What has actually been booked. Each appointment gets a number like BA-2026-0001 and belongs to one event and one specific slot.
Two bookings cannot share a slot
The database enforces this, not just the interface: any given slot on any given event can hold only one non-cancelled appointment.
The direct consequence is that cancelling frees the slot immediately and someone else can take it. If you want a slot to stay closed, cancelling is not enough — block that date in the event's settings.
Which contact details are required is your choice
Every appointment has a first and last name. Whether it must also have an email, a mobile, both, or either one is set in Booking → Settings, and applies to the public booking form, to appointments you add here, and to appointments created by automations.
So an appointment with an empty email or mobile column is not incomplete data — it was booked under a rule that did not need it. Changing the rule later does not invalidate older appointments: you can still edit them, as long as you do not remove a contact detail the current rule requires.
The statuses are not just labels
An appointment can be pending, awaiting payment, confirmed, cancelled, completed, or a no-show. "Awaiting payment" means the slot is being held while the money has not arrived.
For bank-transfer payments the guest submits a tracking code and a receipt and you confirm it — that is the one case where confirming payment is a manual step.
A guest can cancel without an account
The link sent to them is signed for that one appointment. That is why they can cancel or reschedule with no account, and why editing the address cannot get them to somebody else's booking.
If the event sets a cancellation deadline, that link stops cancelling once the deadline passes — and from then on cancelling is only possible from here.
Who cancelled is recorded
Every cancellation records whether it was the guest, you, or the system itself. When a guest says "I did not cancel", that is where the answer is.