roadmap and status of the service, time to finish, deliverables...
He told me once that they are working on doing exactly the same for FluentCart.
I strongly recommend you following him in case you are not doing so already.
We didn't invest much in setting everything with surecart. But tbh, his add-on is a great one!
And if something like that finally comes to the fluent ecosystem, I am sure it will be worth following any of his updates!
PS.: he is in the general community. But not in this one.
"Nelson Miller".
Jorge de los Reyes I’ll check that out and watch his progress with FCart.
As for the Sure products and all of the related brands, I’m never touching those again. Fool me once and all that. 😠
Jorge de los Reyes Also, I’d like to see some - if not a lot - of the service-business features baked into the primary product. With enough flexibility in them that the add-on market can extend & expand them for edge cases. As opposed to ‘services’ being handled entirely by the add-ons.
And the planned FCart invoicing feature leads me to believe that the Ninjas are headed this direction. 🤞🏼
Charlotte D Totally agree!
Let's see how this develops.
Hopefully, we can see a pipeline for FCRM next year...
Charlotte D Feel that.
Great product, great team.
Some practices just don’t align.
wait, make that 2 viral threads in one day, lol
Jeff Haha, what can I say?
AI has finally freed up enough time for us lawyers to go viral twice a day.
Dangerous times, my friend.
Jorge de los Reyes at least you're not wasting time on facebook, YouTube or some other social media time waster. we're building communities instead of consuming them!
Jeff Amen!
Hi Jorge de los Reyes
Actually the booking should be scheduled when the order is paid. If you are not getting expected result could you please share a video how to re-create the issue?
Raiyan Marzan Sure. Let me check it. I just noticed that new "auto-cancel" setting after support guided me to it.
I'll let you know!
Hello Raiyan Marzan .
One question. Shouldn't be the auto-canceled meetings have like a note on the meeting activity box?
Right now, even canceled, it's not showing more than when the user was redirected.
If we set, eg. cancel after 10 minutes. Shouldn't it be showing another activity that could read something like "Canceled 10 minutes after"?
Jorge de los Reyes Yes, it should have. I will have a look again.