Bookings & sessions

Every plan gives you a branded public page at your own link, where customers pick what they want, choose a date if there’s one, pay, and they’re booked — with a confirmation on screen and by email.

Your five flavours of business

When you sign up we ask what kind of business you run: training (courses & certifications), classes & workshops, tours & activities,appointments (hair, beauty, therapy, tutoring — one person at a time), orfood & drink (a menu, plus table bookings by party size and seating time). That choice quietly renames the whole app to match your trade and turns on the right tools.

Three ways bookings work

• Seats — a dated instance with a number of places (a first-aid Session, a workshop Date, a tour Date). People book a seat. Used by training, classes & workshops, and tours & activities.
• Appointments — one person at a time for a set length (a haircut, a therapy hour, a tutoring slot). Customers pick a Service, a Practitioner (or “Anyone”), and a free time slot from real availability.
• Table bookings — food & drink businesses take real bookings by party size and a seating time, chosen from the hours you set. There’s nothing to pay online — customers pay when they’re here. The Menu itself stays a browse-only showcase of dishes, with no dates and no Book button of its own.

Everything after a seat or appointment booking — payment, confirmation, reminders — works the same way; table bookings are confirmed the same way but paid in person.

Seats businesses: offerings & instances

You create the offering (the Course / Class / Experience — the thing itself, with a name, a price and a description) and schedule datedinstances of it (the Session or Date — a date, a time, a number of places, a price). Customers book a place in an instance. Training additionally carries certificate and training-body fields.

Appointment businesses: services & availability

You set up Services (name, length, price, and a buffer of tidy-up time after), and each Practitioner sets their weekly availability plus one-off exceptions (a day off, a late start). The app only offers customers real free slots — service length, existing bookings and buffers are all accounted for — so double-booking isn’t possible. Availability is read in your business’s own timezone (UK by default), so slots stay correct across British Summer Time.

Food businesses: booking hours

Set your Booking hours in Settings — the days and times you take table bookings. Customers on your page pick a party size and a seating time within those hours; there’s no price or payment attached online, that happens when they’re at the table. The Menu stays exactly what it’s always been — a display-only list of dishes, description and price, for browsing rather than booking.

Payments

Customers pay through your own Stripe account — Lili Pod never holds the card or the money, and takes no booking fee. Prices can be set to the penny. For sessions with a minimum number of attendees, payment is captured in a way that protects both sides, and an abandoned checkout releases the seat after a short window. Everything runs in test mode until you switch your own Stripe account to live keys. Table bookings are the one exception — nothing’s taken online, so there’s no card or Stripe step for a customer booking a table.

The calendar

The Calendar shows your schedule — appointment businesses see a day/week diary across their practitioners; seats businesses see the sessions grid. It’s the staff-facing view of what’s already booked, not where customers book (that’s your public page).

Certificates (training only)

After a session you can record a certificate against each attendee, tracked with renewal/refresher dates so reminders go out before they lapse. Producing the certificate itself stays with you — on an accredited course it’s the awarding body’s own document, and Lili Pod doesn’t make templates for it. The certificates screen shows a quiet mark if a booking isn’t fully paid, so you always know what you’re certifying. This is separate from the general Documents feature, which any business can switch on.