Manual bookings

• What "manual" really means

  The system flags a manual booking with an internal marker that turns off everything that would otherwise depend on the client being an InkMap user:

  • No push notification goes anywhere (there's no client account to receive it).
  • The Message button doesn't appear on the booking detail page.
  • The booking can never reach a review — the review system explicitly skips manual bookings, even if the appointment was completed.
  • There's no client-side cancellation, no policy-driven refund math, no dispute path, no warnings.

  What does still happen: the booking shows up in your Bookings tab the same way a normal booking does (Pending, Confirmed, Review, etc.), the booking counts toward your accounting summary once marked complete — or immediately if it's a past-dated booking, which lands in Completed at creation — and your studio calendar treats the time slot as taken (auto-rejecting any conflicting client requests that come in afterwards). You're treating it as a real booking on your side; the client side just doesn't exist on InkMap.

• When you'd actually use it

  Three common shapes:

  • Walk-in or phone booking — someone you've never met on the app shows up or calls. You want the appointment on your calendar and in your accounting. Log it as a manual booking before or after they come in.
  • Returning client without an app account — your existing regulars who book via Instagram DM or text. Same logic: get it onto your calendar and your books.
  • Past-appointment backfill — you finished an appointment days, weeks, or even years ago and never logged it. Pick the past date in the calendar and the booking lands as Completed immediately (no Pending → Confirmed → Mark Complete dance). Useful for onboarding from another booking system, or for cleaning up appointments you forgot to log at the time.

  Don't use a manual booking for an InkMap client who did send a request through the app — that's the normal flow, and creating a manual booking on top of it would double-book the slot.

• Where the deposit fits

  Manual bookings only support out-of-app deposits: cash, bank transfer, Revolut, PayPal, whatever — anything that doesn't go through Stripe. The Stripe checkout flow needs a real client account on the other side, so it's not an option here.

  On a future-dated manual booking the deposit field works like this:

  • Deposit Pending — you've agreed on a deposit amount but the client hasn't paid yet. The booking lands in Pending until you flip the deposit to Received.
  • Deposit Received — you've already received the deposit (cash in hand, money in your account). The booking lands straight in Confirmed.
  • No deposit at all — also lands straight in Confirmed.

  You don't have to fill in a deposit at all if it's a no-deposit booking. Note that on time-based services (piercer / laser / PMU), the deposit isn't a number you type — it's auto-summed from the per-service deposits you set in Services & Pricing, and the only choice you make in the modal is Pending vs Received. On project-based services (tattoo / body mod) you type the deposit amount yourself.

  On a past-dated manual booking the deposit field is hidden entirely. A past appointment has already happened — splitting the total into "deposit + remainder" doesn't make sense any more. Just enter the total price the client paid; the booking lands as Completed with that amount as the income on your accounting page.

  The wider deposit logic on InkMap — policy snapshots, refund eligibility, the day-7/14/21 reminder chain — is a whole separate concept that mostly applies to real client bookings, not manual ones. On a manual booking, the deposit field is just a record-keeping tool: it's an amount that says "yes, I collected this much".

• What does NOT happen

  Worth being explicit because the contrast with a normal booking is sharp:

  • No client notification. Ever. Not on create, not on edit, not on complete, not on drop.
  • No review. A manual booking can be marked complete, but it will never appear in the Review tab as Ready-to-Review on a client's side because there's no client side. The review system server-side throws "Reviews are not available for manual bookings" if anything tried.
  • No messaging. The Message button is hidden from the detail page on a manual booking — there's no conversation thread to open.
  • No dispute or warning. If something goes sideways with a walk-in, the InkMap warning system isn't involved — you'd handle it directly with the person.
  • No client lifecycle tabs. Things like "the client confirmed" or "the client cancelled" or "the client left a review" just aren't states a manual booking can reach.

