What's a recurring booking?
A recurring booking is a schedule you set up once for a customer. Muddy uses it to create bookings ahead of time, repeating weekly, monthly or yearly. Each one is a normal booking: confirmed when it's created and invoiced like any other.
It isn't a subscription and has no billing of its own. The bookings are invoiced on whatever schedule you already use, so set up your invoicing settings before you publish a recurring booking (go to Settings, then Invoicing).
Step 1: Switch on recurring bookings
Recurring bookings are off by default.
- Go to Settings.
- Under Bookings, click Recurring bookings.
Enable recurring bookings (1)
The main switch. When it's on, recurring bookings appear across the app and Muddy creates bookings from your schedules. When it's off, they're hidden and no bookings are created, even from schedules you've already set up.
Materialisation cadence (2)
How often Muddy creates the next batch of bookings:
- Weekly: runs about once a week and keeps roughly two weeks of bookings created ahead.
- Monthly: runs about once a month and keeps roughly two months ahead.
This only controls when bookings are created, and applies to your whole account. It has nothing to do with how often a customer's bookings happen. A customer can have a weekly schedule whichever cadence you pick here.
Day of month (only when cadence is set to Monthly)
For Monthly, pick the day the run happens: 1st, 10th, 15th, 25th or 28th. It stops at the 28th so every month has the day.
Deferred payment reminder lead time
If you use deferred payment for recurring bookings, Muddy can send a reminder to the customer before their booking is auto-cancelled for non-payment. Set how far ahead (in days or hours) the reminder goes out. To choose which channels the reminder uses, or to turn it off entirely, go to Notification settings.
Click Save.
Step 2: Create a recurring booking
You can start one from:
- The Recurring bookings page (go to Bookings in the left-hand menu, then click Recurring bookings at the top), by clicking Create recurring booking (1)
- A customer's page, by scrolling to Recurring bookings and clicking Create. The customer is filled in for you
The form
The form has three steps along the top: Configure, Review & publish and Live. Most of the work is in Configure.
Customer (1)
The customer the schedule is for. Every booking it creates is theirs.
Service (2)
The type of booking, such as "Private hire" or "Puppy lesson". Services are set up in Settings, then Services. See Setting up your offerings for details on how to create and configure them.
Resource (3)
The location or resource the customer is booking, such as a specific field or groomer. Resources are set up in Settings, then Resources. See Setting up your offerings for details.
Together, the service and resource determine which offering is used. Each offering has its own prices, opening times and booking rules. If you haven't yet set up an offering that combines the service and resource you want, do that first under Offerings in the left-hand menu. See Setting up your offerings.
Repeat every (4)
How often bookings repeat:
- Week: pick the days of the week and the interval, such as every week or every 2 weeks.
- Month: see the monthly options below.
- Year: pick the month, then a day of the month or day of the week within it.
Weekly options
- Interval: the number of weeks between cycles. 2 means fortnightly.
- Days of the week: one or more days. A booking is created for each day you pick, every cycle.
Monthly and yearly options
- Day of month: a date from the 1st to the 31st, or Last day. In months without that date, the booking falls on the last day of the month.
- Day of week: a position (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, Last or 2nd to last) and a day. For example, "2nd Tuesday" is the second Tuesday of every month.
Start time
When each booking starts.
Duration
How long each booking lasts. This can affect the price.
Dates, cycles, and pricing
Start ASAP (1)
On: the schedule starts today. Off: pick a start date.
Runs indefinitely (2)
On: no end date. Off: pick the date after which no more bookings are created.
Limit cycles (3)
On: stop after a set number of cycles. For example, 3 cycles of a weekly Mon/Wed/Fri schedule is 3 weeks and 9 bookings.
Override price (4)
Normally each booking uses your usual pricing, based on the service and resource (the offering), duration, number of dogs and any price adjustments.
Switch on Override price to charge a fixed amount for every booking instead:
- Enter the amount in Override price.
- Use Amount includes tax to say whether the amount includes tax.
Price adjustments still apply. To stop an adjustment applying to recurring bookings, add an "Is not a recurring booking" rule to it.
A fixed price switches off customer self-service. Customers can't reschedule, edit or cancel any of the bookings online, and the switches below are locked. This is deliberate: a fixed price is an agreement between you and the customer, and letting them change bookings partway through could undo it. Remove the override to unlock the switches.
