Updating a confirmed booking

• What's editable on each model

  The two models split cleanly:

  • Project-based (tattoo, body modification) — the practitioner can re-propose any of the six per-session fields at any time, on any session, including ones that are already green. The client can't initiate a change of their own; they can only respond to the practitioner's proposal with Accept or Reject. On any field but the deposit, the Reject button is only available while a proposal is pending — once a field is green, the client has no button to walk it back. To change anything from the client's side, the path is to message the practitioner and ask them to re-propose.
  • Time-based (piercer, permanent makeup, laser) — nothing on a confirmed booking is editable in-app. The practitioner has no proposal modals; the client has no Accept/Reject buttons because there's nothing left to negotiate. Either side that wants a change has to drop / cancel and start a fresh booking.

• What flips when a confirmed booking is re-proposed

  This section is project-based only — it's the part of the model that catches new readers off-guard.

  • The booking goes back to Pending. The moment the practitioner taps Submit Proposal, the booking-level status flips from Confirmed to Pending and the booking re-appears under Bookings → Requests → Pending. The original Confirmed card stays around for any other sessions of the same booking that are still locked in — so a multi-session project can show up in both tabs at the same time. See Booking statuses for the dual-card detail.
  • The touched field flips out of green on both sides. It shows a Pending badge — yellow for the practitioner (waiting on the client) and orange for the client (their turn to accept or reject). Same colour code as a fresh negotiation. If the client rejects the new value, the field turns red on both sides and the practitioner has to propose another one. The full dot-and-badge taxonomy is in Session statuses, explained.
  • Date, Time, and Duration travel as a group after a rejection. If any of those three is currently red on the session (because the client rejected it earlier or because a proposed date passed without confirmation), re-proposing one of the three forces the other two to be re-submitted along with it. The bundle exists because all three together describe a single appointment slot — it doesn't make sense to confirm a new date but keep yesterday's time.
  • The cancellation policy stays frozen. The deposit-refund rules attached to the booking were snapshotted onto it the day the client submitted, and a re-proposal does not refresh that snapshot. If the practitioner tightened or loosened their Policies & Legal card later, the booking still runs on the version it was created with. See Deposit rules and refund eligibility.
  • Once a deposit is sent or received, the deposit field is locked. A practitioner who wants to change the deposit amount after the client has marked it sent or paid via Stripe doesn't have a re-propose path — the field row is greyed out and the per-field modal won't open. The only way to reset the amount is to drop the session and let the client re-book.

• Update or cancel?

  On project-based bookings, a small change is a re-proposal: shifting a date by a couple of days, raising the price after a closer look at the reference, splitting one long session into two. The booking flips to Pending, the client agrees, the booking flips back to Confirmed, and life goes on. A larger change — different practitioner, different studio, different project entirely — isn't an update; it's a fresh booking. The collector cancels the old one (or the practitioner drops it), and a new request goes in.

  On time-based bookings, every change is a cancel-and-re-book. There is no smaller "update" available, and the friction is real: a paid deposit has to be refunded before the new booking can be paid for. Both sides should read the deposit step on the cancellation article so neither is surprised by the refund flow.

Step by step

1. 1

   You can't initiate a change yourself — message the practitioner first

   On a project-based booking, the Accept and Reject buttons on each field are only visible while the practitioner has a fresh proposal sitting on it. Once a field is green, the Reject button disappears — you have no button to walk back a confirmation, by design.

   So if you want a confirmed date moved, a session split in two, the price re-checked, or the location changed, the path is to open the booking, tap Message in the header, and ask the practitioner to re-propose. They have a pencil icon on every field on their side and can re-open any of them at any time. There's no "request a change" button on your side, and writing "let's move it to Tuesday" in the DM is faster anyway.

2. 2

   Read the new proposal and pick Accept or Reject

   When the practitioner submits, you get a push notification and the booking moves back to Bookings → Requests → Pending — even if it was in Confirmed five minutes earlier. If other sessions of a multi-session booking are still locked in, the booking keeps a card under Confirmed as well; both cards open the same detail page.

   Open the booking and scroll to the field that was re-proposed. The icon on the compact card and the field-row badge are both orange — your turn to act. Use the Accept / Reject buttons under the field. If the practitioner re-proposed a date and the time and duration were already locked, the time and duration auto-reset to pending too. The appointment slot is treated as one decision, not three.