• Edit, drop, or delete — pick the right one

  After a manual booking exists, you've got three different ways to change it:

  • Edit — fix a typo in the client name, change the contact, update the project details, add reference images, change the date or time. Use this for anything that's a course-correction on a booking that's still real.
  • Drop — the appointment was real, it was scheduled, but it didn't happen (no-show, you both called it off, etc.). The booking lands in your Dropped tab as a historical record. If a deposit was involved, the drop screen lets you choose Keep Deposit or Mark as Refunded before closing the booking out.
  • Delete — the booking was a mistake. You typo'd the date, you clicked Add Manual Booking by accident, the entry was test data, whatever. Delete wipes the row permanently and the booking disappears from every tab — Confirmed, Pending, Review, Dropped, accounting. You can only delete a manual booking that hasn't been marked complete yet (and on a project-based booking, no individual session can have been marked complete either) — otherwise your accounting summary already depends on it and a silent gap would be worse than the misclick.

  The choice between Drop and Delete is essentially: did the booking deserve to exist? If yes → Drop. If no → Delete.

Step by step

1. 1

   Tap Add Manual Booking on the Bookings tab

   Open the Bookings tab from the bottom bar. Scroll past the monthly calendar — the Add Manual Booking button sits at the bottom of the screen with a plus icon. If your Booking module isn't active, the button shows a lock icon instead and tapping it routes you to your subscription page.

2. 2

   Fill in the booking — what's required vs. optional

   What the modal actually needs before the Create Booking button unlocks differs slightly between time-based and project-based, but the shared minimum is more than just the client and the date.

   Required on every form:

   • Client name — whatever you'll recognise them by. First name, full name, "Walk-in 3/14", a nickname — anything goes. Visible only to you.
   • Date — the day of the appointment. Past days are selectable (within ± 5 years of today). When you tap a past date, a banner appears at the top of the modal: "Past appointment — this booking will be saved as completed and added to your accounting." That's the visual cue you're logging history rather than scheduling something new.
   • Start time — the appointment start, as hours + minutes.

   Required on time-based forms only (piercer / laser / PMU):

   • At least one service — picked from your configured services list. Each selected service must have both a duration and a price (or be flagged Free) set in Services & Pricing. If a service is missing one, the modal shows a red error banner with a link straight to Services & Pricing and the Create Booking button stays disabled. This is also where the deposit comes from on time-based — auto-summed from any selected services that have a deposit configured. End time is auto-derived; you don't pick it.

   Required on project-based forms only (tattoo / body mod):

   • Duration — hours + minutes, picked from a wheel. Determines when the appointment ends.
   • Price — total for the booking. Free-text amount on tattoo and on body-mod-without-per-service-pricing; auto-summed from selected services on body-mod-with-per-service-pricing. Either way the total has to be greater than zero before you can submit (a service flagged Free is fine).

   Everything else is optional and editable later:

   • Contact — phone, email, IG handle, anything. Untyped free-text — for your own reference.
   • Location — defaults to your current workplace; you can pick a resident studio or a guest spot you've got coming up.
   • Deposit — only shown on future-dated bookings. On time-based, the deposit amount is auto-summed from the services that have a deposit configured; you only pick Pending vs Received. On project-based, you type the deposit amount and pick the status. Past-dated bookings have no deposit field at all — just the total price the client paid.
   • Project details (tattoo + body modification only) — Style, Placement, and Size pickers, the same ones the rest of the app uses. Style is a multi-select grouped list with a search box. Placement is the body-region picker (tap a region like "Arms" or specific spots like "Forearm" / "Wrist" — you pick a region OR specific spots, not both). Size is Small / Medium / Large / XL. Piercer / laser / PMU forms don't show the Project Details card at all because their service taxonomy already encodes the placement and discipline-specific details.
   • Reference images — up to six. Available on tattoo, body modification, laser, and PMU forms. The piercer form doesn't show this — piercers don't use reference images in the normal client flow either.
   • Notes (private) — for your eyes only, doesn't show anywhere else. Available on tattoo and body modification forms.

