If your customers should book a rental or service from an availability calendar, then then use the Calendar booking transaction process.

Calendar transaction settings are configured when you create your Listing type. Learn more about how to configure a Listing type to suit how bookings should be made on your marketplace.

The rest of this article details how Calendar booking transactions happen for customers, providers, and operators (admins).

To make a booking, the user will (1) browse the listings and click on the desired item or service. Then, they will (2) select their preferred booking duration from the provided calendar, and see the price (3) for booking the listing for that period. Once selected, they proceed by clicking on (4) "Request to book".

The user is then taken to a separate booking page, where they are able to choose their payment method (5) and add additional information regarding the booking as a message (6). They also see the total price of the booking. When they are ready, they will click on “Confirm booking request” (7). They then get to the final page, where the booking request is confirmed (8), and there’s the option to send further messages if needed (9).

You can see screenshots of the different steps below.

Step 1: Customer browsing

Steps 2-4: Customer looking at listing view

Steps 5-7: Customer on the checkout page

Steps 8-9: Customer after checking out

Once a booking request is made, the provider must approve or reject the request. If they reject the request, the customer is notified and the hold on their card is removed. If the provider doesn't respond within six days or one day before the start of the requested booking period, then the booking request expires automatically. This ensures that customers aren't left hanging and can quickly seek out alternatives.

When a provider receives a booking, they will get an email notification and see a red notification on their marketplace interface near the Inbox button (1). Within the inbox, they have the option of seeing all the bookings and booking requests in the provider inbox (2). They can access the newest request by clicking on it (3).

This takes them to the the transaction view. Here they can also see the price breakdown including the marketplace fee (4), and either accept (5) or decline (6) the request. The provider can also send a message (7) to the customer before or after accepting/rejecting the request.

When accepting or declining the request, the conversation thread is updated (8). Both the provider and the customer can still exchange messages in the conversation thread (9).

On the customer's side, they will be able to see that the booking request has been accepted(10), and continue sending messages if needed (11).

You can see the screenshots of these steps below.

Step 1: Provider notification

Steps 2-3: Provider looking at their inbox

Steps 4-7: Provider looking at the transaction thread

Steps 8-9: Provider's transaction thread after accepting the request

Steps 10-11: Customer's transaction thread after the provider has accepted the request

Payments in the transaction are made via Stripe's payment system. The fee the customer pays is pre-authorized immediately after the customer makes the booking request. The authorized amount is then charged and paid once the provider accepts the request. The payment then is held in your marketplace Stripe account until the booking period passes or you as the operator mark it complete. Either action triggers a payout to the provider's bank account. Funds should arrive there in 7-10 business days.

Operators can intervene during a transaction at key points. In the default booking transaction process, operators have four available actions: accepting or declining a purchase request, and marking it as completed or cancelled on the user’s behalf (12).

These options are only available when the transaction is in a suitable state. You can accept or reject the request (instead of the provider doing this) after the buyer has made a booking request, and before that request has expired. You can mark a booking completed or cancel it only if a booking is accepted and before the booking period has ended. If you cancel an accepted booking, the customer is refunded the full booking amount.

These actions are taken from the Console. You need to navigate to the transaction in question, and then choose the action from the right hand side (13). The transaction needs to be in the appropriate stage for these options to become available, and you need to confirm the action you are taking through a separate window (14). Whenever you move the transaction forward, you can see confirmation that the operation was successful from the timeline and activity logs (15).

You can see screenshots of the process below.

Step 12 (optional): available operator actions in the transaction process

Step 13: Choose the operator action (here, we choose 'accept')

Step 14: Confirm the operator action

Step 13 (again): Choose the operator action (here, we choose 'operator complete')

Step 14 (again): Confirm the operator action

Step 15: See the completed transitions in the timeline and activity log

You can see how Calendar booking transactions work by testing in your marketplace. Follow the testing tutorial to learn how to create your test user, listing, and transaction to learn more about how your marketplace works.