Customer accounts & bookings

Your customers can book as a guest or with an account - both work side by side. Understanding the difference helps you answer the most common questions your customers will ask.

What this means for your business

• Lower friction to book - guests don't need a password, which means more completed bookings from first-time or one-off visitors. This is best practice.
• Repeat customers self-serve - account holders see all their bookings, memberships, and gift voucher balances in one place. Fewer "can you move me to Thursday?" emails for you.
• No lost history - when a guest later signs up with the same email, every past booking appears in their new account automatically.
• Members always have accounts - memberships are tied to a recurring subscription, so signing up for one creates an account by default.

How each flow works

Guest checkout

Customer enters name, email, and payment - done. Their confirmation email includes a link to manage their booking - change the date, add or remove spaces, or cancel - this can all be done without an account. There's also a Find booking link in the booking page menu, which will send details of their upcoming bookings, and a prompt for repeat guests to create an account.

With an account

Same flow on the first booking, with a prompt to create an account on the end. When logged in, their bookings are displayed at the top of the booking calendar

Managing customer data

From the admin customers page you can view anyone's full booking history, see membership status, and delete a customer record on request.

To act on a single booking, click it in that history. Session opens it on the bookings page with the booking's details panel already showing, so you can cancel, refund, move it to another date or check the customer in without hunting for the right day first. Cancelled bookings aren't clickable - there's nothing left to manage on them.

Opening a customer's record also lets you act on their membership and credits: cancel or refund a payment on their membership (see refunds), and adjust their session credits - handy for putting right a duplicate charge or a miscount from a migration.

Each bundle or voucher in a customer's record shows its code (for example GV-A1B2C) beneath the name, so you can tell apart several that share the same name - tap it to copy. The customer sees a shortened version of the same code in their own account under Session credits, which is useful when they get in touch to ask about a specific credit.

Correcting a mistyped email address

If a customer's emails are bouncing, the usual cause is a typo they made at checkout. Open their record, fix the Email field and save - Session clears the bounced marker at the same time, so your emails start reaching them again on the next send.

Sometimes the corrected address is already on a second record - typically a contact you brought in from a mailing list, sitting on the correctly-spelled address while their bookings sit on the typo. When that second record has no bookings of its own, Session merges it into the customer you're editing and carries their marketing preferences across, then confirms what it merged. The customer ends up as one record with their booking history intact.

If either record had unsubscribed from your marketing, the merged customer stays unsubscribed - an opt-out is never undone by a merge.

Common questions

1. I can't find my confirmation email. This is often due to a mistyped email address. Search for their booking or customer name/email first, and update if needed. Occasionally emails will end up in spam, which is also worth them searching.

2. I booked as a guest but want an account now. They sign up with the same email. Past bookings merge automatically - nothing for you to do.

3. I signed in but my old bookings aren't showing. Usually a typo or different capitalisation between the two emails. Check the admin customer list for a near-match and update the email on the older record.

4. Saving an email says it's already used by another customer. Every email address belongs to one customer record, so the address you're typing is on a second record. If that record is a mailing-list contact with no bookings, Session merges it in for you automatically. If it has its own bookings or a sign-in account, the message names it - open it to check whether it's the same person, and get in touch if the two records need merging.

5. Do I need an account to book? No - guest checkout is always available. Accounts are only required for memberships.

6. How do I cancel? Every confirmation email has a Manage booking link. If the cancellation window has passed, the buttons are disabled and they'll need to contact you directly.