The Customer’s Booking Page and Dashboard

Every “can I move my appointment?” email you answer by hand is time you could spend on the appointment itself. Core Bookings gives each customer two self-service places: a private page for each booking, and a dashboard that lists all of them. Neither needs a password or a WordPress account.

The Private Booking Page

Every booking gets its own private link, sent in the confirmation email. It opens a standalone page that shows the service, date and time, timezone, location, seats, price and payment status, plus any phone number, notes, guests and booking answers.

The link works until 90 days after the appointment. It isn’t indexed by search engines, and the private part of the address never reaches your server logs or other sites.

What Customers Can Do There

The page only shows actions that make sense for the booking’s current state:

• Reschedule: pick a new time from live availability, then Confirm new time or Keep current booking.
• Cancel this appointment: add an optional reason, tick the confirmation box and click Confirm cancellation.
• Withdraw this request: for a request still waiting for staff approval. Withdrawing a recurring request withdraws all its sessions.
• Release this hold: gives back a reserved time that hasn’t been paid for. Nothing is charged.
• Continue to payment or Pay remaining balance, when money is still owed.
• Join meeting for video appointments, and Add to calendar with Google Calendar, Outlook or a downloadable calendar file.
• Complete intake, when you’ve set up an intake form.
• All my bookings, which opens the dashboard.

Rescheduling and cancelling close at the service’s Change or cancel cutoff (minutes). After that, the page says online changes are closed and asks the customer to contact you. The cutoff is set per service: see Create a Service.

The Customer Dashboard

The dashboard lists a customer’s appointments and session packs in one place. It’s built in at https://example.com/?cb_portal=1. To put it on your own page instead:

1. Create a page and add the shortcode below.
2. Publish it.
3. Go to Bookings → Settings → Customer accounts, choose that page under Customer dashboard page and click Save customer account settings. Sign-in emails and All my bookings links now open it.

[core_bookings_dashboard]

The page stays cacheable. It holds no customer data until the visitor signs in.

How Customers Sign In

• By email: the customer enters the address they booked with and clicks Email me a private sign-in link. The link works once, for 15 minutes, and opens a dashboard session that lasts an hour. Sign out ends it early.
• By WordPress login: a customer whose account is linked to their bookings sees the dashboard straight away while logged in. Linking is covered in Customer Accounts and Login.

The sign-in form always gives the same answer, whether or not the email has bookings, so nobody can use it to check who your customers are.

What the Dashboard Shows

• Appointments, switchable between Upcoming and Past, each with status, payment, Manage appointment and Book again links and any balance due.
• Session packs with credits remaining, expiry and Book using a credit.
• Book a service, listing your listed services, with Buy session pack on services that sell packs.
• Your details, only when your site registers extra customer fields that customers may edit.

Good to Know

• Cancelling never refunds a payment automatically. The page tells the customer to contact you about refunds. Late-cancellation fees are covered in Cancellation Fees, No-show Protection, Tips and Peak Prices.
• Dashboard access never grants access to WordPress or your admin area.
• Guests added to a booking get the calendar file, not a manage link.
• Merging two customer records stops emailed sign-in links for the removed address.

Book a test appointment on the Core Bookings demo to see it for yourself. The confirmation screen you land on is the booking’s private page, with its private link in the address bar.