"Tentative" Bookings

Tentative Bookings in MIDAS

Not every booking is confirmed at the point it is created. A client enquires about a room, you hold it while they check with colleagues, and either they confirm or they don't. Without a way to flag this status, the room is either blocked (preventing other bookings that might have materialised) or left unbooked (risking losing the enquiry).

MIDAS supports tentative bookings as a distinct status, sitting between a request and a confirmed booking.

How tentative bookings work

A tentative booking reserves the space in the same way a confirmed booking does - it will show as unavailable to other users, preventing conflicts. The difference is that it carries an expiry: if it is not confirmed within a configured time period, it automatically cancels itself and the space becomes available again.

Expiry rules

You can configure expiry based on two criteria:

• Time after creation - the tentative booking expires a set number of hours or days after it was created, if not confirmed
• Time before the booking starts - the tentative booking expires if it has not been confirmed by a certain point before the booking date, regardless of when it was created

Both rules can run simultaneously - whichever triggers first causes the expiry.

Notifications

MIDAS can notify the relevant staff when a tentative booking is approaching expiry, giving them a chance to follow up with the client before the hold is lost. When a tentative booking expires or is confirmed, the relevant parties can receive email notifications.

Visibility in the booking grid

Tentative bookings are displayed differently in the booking grid, making it easy to see at a glance which holds are firm and which are provisional. Staff can click through to see the details and convert a tentative booking to confirmed when the client commits.

→ Start a free trial and test tentative bookings with your own availability configuration.