Bookings and approvals

A booking is a promise to a customer that a specific car will be available at a specific time. DriveDesk supports three shapes of that promise, and each one behaves differently downstream.

The three booking types

Time slots

Every booking has a window, and within it each customer can have their own planned visit slot. On a home visit with three stops, each household gets its own time. On an event, each attendee does. A slot must fall inside the booking's window — the form will not let you save one that does not.

Picking a vehicle

• Only vehicles flagged as available for test drives appear — plain inventory is excluded.
• A vehicle under maintenance still appears, but with the reason shown, so you know why you cannot pick it rather than wondering where it went.
• Blocked windows on a vehicle's calendar (servicing, holds, reservations) keep it out of conflicting slots.

Approval

Bookings created by someone who holds Approve tasks are approved the moment they are saved. Everyone else's bookings wait for a decision. This is the control point: until a booking is approved, its gate pass is not armed, the staff assignment is not live, and no confirmation goes to the customer.

1. 1

   It waits

   The approver opens the booking and sees an awaiting-approval panel with the full details and who submitted it.

2. 2

   Approve

   Approving with an optional comment flips the status, arms the gate pass, activates the assignment and notifies the submitter.

3. 3

   Or reject

   Rejecting requires a comment. The submitter is told why, and can fix the booking and resubmit it to the approver pool.

4. 4

   Everything is recorded

   Every submission, resubmission, decision and standalone comment is appended to a thread on the booking that nobody can edit or delete.

Turning enquiries into bookings

Opening a lead and choosing 'Book a slot' pre-fills the booking form from the enquiry: the customer's name on the first stop, their preferred date and slot anchored into the booking window so it stays selectable, and the originating enquiry already ticked. One booking can satisfy several enquiries at once — useful when a multi-stop home visit or an event covers a group of leads.

Reminders, no-shows and changes

• Each scheduled booking gets exactly one reminder to the primary customer about two hours before the slot. It never sends twice.
• A scheduled booking whose slot passed by more than about two hours with no gate scan is marked a no-show automatically, and its staff assignment moves out of the active list.
• Customers can reschedule or cancel themselves through a personal link — see Customer communications.
• A reschedule request does not move the slot on its own. A manager approves it, and only then does the slot change.

Discarding a booking

A booking that has not gone anywhere yet can be permanently discarded, taking its gate pass and any tracking records with it. Once a vehicle has actually left the gate, discard is no longer the right tool — cancel or complete the trip instead so the history survives.