   Once everything required is filled, tap Create Booking at the bottom of the modal. The booking gets created and lands in your Bookings tab.

3. 3

   Find your new booking in the Bookings tab

   Where the booking lands depends on what you entered:

   • Pending if you set a deposit as Pending (future-dated only) — it sits there until you flip the deposit to Received.
   • Confirmed for future-dated bookings with no deposit, or with the deposit already received.
   • Review → Completed for past-dated bookings — it goes straight there and shows up in your accounting summary immediately, with no Mark-Complete step needed.

   Tap the card to open the detail page. The header shows a purple Manual Booking badge instead of the usual @username — that's the visual marker that this isn't a normal booking. The "client" avatar is a pencil icon rather than a profile picture.

   In your Accounting page, manual booking rows are tagged with a small Manual pill next to the typed client name so you can tell at a glance which entries came from off-app appointments versus regular client bookings. The same pill shows on the studio's accounting page if you're a resident.

4. 4

   Edit anything you need to fix

   On the detail page, all of these are editable in place:

   • Client name and contact — tap the Client card near the top and edit either field. The card sits above the project description.
   • Project description, reference images, tattoo/piercing/laser/PMU details — same inline pencils as on a normal booking.
   • Date, time, price, location, services — open the session card (or the time-slot card on a piercer / laser / PMU booking), tap the field you want to change, and submit. On a normal booking these changes would go through a "propose-to-the-client → wait-for-accept" round trip; on a manual booking the change auto-confirms instantly (the button literally says Update Changes instead of Submit Proposal because there's no one to wait for).
   • Deposit amount — the deposit amount itself isn't editable after creation. If you got it wrong, your easiest path is to delete the booking and recreate it.
5. 5

   Flip the deposit to Received once you've got the money

   If the booking is sitting in Pending waiting on the deposit, scroll to the deposit card on the detail page. Tap Confirm Deposit when the money's in. The booking moves from Pending to Confirmed.

   There's no Stripe path here — InkMap isn't holding the deposit, you confirmed it directly with the client. That's the entire deposit flow on a manual booking.

6. 6

   After the appointment, mark it complete

   Only for future-dated bookings. Past-dated manual bookings are already in Completed state at creation, so you can skip this step entirely for those.

   For future-dated bookings, once the appointment date has passed the booking shifts itself to Bookings → Requests → Review → Awaiting, the same way a normal booking does. Open it and tap Mark Complete — on time-based services this is one tap with a confirm prompt; on project-based you'll get the standard actual-final-price modal so you can record the real total and who collected the payment. The mechanics here are identical to a normal booking, covered fully in Marking a booking as completed.

   The two differences worth knowing:

   • No client notification fires when you mark it complete (no client to notify).
   • No review prompt lands on a client's side after (no client side to land on). The booking goes straight to Completed in your Review tab.

   The accounting summary picks up the final price from this step the same way it does for a normal booking. The row shows the client name you typed when creating the booking, with the Manual pill next to it, so you can recognise it in your monthly summary.

   You'll also receive your own pre-appointment reminder push (1 day before and 1 hour before the appointment) so a manual booking doesn't slip your mind — same reminder a real client booking sends, just only to you, since there's no client side.

7. 7

   Drop the booking if the appointment never happened

   If the date passed and the appointment didn't take place — no-show, you both agreed to call it off, whatever — tap Mark Dropped in the Review tab (or the Drop Booking button at the bottom of the detail page before the appointment). The drop modal asks you to pick a reason.

   If a deposit was involved, the drop screen offers Keep Deposit (you keep the money — useful for no-shows) and Mark as Refunded (you tell the app you've refunded the client outside the app, and the booking closes out). Both options skip the back-and-forth client-confirmation step you'd see on a normal booking, because there's no client to confirm. The mechanics of Drop on a normal booking are in Cancelling or dropping a booking; on a manual booking the screens look the same but the deposit branches auto-resolve in one tap.

