Help centre | Article

Booking requests

How organisations send you work and how you manage requests.

How organisations find you

Organisations can discover you and send booking requests through the locum directory or by opening your public profile link directly. They do not need a Sessional account.

The request form asks for the organisation details, booking information, and contact details, then lands in your dashboard once confirmed. Receiving requests is free on every plan; the Sessional pricing page shows what the paid plans add around them.

What organisations see on your profile

When an organisation views your profile, they see your name, photo, biography, primary specialty, availability calendar if published, and any optional fields you have chosen to display.

You control exactly what is visible from your profile Visibility tab.

What a booking request contains

Each booking request includes the organisation name, contact details, booking type, date and time, offered rate, and notes such as parking or system access.

Email verification

To prevent spam, every booking request requires email confirmation before it reaches your dashboard. By default the address must also be on an approved NHS domain. You control this: you can turn the NHS-domain requirement off in your profile, and you can add your own trusted domains to the allowlist, which is how private clinics and agencies you already work with get through.

Note

Every booking request in your dashboard has confirmed control of the address it came from. Whether that address also has to be an NHS one is your setting, so if you have relaxed it or added your own domains, requests from those will reach you too.

Request lifecycle

A request arrives as Submitted and you either accept it or decline it; those are the two actions on the Requests tab of your Sessions or Shifts page. Accepting asks you to confirm, then creates a confirmed booking, with the terms shown beside the Accept button, updates your availability and emails the organisation. Before you accept, the request card warns you if the date has already passed, if you marked that time unavailable on your availability calendar, or if it overlaps a booking you already have; an overlapping request is refused until the existing booking is cancelled or moved. The organisation must confirm its request by email within 14 days of sending it, or the confirmation link expires and they send a new one. A confirmation link that has already been used says the request is confirmed and shows its details; it does not confirm anything twice.

Note

On Basic, accepting a request creates a booking, so it uses one of your 3 bookings for the month. Once the month's allowance is used, Accept is refused until next month or until you upgrade. Receiving and declining requests is never limited.

Declining a request

If a request does not suit you, press Decline request and confirm. Sessional emails the person who sent the request to say you are not able to take it. The email is a fixed, polite note: you cannot add your own message to it, so if you want to explain or suggest another date, write to them separately. Declining has no negative effect on your profile or directory ranking.

No marketplace fees

Sessional is not an agency or marketplace. There are no commission fees, placement charges, or per-booking costs. Organisations book you directly and you keep 100% of your agreed rate.

Frequently asked questions

Can I negotiate the rate on a locum booking request before accepting?

Not inside the request itself. A request can only be accepted as it stands or declined. If the rate or times are not right, contact the organisation directly using the details on the request and ask them to send a new one, or accept and then correct the rate on the booking with Edit rate and times once you have both agreed it.

What if I need to cancel a locum booking after accepting it?

Once accepted, a booking is created. You can cancel the booking from your Sessions or Shifts list: the cancel panel asks who cancelled and says who will be emailed. That is the organisation's saved contact or, when none is saved, the person who sent the booking request. If neither has an email address, nobody is emailed and the panel tells you to let them know yourself. Cancellations are recorded in your audit trail.

Do organisations need a Sessional account to send booking requests?

No. Organisations submit booking requests through a simple public form on your profile.

Can I receive booking requests on the Basic plan?

Yes. Receiving booking requests is available on all plans, including Basic, and there is no limit on how many you can receive. Accepting one creates a booking, which counts towards Basic's monthly booking allowance, so accepting is refused once that allowance is used.