Find Your Way Around the Workspace
Booking software gets messy when every feature adds its own menu item. Core Bookings keeps everything under one Bookings menu with seven entries, and groups the rest of the screens inside them. Once you know the seven hubs, you can find any setting in two clicks.
The Seven Hubs
The same seven entries appear in the WordPress sidebar and in the app bar at the top of every Core Bookings screen:
| Hub | What’s inside |
|---|---|
| Overview | Your schedule at a glance, things that need attention and a setup checklist. |
| Appointments | Every booking as a list or a day, week or month calendar, plus Add appointment for phone and walk-in bookings. |
| Services | Services, plus Classes, Promotions and Invitations. |
| Staff | Staff hours and time off, plus My calendar, Teams, Locations, Resources, Staff portal and Import public holidays. |
| Customers | Customer history, session credits, waitlists and group rosters, plus Memberships and Reviews. |
| Reports | Revenue, cancellations, no-shows and more. Appears only while the Insights module is on. |
| Settings | Payments, calendars, emails, connections and maintenance screens. |
Inside a hub, tabs above the screen switch between its sections. Module screens, such as Classes or Teams, only appear in their hub after you switch the module on in Turn Modules On and Off.
The Overview Screen
Bookings → Overview opens on Booking overview. Choose Next 7 days or Next 30 days and click Apply to change the range.
- Four metric cards: Confirmed appointments, Guests scheduled, Awaiting payment and Needs attention. Click a card to open the matching filtered list in Appointments.
- Upcoming appointments: the next six confirmed bookings. View all opens every upcoming appointment.
- Your week at a glance: confirmed appointments per day for the next seven days.
- Needs attention: payments to review, calendar problems and failed deliveries, each linking straight to the fix.
- Your booking setup: checks staff availability, published services and online payments, with an Open booking page link. Managers only.
The New service button sits in the Overview header too, so you can add a service from your first screen.
Find Your Way Through Settings
Bookings → Settings uses a grouped side list instead of tabs. On a phone, the list folds behind one line naming the open section.
| Group | Sections |
|---|---|
| Bookings and payments | General, Payments, PayPal, Polar, Paddle (one screen), Payment rules, Taxes, Customer accounts, Intake, Booking questions, Spam protection |
| Calendars and messages | Calendar & meetings, Microsoft 365, Calendar feeds, Emails, SMS and WhatsApp, Automations |
| Connections | Webhooks, Integrations, AI agents |
| Maintenance | Modules, Setup checks, Operations, Import / Export, License |
Sections that belong to a module, such as Taxes or Automations, only show while that module is on. License is visible to administrators only.
Search From Anywhere
The app bar has a search box on every Core Bookings screen. Type at least two characters of a name, email, phone number or booking reference and press Enter.
- Appointments are listed closest date first, 20 at most. Click one to open it in a dialog.
- Managers also see matching customers, including matches on a customer tag.
- Phone numbers match whatever formatting the customer used.
What Staff See
Managers (administrators by default) see every hub. A staff member who isn’t a manager gets a smaller workspace:
- Overview and Appointments, showing only their own appointments.
- My schedule in place of Staff, with My calendar for connecting their own Google account and Import public holidays.
- My availability, but only if a manager ticked Allow this staff member to manage their own availability on their profile.
- Classes, for session rosters and check-in, while the Classes module is on.
Staff never see Customers, Reports or Settings. If your team would rather not use wp-admin at all, the Staff Portal gives them a phone-friendly page instead.
Try It on the Demo
The Core Bookings demo has a workspace filled with sample bookings. Log in with bookings-demo and the password demo to click around. Next, read Manage Appointments and The Staff Calendar.