Set up a booking form

Forms & Bookings lets visitors book a course, a trip, a class or an appointment on your site. Each booking lands in your Bookings inbox and you get an email. It is an app, so it is included in Pro, Business and Enterprise, with nothing extra to pay.

Install the app

1. Open Settings for the site, then Apps.
2. On the Available tab, click Install on Forms & Bookings.
3. Read the list of what it can do, then click Install.

Three pages appear in the editor menu, below Users: Bookings, Forms and Schedules. Each also has a link on the app's row in Apps, and Bookings opens when the install finishes.

Create a form

1. Open Forms and click New form.
2. Pick a starting point: Course booking, Trip registration, Appointment request, Class sign-up, Order enquiry, Contact, or Blank form. A template holds questions only. It never holds your prices or dates.
3. Type a Form name and click Create form.

The form opens in the builder. The Fields tab has your questions on the left, a live preview in the middle and the settings of the selected question on the right.

Add and change questions

• Click Add a field and choose a type. They are grouped as Basic, Choices, Dates and bookings, and Layout. A new question opens with its name selected, so just type your own words over it.
• Name, Email, Phone and Consent start as required. Click a question to change its wording, add Help text (shown under the question) or switch Required on or off.
• In a choice question, type the first option and press Enter to get the next one. To add many at once, copy a list (one choice per line) and paste it into an option box: each line becomes its own choice.
• Drag questions to reorder them, or open Advanced, then use Move up and Move down. Advanced also holds the technical settings (a question's id and type), which most people never need.
• Remove field takes a question off the form. Bookings you already have are not changed.

Show a question only sometimes

Under Show this question, choose Only when an earlier answer matches. For example, show "Group leader's full name" only when the answer to "Do you have a group leader?" is Yes. A question can only depend on one that comes before it.

Consent, headings and notes

• Consent is the terms box. Add a link address (it must start with https://) and the link words. You can show it as a tick box, or as one sentence above the send button: "By sending, you agree to your link words."
• Heading splits a long form into parts. Switch on Start collapsed to hide the questions under it behind a "+" button. Those questions must all be optional.
• Note adds a line of text for visitors with no answer box.

Ask for a photo or a file

1. Click Add a field, then File upload.
2. Write the question, for example "Photo for your certification card".
3. Switch Required on only if you cannot go ahead without it.

A visitor can attach one file per question. It must be a JPG, PNG, HEIC or PDF, up to 5 MB. Files are private: only you and your team can open them, from the booking. See Privacy and spam protection for bookings before you ask for an ID or passport.

Limit places

• For a plain choice (a dropdown or a one-answer list), fill in Places next to an option. When the places are used up, the option shows as full and cannot be picked.
• For dates that repeat, such as a trip every second Friday, use a schedule instead.

Connect dates with a schedule

A schedule is a list of real dates that one or more forms can share.

1. Open Schedules and click New schedule.
2. Give it a Name and choose a Kind: Trip or event (repeating departures, can last several days), Course intake (several sessions in each intake, one booking covers all) or Appointment hours (weekly opening hours, the visitor picks a day and a time).
3. Set when it runs: when the first one starts and ends, how it Repeats, when to Stop, Places per date, Stop taking bookings (how long before the start) and Show on the website (how far ahead visitors can see).
4. Check the Upcoming dates list. These are the real dates visitors see. You can change the places or times of one date, and add a one-off date.
5. Under Closed dates, add days or ranges when nothing runs. Visitors never see the reason. Switch on Every year for seasons and holidays.

Then, in your form, Add a field, choose Date from a schedule, and pick the schedule under Dates come from. Two forms that use the same schedule share its places, so a date cannot be booked twice over.

If you close or move a date that already has bookings, the app asks first whether to keep those bookings or cancel them and email each person. Nothing is refunded automatically.

Set the words around the form

Open the Settings tab to change the Send button, the Note under the submit button, the Default country code, the Thank-you title, the Thank-you message and up to four What happens next steps. To greet the person by name, click a question name under Thank-you title, for example to make "Thank you, {First name}".

When your form has an email question, the confirmation email to your customer is switched on for you. You can change or turn it off under Emails and payment.

Open Emails and payment to choose who gets the emails and to add payment instructions, bank details, a PayNow QR image and a WhatsApp button. See Booking emails.

Publish the form

1. Click Preview to see it as a visitor will.
2. Click Publish.

The label next to the buttons shows Draft, Published, or Draft changes when you have edited a published form. Visitors see the published version until you click Publish again.

Put the form on a page

1. Open the page in the editor and add the Booking form block, from the Forms group.
2. In its settings, open the Form list and choose your form by name.
3. Publish the site.

The form only shows once it is published. Under Settings, then Advanced, in the form builder there is also a code snippet for pasting the form into an HTML block by hand.

Common questions

I changed the form but visitors still see the old one. Click Publish in the form builder, then publish the site if you also changed the page.

Can I delete a form? Not from the Forms page today. Leave it as a draft, or remove the block from the page.

Do bookings use my AI credits? No. Bookings do not use credits.