Bookings

A booking moves through a defined lifecycle, and every screen in ShortletBox (the list, the calendar, the payment pages, the reports) reads from the same state. References look like SB-XXXXXX.

The lifecycle

awaiting_approval ──approve──▶ pending_payment ──payment lands──▶ confirmed
        │                            │                               │
     decline                       expire                        check in
        ▼                            ▼                               ▼
     declined                     expired                       checked_in ──▶ checked_out

• Awaiting approval: a guest’s request from your booking site. Approve or decline it from the list, the booking page, or the dashboard action queue.
• Approve is payment-aware: if a deposit is owed, the booking moves to Pending payment and the guest gets a pay-by-link with a payment hold (48 hours by default, configurable per workspace). If nothing is owed, it confirms outright.
• Pending payment: the clock is ticking. If the hold lapses unpaid, the booking expires automatically and the nights free up.
• Confirmed: money (or your say-so) has secured the dates. The guest automatically receives their check-in link.
• Checked in: available once every occupant’s ID has been confirmed by your team. Checking in also starts the payout clock.
• Checked out: the stay is complete.
• Cancelled: possible from any pre-checkout state. Cancelling revokes any smart-lock door codes already issued.

Bookings carry their source: direct (your site, widget or API), admin (created by your team), or airbnb / booking_com.

Creating a booking yourself

New Booking (top bar) is for walk-ins and phone bookings. Pricing is calculated server-side (nightly rate × nights, length-of-stay discount, then coupon), and you can override the deposit for this one booking. Guests are de-duplicated by email, so a returning guest keeps one history. Bookings you create are confirmed immediately and skip the online check-in gate.

If your plan has a monthly booking cap, creation is blocked at the cap, and the banner in the admin warns you from 80%.

No double bookings, ever

Overlapping active bookings for the same property are impossible. The rule is enforced at every level, down to the database itself, and it also runs race-safe: two guests grabbing the last night at the same instant can’t both win. Back-to-back stays are fine, since checkout day and the next check-in day can be the same date.

Manual calendar blocks and OTA blocks also make dates unavailable, but a lagging OTA feed can’t lock you out of fixing a real booking; blocks are only checked when a booking’s dates actually change.

Occupants

Each booking tracks who is actually staying. The primary guest adds companions during check-in (capped at the booking’s guest count), or your team manages the occupant list from the booking page: add, edit, remove, resend links, confirm IDs, request re-uploads.

Where money fits

Each booking’s pricing card shows the total, what’s been paid, the balance, and a payment-state chip (Unpaid → Partially paid / Deposit paid → Paid, or Refunded), always computed live from the payments ledger, never stored, so it can never disagree with the money.