Reservations and calendar

A booking is the point where an answered message becomes a seated customer. Which is why the most important rule comes before everything else: the assistant never offers a time it cannot give. It looks at what is actually free and offers that. The rest of this page explains where it looks, and who decides.

The four ways of working

Every business handles bookings its own way, so you choose how the assistant behaves:

1. It books directly. It uses the calendar inside PappaChat: checks availability, fixes the appointment while the customer is still in the chat or on the phone, and the booking appears in the panel immediately.
2. It sends your link. If you already book through a system of your own, the assistant does not replace it: it hands the customer your booking link and the conversation stays on record. The system, and the data inside it, remain yours.
3. It collects the request. The assistant takes the day, time, party size and contact details, passes them to you, and you confirm. Useful when the real "calendar" is a notebook behind the counter.
4. It leaves bookings alone. It answers everything else and hands booking requests to a person.

Collecting booking requests is included on every plan; the internal calendar with resources and availability, and the Google Calendar sync, start with the Pro plan (see Plans and limits).

Resources: who or what gets booked

The internal calendar is not a flat list: it states what a booking lands on. A chair, a table, a room, a vehicle, a professional: each has its own book, its own hours, its own capacity and durations. The assistant books the right resource, and two bookings never end up on the same spot at the same time.

The words adapt too: a restaurant sees "tables" and "covers", a hotel "rooms" and "stays", a practice "appointments". If the right word for your business is a different one, you type it in the settings and the panel uses yours.

Rooms and vehicles can also be booked across days: a stay or a rental occupies the resource from start to finish, not a time slot inside one day.

The calendar in the panel

The Calendar section shows bookings as a chronological list or as a day and week grid, with a dedicated view for stays. Every booking states when it arrived and who took it: the assistant on which channel, or an operator by name. That is the first thing anyone asks about a booking they did not make themselves, and it is written on the row.

The closures and opening hours you set apply to everyone: the assistant does not book on closed days, and the calendar only draws the hours you actually work.

Who confirms: the approval policy

Whether the assistant confirms on its own is not a single switch, because no business thinks that way. Three options:

• It confirms everything itself. Every booking the calendar allows is confirmed on the spot.
• Everything goes through you. Every booking the assistant takes waits until a person has looked at it.
• Rules. It confirms on its own, except for the cases you choose: groups above a size you set, bookings on short notice or too far in advance, customers it has never seen before, long stays, one specific book (say, a professional who wants to see everything), or every booking that arrived by phone.

When a booking is held, the reason is recorded and shown: not just "pending", but "pending because it is a large group". The customer, meanwhile, is told they will get a confirmation shortly.

The approval queue

Held bookings have a dedicated queue inside Calendar, with a counter visible across the panel. Every row answers the questions the person deciding actually has: when, who, from which channel, why it is waiting, and whose book it is. Requests without a readable time are there too, which no grid could otherwise show. From the queue you confirm, reschedule, cancel, or open the conversation the booking came from.

When you confirm, the customer finds out: the confirmation goes out on the same channel they booked on, without you having to write it. If you move or cancel a booking, you can choose to notify them the same way.

What the assistant does not do

• It never moves or cancels an existing booking on its own. Those touch somebody else's plans and remain your decisions.
• It never revives a cancelled booking. That slot may already have been resold.
• Its rules do not apply to you. If an operator records a walk-in, that booking is theirs and it stands: the approval policy governs the assistant, not your staff.