Manual Booking Mode

What is Manual Booking Mode? In a nutshell, this is a feature that affects performers who have offered to pay the booking fee on behalf of clients. Manual Booking mode lets these performers approve the bookings first before getting charged the booking fee. When Manual Booking Mode is turned on, performers will be alerted of client-initiated bookings via email and then have 72 hours to accept or decline. More specifically:

If the client books a performer on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, the performer has until Wednesday to accept or decline.

If the client books a performer on Monday, the performer has until Thursday to accept or decline.

If the client books a performer on Tuesday, the performer has until Friday to accept or decline.

If the client books a performer on Wednesday, the performer has until Monday to accept or decline.

If the client books a performer on Thursday, the performer has until Tuesday to accept or decline.

If the performer doesn’t respond within the allotted time period, the client is notified and any deposits paid online are immediately returned.

Many performers reading this might think to themselves “this sounds like common sense! Isn’t this the way it works now?” The answer is actually no. The current default behavior for performers who offer to pay the booking fee for clients is that when the client completes the booking, the performer’s credit card on file gets automatically charged the booking fee. While many performers enjoy the instantaneousness of this, many have expressed a desire to pre-approve client-initiated bookings first before getting their credit cards charged.

Our hope with Manual Booking Mode is that by giving performers the ability to confirm client bookings first before getting charged the booking fee, performers will not be caught off guard by surprise bookings which they might have to turn around and cancel.

As of this writing (5/17/09) performers have to contact us in order to opt into Manual Booking Mode. In the near future, however, we will build in a way for performers to opt in themselves through their control panel. This will need to be accompanied by a clear and concise FAQ entry to help performers understand exactly how Manual Booking Mode works.

But of course for those performers who like things the way they are, fear not. Manual Booking Mode will be strictly optional. If you are like many performers who enjoy coming home from a gig Saturday night to see that you’ve already been booked for your next gig, then that won’t change. You can leave your account just the way it is.

For those performers, however, who have been frustrated by clients booking you without checking with you first, Manual Booking Mode should be the answer you’ve been looking for.