Booking management

A booking is a single period of clinical work at an organisation. Sessional tracks bookings through their full lifecycle so you always know what has been worked, invoiced, and paid.

Every booking starts the same way and ends on Paid. What happens between Delivered and Paid depends on the billing mode of the booking:

1. Offered: a booking has been proposed or you have noted availability
2. Confirmed: both parties have agreed to the booking
3. Delivered: you have completed the clinical work
4. Settlement: from Delivered, the path splits.
   • Self-invoiced bookings move through Invoice ready and Invoiced on the way to Paid. You generate the PDF, send it, and track payment.
   • Agency-managed and PAYE at source bookings skip the invoice steps entirely. The agency or umbrella handles billing with the end client; you mark the booking Paid when the settlement arrives in your bank.
5. Paid: payment has been received
6. Cancelled: the booking was cancelled before delivery

Each booking records the organisation name, date, start and end times, agreed rate, site notes, and any terms. These details stay with the booking throughout its lifecycle and carry through to invoicing and pension form generation.

How a booking is priced depends on which rate type you choose:

• Session rate: a flat fee for the whole booking. The total is the rate, however long the booking runs.
• Hourly rate: the total is the rate multiplied by the hours worked. If the booking overruns or finishes early, you can adjust the hours after delivery and before invoicing.

Most professions bill one way and see a single rate field. Where both are normal in practice, including GPs, dentists, psychiatrists and optometrists, the booking form shows a toggle and opens on the session rate. GPs, for example, usually bill a session rate for practice surgeries but an hourly rate for out-of-hours and urgent care work.

Bookings can be created in three ways:

• From a booking request: when you accept an organisation's request, a confirmed booking is created automatically
• Manually: add a booking directly from your dashboard with the organisation, date, times, and rate
• In bulk, from a CSV: import many past or future sessions at once from a spreadsheet, see below

If you have a run of past or future sessions to log, add them all at once from a spreadsheet rather than one at a time. Open Bulk add sessions→, then upload or paste a CSV.

• Start from the downloadable template so your columns are in the right order.
• Required columns are organisation, date, start time, end time, and rate. Dates can be YYYY-MM-DD or DD/MM/YYYY.
• Optional columns cover the contact name and email, rate type, billing mode, role context, and notes. Leave billing mode blank and the session is treated as self-invoiced, so it comes in ready to invoice.
• Every row is checked before anything is saved, and any row with a problem is flagged so you can fix it before importing.

Open a booking from the Bookings list to reach its detail page. Everything you can change lives under Actions:

• Edit rate and times: correct the agreed rate, and the start and end of the booking. The panel shows what the booking was worth before and what it will be worth after, so you can check the figure before saving.
• Edit context: change how you were paid (self-invoiced, agency-managed, PAYE at source), the company structure the work ran under, and the role you worked.
• Adjust hours: on an hourly booking that is delivered and not yet invoiced, record the hours you actually worked when a shift overran or finished early.

Your earnings, tax reserve, pension figures and reports are all calculated from the booking itself rather than stored separately, so they update the moment you save a correction. There is nothing else to reconcile.

Cancelling and deleting are different actions for different situations:

• Cancel a booking that was genuinely agreed and then called off. It moves to Cancelled, stays in your records, releases the availability slot, and the organisation is emailed. If your cancellation terms apply you can still raise a cancellation fee.
• Delete a booking that should never have existed: a duplicate, or an entry with the wrong details that you would rather start again from. It is removed from your records entirely, and the organisation is not notified.

Delete sits at the foot of the booking detail page and asks you to confirm first. Any expenses you logged against the booking are kept, because the money was still spent. A booking that is already on an invoice cannot be deleted; void the invoice first.

Use the filters at the top of the Bookings page to narrow your list:

• Status: filter by lifecycle state (confirmed, delivered, invoiced, paid, cancelled)
• Organisation: show bookings for a specific organisation
• Date range: set a start and end date to view bookings within a specific period

Combined filters work together, so you can view all delivered bookings at a particular organisation within a given month.

The top of the Bookings page shows summary cards giving you an at-a-glance overview:

• Total bookings: the total number of bookings matching your current filters
• Upcoming: confirmed bookings with a future date
• Delivered: bookings completed and ready for invoicing
• Total earned: the combined value of paid bookings

Export your booking data as a CSV file for use in spreadsheets or accounting software. The export respects your current filters, so you can export all bookings or just a filtered subset. The CSV includes booking date, organisation, times, rate, status, and invoice reference where applicable.

Select multiple delivered bookings from the same organisation using the checkboxes, then click "Invoice N bookings" to create a single invoice covering all of them. This saves time when you have worked several bookings at the same organisation within a billing period.

A booking schedule is a written confirmation of one or more agreed bookings and their terms that you can send to an organisation before the work, separate from invoicing. Select bookings from a single organisation with the checkboxes, then:

• Download schedule: generate a PDF of the run to keep or share yourself
• Send schedule: email the organisation the PDF plus a no-account link to view and acknowledge the whole run in one step

Every schedule you have sent appears in the Booking schedules sent panel at the foot of the Bookings page, with its reference, the organisation, the sent date, and whether it has been acknowledged.

When creating a booking, you can choose:

• Payment terms: 7, 14, 28, 30, 45, or 60 days from invoice date
• Cancellation terms: the “Standard” option uses the default notice period for your registered profession (28/7 sliding scale for GPs, 3 working days for pharmacists and optometrists, 24 hours for nurses and most allied health professions, 7 days for dentists and psychiatrists). Universal alternatives include a 28/7 sliding scale, 14-day cutoff, 48-hour notice, 24-hour notice, no fee, or custom terms.

Your defaults are set in your profile and pre-populate each new booking. The booking terms summary updates as you change selections. These terms carry through to invoices. The payment deadline and any cancellation fees are calculated from what you chose.

If a booking is cancelled and your agreed cancellation terms apply, you can generate a cancellation fee invoice from the invoices page. The invoice will include the cancellation terms and the booking details. You can also choose to waive the fee if you prefer not to charge.

When a booking is confirmed (via an accepted booking request), both you and the organisation contact receive a confirmation email with the booking details, date, times, and rate.

When you confirm a booking, the availability calendar→ updates automatically based on the booking times:

• A morning booking marks the AM slot as booked
• An afternoon booking marks the PM slot as booked
• A full-day booking marks the entire day as booked

If a booking is cancelled, the slot is released back to available. You never need to manually update your calendar for confirmed or cancelled bookings.