   A dropped manual booking stays in your Dropped tab as a record — if you want it gone entirely, see step 8.

8. 8

   Delete the booking only if it shouldn't exist at all

   At the bottom of the detail page, manual bookings get a Delete button next to Drop (and only there — normal client bookings don't have a Delete option). Tapping it opens a popup that explains: "This permanently removes the booking from your history — name, date, deposit record and all. It does not appear in the Dropped tab afterwards. Use Delete only for entries you created by mistake. If the appointment was real but didn't happen, use Drop instead so the record stays in your history."

   Tap Delete forever to confirm. The booking is wiped from every tab — Pending, Confirmed, Review, Dropped, accounting — and the appointment reminder is cancelled.

   Two rules on when Delete is available:

   • The booking must not be marked Completed at the booking level.
   • On a project-based booking, no individual session can be marked Completed either.

   If either of those is true, the booking already feeds your accounting summary. Use Drop instead so the historical record stays consistent.

Frequently asked questions

I just typo'd the client name. Do I have to drop the whole booking and recreate it?

No, fix it in place. The detail page has a Client card near the top with editable Name and Contact rows — tap either to edit. You can change the client name as many times as you want.

Can the client see anything I logged?

No. The client isn't on InkMap as far as this booking is concerned — there's no account on the other side, no notification, no messaging thread, no review prompt, no profile link. Everything you write on a manual booking is visible only to you (and to your studio if you're a resident, in the same way any of your normal bookings are visible to the studio owner).

I want to use Stripe to collect the deposit on a manual booking.

That's not possible — Stripe deposits need a real client account on the other end to charge. Manual bookings only support out-of-app deposits (cash, transfer, Revolut, PayPal, whatever you and the client agreed on). The deposit field on a manual booking is a record-keeping tool, not a payment trigger.

Why can't I edit the deposit amount after I create the booking?

The deposit amount on a manual booking is locked at creation because the rest of the booking state (Pending vs Confirmed, refund-eligibility hooks) keys off it. If you put the wrong amount in, the simplest path is to delete the booking and create a new one with the right number — Delete is right there at the bottom of the detail page.

I marked a manual booking as complete by mistake. Can I delete it now?

No — once a manual booking is in Completed, it's already producing a row in your accounting summary, and deleting it would create a silent gap. The Delete button hides automatically in that state. Same logic applies on project-based manual bookings the moment any individual session is marked complete: the row is in your accounting, Delete is gone. If you misclicked, the practical recourse is the same as for a normal booking — message yourself a note, accept that the line in your accounting is wrong, move on. There's no support path for reversing a Mark Complete.

Will my studio see my manual bookings?

If you're a resident at a studio, manual bookings show up on the studio calendar the same as any other booking, and the appointment counts toward the studio's accounting (with the cut split based on your arrangement). Manual booking rows on the studio's accounting page also carry the Manual pill so the studio owner can tell which entries came from off-app appointments. If you're independent, it stays on your own books only.

Can I create a manual booking for a date in the past?

Yes. Past dates are selectable directly in the calendar (within ± 5 years of today), and a banner at the top of the modal confirms the booking will be saved as Completed. You don't need to mark it complete afterwards — it's already in your Review → Completed list and feeding the accounting summary. The deposit field is hidden on past-dated bookings; you just enter the total price the client paid. Useful for migrating a year of off-app appointments from another booking system, or for backfilling appointments you forgot to log at the time.

What's the difference between Drop and Delete again?

Drop = the appointment was real but didn't happen — leaves a Dropped record in your history. Delete = the booking shouldn't have existed at all — wipes the row entirely. Drop is reversible-ish (you can also delete the Dropped record later if you change your mind); Delete is forever and the booking won't appear in any tab afterwards.