3. 3

   On a time-based booking, the only path is to cancel and re-book

   The piercing, permanent makeup, and laser model has no in-app way to edit a confirmed appointment. There's no per-field modal, no proposal flow, no Reschedule button anywhere. If you want to move your confirmed slot, message the practitioner first if you'd like to coordinate, then cancel the booking from the booking detail page (the Cancel button is at the bottom). Once it's cancelled, you can submit a fresh request for the new slot.

   If a deposit was already paid, cancellation runs the refund eligibility from the policy snapshotted on your booking — same math as any other cancellation. The full walk-through is in Cancelling or dropping a booking.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the booking go back to Pending the moment I re-propose a single field? Doesn't that "unconfirm" everything?

Yes — that's by design. Pending is the system's signal to both sides that something is open and needs a decision: the client gets the right notification framing, the right Accept/Reject UI, and the booking lands in their Pending tab where they actually look. The other sessions of a multi-session project stay confirmed independently, so a re-proposal on session 3 doesn't shake session 1 or 2 loose. Once the client accepts the new value, the booking returns to Confirmed automatically.

I'm a tattoo artist. Can I move a confirmed session to a different location — say, a guest spot?

Yes. The Location row on the session card opens a modal listing your home studio, your independent location, and any active guest spots — you pick the new one and submit. Location proposals are per-session, like every other field. If the new location is a guest spot with a date range and the session's date is outside that range, the modal will warn you and you'll typically want to re-propose the date in the same submit. Body modification practitioners don't have a Location row, since the model only supports one location per booking on that side.

I'm a practitioner. I want to add a fresh session to a confirmed multi-session project. Does that put the existing sessions back into negotiation?

No. The new session gets added as Session N+1 with everything orange (your turn to act on every field), and the already-confirmed sessions stay green and locked. The booking shows up in both Pending and Confirmed while the new one is being agreed; once it lands all-six-confirmed, the booking is purely Confirmed again.

I'm a piercer / PMU / laser practitioner. The client wants to push our confirmed appointment by an hour. Can I just edit the time?

No — time-based bookings have no in-app edit path once confirmed. The slot, services, and price are locked at the moment of confirmation. The only way to move it is to drop the booking and let the client re-book on the new slot. If a deposit was paid, the drop will route through the refund flow (Stripe-auto for card payments, manual mark-as-sent for offline ones) before the new booking can take its place.

I'm a client and the practitioner just re-proposed a date I'd already accepted. Did I do something wrong?

No, the practitioner has the pencil on every field at all times — they can re-open any of them. Common reasons: a guest spot they were planning to host you on got cancelled, a longer session next door fell through, a personal commitment landed on the date, or they thought a different angle on the project would work better. Read the change reason on the field if there's one, message them with any questions, and use the Accept / Reject buttons when you're ready.

I'm a practitioner. The deposit on a session is already received but I realised I should have asked for more (or less). Can I update the amount?

No, not directly — that field is locked once the deposit is sent or received. Deposits in motion sit on the booking attached to a specific cancellation eligibility, and silently changing the amount would either erase money already in your account or invent money the client never paid. The clean path is to Drop the session, which sends the original deposit back through the refund flow, and let the client re-book at the new amount — the new booking gets a fresh deposit and a fresh policy snapshot. Worth checking the math in Deposit rules and refund eligibility before you drop, especially if the client paid via Stripe.

Can the client change their mind on a field they already confirmed without me re-proposing it?

Not from the UI. Once the client accepts a field and submits, the Reject button on it disappears — they have no way to walk back a confirmation. The only path on their side is to message you and ask you to re-propose, which you can. This is by design; it stops "actually I changed my mind on that date" surprises landing on you after you've organised your week around the appointment.

I dropped a session of a multi-session project to "redo" the date because the client was being indecisive. Was that the right move?

Probably not, on project-based. Dropping a session on a project-based booking is a one-way action — it sends the deposit through the refund flow and the session card lands in the Review tab as Dropped, leaving a record neither of you can wipe. Re-proposing the date on the existing session is non-destructive: the booking flips to Pending, you propose the new value, the client accepts, the booking flips back. Drop is for sessions that aren't going to happen at all (life, project no longer the right fit, you're walking away from this work). Re-propose is for sessions that are still happening but with different details.