Payment, animals, and self-service
Payment collection method (1)
Choose how each booking created by this schedule is paid:
- Invoice: bookings are confirmed without payment and included in your next invoice run.
- Deferred: bookings are confirmed without payment, and you collect payment yourself after confirmation. You can set unpaid bookings to cancel automatically before they start.
Whichever you choose, make sure your invoicing settings are configured. Recurring bookings are never charged upfront at the time of booking.
Number of dogs (2)
Used for every booking and to work out the price. With an override price it's only for your records and doesn't change the amount.
Commercial booking (3)
Switch this on if the booking is for a commercial customer. When enabled, commercial pricing rates from the offering's pricing are applied to each occurrence.
Customer self-service (when there's no override)
Without an override price, you choose what customers can do with their bookings:
- Allow customer to reschedule an occurrence: when off, only you can move a booking.
- Allow customer to edit an occurrence's details: when off, only you can change a booking's details.
- Allow customer to cancel an occurrence: when off, only you can cancel a booking.
- Release slots when occurrences are cancelled or rescheduled: when off, the slot stays held for the customer after they cancel or reschedule.
All of these are off by default, so set them for each schedule.
Step 3: Check the preview and publish
Scroll down to Schedule preview. It's a 12-month calendar with every planned booking marked. Any that clash with an existing booking, a block out or a closure are flagged, so you can fix them before going live.
When you're happy:
- Click Save as draft to keep it without publishing. You can edit or delete a draft at any time.
- Or go to Review & publish and confirm. Once published, you can only change the pricing and customer permissions. The dates, frequency, service and resource are fixed.
Managing an existing recurring booking
The list
Go to Bookings in the left-hand menu, then click Recurring bookings at the top. You can filter by customer, resource, service, schedule pattern, time, effective date and status.
The detail page
Click a recurring booking to open it. Its calendar shows:
- Successfully created bookings: bookings that have been created and confirmed.
- Future scheduled occurrences: dates that will be created on the next run.
- Failures: dates where a booking couldn't be created, for example because the slot was taken, you were closed or a block out was in the way. Each shows the reason, and you can retry it from here.
What you can do at each stage
- Draft: change anything, or delete it.
- Published: change the pricing and customer permissions only.
- Cancelling: you'll be asked whether to cancel the upcoming bookings it has already created as well.
Cancelling can't be undone. To start again, you'll need to set up a new recurring booking.
Payment and invoicing
Recurring bookings are never charged when the booking is created. With Invoice, each booking is confirmed and waits to be picked up by your next invoice run. With Deferred, you collect payment after confirmation.
Check your invoicing settings before publishing your first recurring booking. Go to Settings, then Invoicing, to set your schedule, payment terms and other options. See Invoicing and automatic payments for details.
Notifications
You and your customer are both notified at the points below, using your notification templates and the channels (email, SMS, WhatsApp) set up in Notifications settings.
When a batch of bookings is generated successfully
- Your customer gets Your recurring bookings, listing the new bookings, their references and the period covered.
- You get N occurrence(s) scheduled, with the same details.
When some bookings in the batch couldn't be created
For example, because the slot was taken, you were closed or a block out was in the way.
- Your customer gets There was an issue with your recurring bookings, with an Unavailable dates section listing the failures.
- You get N could not be scheduled if all failed, or N scheduled, M could not be scheduled if some worked, with the reasons.
When a recurring booking is cancelled
- Your customer gets Your recurring booking has been cancelled, listing the schedule and any upcoming bookings cancelled with it.
- You get Recurring booking cancelled, with the same details.
Tips and things to watch out for
- Set up your offerings first. A recurring booking needs an existing offering (a service at a resource) with the right prices and opening times in place before you create the schedule. See Setting up your offerings.
- Your account might use different words. Dogs is the default, but your account might say "cats" or another animal. To change them, go to Settings, then Terminology. See Customizing app terminology.
- Check your price adjustments. Decide whether each one should apply to recurring bookings.
- The materialisation cadence is account-wide. Every recurring booking is created on the same cadence.
- Drafts are safe to leave. A draft creates no bookings and sends no notifications until you publish it.