Instant confirmation is the right default for almost every session type: it is what makes a booking page faster than an email exchange in the first place. But there are situations where locking in a slot the moment someone picks it is actually the wrong move, and those are exactly the cases booking approval exists for.
When approval earns its friction
- •High-value or high-effort sessions where you want to see who is asking before you commit real prep time, a strategy consultation or a VIP intensive.
- •Sessions where the meeting location genuinely depends on who is booking, in person for a local client, a call for a remote one, and you want to decide that at review time rather than guess in advance.
- •Any session type where a bad-fit booking costs you more than a delayed confirmation costs the guest.
What it costs you
Every approval step is friction, and friction loses bookings, particularly for anything that reads as low-stakes to the visitor. A Quick Intro Call or a Coffee Chat should almost never require approval; making a fifteen-minute favor wait on your review defeats the point of it being fifteen minutes.
How it works in Schedulera
Turn on approval per session type. A request lands in your dashboard rather than confirming instantly, and you choose the meeting location at the moment you approve it, so you are never guessing before you have actually seen who booked. It applies to single, fixed-host session types today, recurring and round-robin bookings stay instant.
The honest rule of thumb
If you would say yes to almost anyone who books, skip approval and keep the instant confirmation. If you regularly want to see who is asking before you agree, turn it on for that one session type and leave everything else instant. Start free and set it up in a minute either way.