Smart waitlist and group bookings

We've shipped smart waitlist and group bookings to every BookAppointment account — no upgrade, no setup fee, and nothing to install. Here's exactly what changed and how to start using it.

What's new

• Customers can now join a waitlist for any day from the booking page, choosing a preferred time window (any time, morning, afternoon or evening), party size and notes.
• When a booking is cancelled — by the customer or by you from the calendar — everyone on the waitlist whose preferred window covers the freed time is notified automatically by branded email, plus SMS if they opted in.
• New Waitlist page in the admin area: see who is waiting for each day, filter by status, mark entries as booked, remove them, or manually offer a specific date and time to one customer.
• Waitlist notification templates are editable under Notifications > Templates, like every other message.
• Group bookings: on the review step customers can add extra people — a child, partner or friend — each with their own service. We book them as close to your time as possible with another available team member and keep them together under one reservation.
• Group members show on the calendar and booking list with the guest's name, so you know who is who on the day.

Why it matters

Every release we ship comes from real UK businesses telling us what slows their day down. This one lands in the parts of the system you already use, so there's no new tool to learn — open your dashboard and it's there.

How to start using it

1. Sign in to your BookAppointment dashboard.
2. Look for the new options described above — they're switched on for every plan.
3. Not sure where to begin? Our help centre walks through each step, or you can reply to any email from us and we'll set it up with you.

If something you need still isn't here, tell us: every request goes on our public ideas board where other businesses can back it, and we email you the day it's built.