Ecommerce Platform | The difference between a temporary online reservation and a permanent online order in Premier

Ecommerce Platform | The difference between a temporary online reservation and a permanent online order in Premier

What is a temporary reservation?

When a guest adds an item to their basket, a temporary reservation appears in your Premier diary for a maximum of thirty minutes, to prevent over bookings while your guest completes their checkout process.

How does this work?

- The client adds a spa item to the basket on your storefront

- This creates a temporary booking in Premier as a placeholder, so double bookings do not occur, and also creates a 'Pending Payment' order in your ecommerce platform

- The client fully pays for the booking and completes their order

- The temporary booking is deleted

- The permanent booking takes its place

How do I tell if it is a temporary booking or not?

In your experience management system (e.g. Premier): There a few way ways to check this but the easiest way to tell the difference between these two types is to look at the order reference. Temporary bookings have a reservation reference like exampleRe00001754 and permanent bookings have your ecommerce platform order reference (e.g. Example-60). 


In your ecommerce platform: If you see a Pending Payment order and want to check if this is a temporary booking, click 'Edit' on the order, and visit the Payments and refunds tab. A temporary booking will not have a payment made against it (see screenshots below).




What happens if the guest phones up to pay/book and I can see their temporary reservation?

If a guest ever phones up to pay over the phone/use a voucher and your can see the reservation from their online browsing, please do not mark the bill as paid against the temporary booking as this order will still auto-delete (and as they haven't paid online, our ecommerce platform won't send a permanent booking to replace this one).