The External Bookings Dashboard is your central view for managing all visitor bookings in Cobot. Find it under Calendar » External Bookings.
All visitor bookings also appear on your main Booking Calendar under Calendar » Calendar, color-coded to distinguish them from member bookings. Hover over any booking to see the visitor's details, selected extras, and booking duration at a glance.
What You Can Do From the Dashboard
Book on Behalf of a Visitor
Visitors can book directly on your homepage or public pages. In some cases, though, you might prefer to create the booking on their behalf:
Phone or walk-in inquiries – a visitor calls or stops by asking to book a meeting room on the spot.
Special rates or negotiated deals – you've agreed on a custom price with a visitor or partner that doesn't match your default pricing.
Booking on behalf of a lead – a sales conversation ends with "just book it for me," and you want to close it before they change their mind.
Recurring outside guests – a regular visitor, like a local business partner, who books often but prefers you handle it for them.
Events or group bookings – you're coordinating a booking for a visitor hosting an external event or workshop.
💡 Pro Tip: You can select a custom rate if you want to enter a one-off price you've agreed on with a visitor or partner, instead of your default pricing.
When making a booking on behalf of a visitor, you can add their details manually, or select an existing contact from the drop-down – their name, email, and billing address will auto-fill.
You can also add extras, like catering or equipment.
Click Create Booking to finish. Cobot generates the invoice and adds the booking to your calendar.
Edit Bookings and Offer Custom Rates
You can edit a visitor booking directly from the dashboard once it's made. This allows you to easily add or remove extras, change the resource, update visitor details, or change the pricing.
This comes in handy when a visitor picked the wrong date, you'd like to offer them a better meeting room, or you want to give them a custom rate not offered on your website.
To edit an external booking, go to the Calendar » External Bookings » External Bookings Dashboard, find the booking and click Edit.
This will open up a page where you can make all of your changes.
Important Note: When updating a booking extra, Cobot uses the price of the extra that was valid when the original booking was made.
As you edit, the booking overview on the right side updates to show your changes.
You will see a warning with a short summary of what will happen once you click Update Booking – for example, whether the price will increase or decrease, and whether a new invoice or credit note will be generated.
Important Notes on Editing External Bookings
Editing an approved booking automatically generates a new invoice or credit note, which is emailed to the visitor as soon as you click Update Booking – unless you deactivated "Automatically send invoices by email" under Calendar » External Bookings » External Booking Settings.
The updated amount isn't charged or refunded automatically.
If you've activated Stripe or PayPal for external bookings, visitors will find a payment link on their invoice.
Editing a pending external booking doesn't generate an invoice right away – you can still approve it afterward, and a regular invoice will be sent out at that point.
Discount codes don't apply to bookings with a custom price.
You can edit upcoming pending or approved bookings any time. Past external bookings cannot be edited.
Approve or Decline Bookings
If you have 'Approval Required for Visitors' enabled on a resource, new visitor bookings appear in the dashboard as pending. From here you can approve or decline them. An email is sent to the visitor once you take action.
Important Note
If you use Stripe, payment authorizations expire after a few days. Approve pending bookings promptly to avoid the hold expiring before you confirm.
Cancel Bookings
You can cancel any visitor booking at any time by clicking 'Cancel' on the booking. The visitor receives a cancellation email automatically.
The dashboard also shows you whether a refund needs to be issued. Refunding directly from Cobot is only available when the payment has been made through Stripe.
All others must be processed directly in the payment gateways dashboard and then offset in Cobot with a free-form invoice to keep your analytics accurate. See Non-Member/Visitor Invoicing for more detail.
Visitors can also cancel their own bookings using the link in their confirmation email, as long as the cancellation window on the resource has not expired.
Convert Visitors to Members
Visitors are automatically added as a Contact. If a visitor decides to become a member, use the 'Convert' button on their booking to move them to a membership plan. You can also convert them from their Contact Card.
Their details are pre-populated in the new member profile. See Adding Members for more on connecting a new member once converted.
Managing Invoices
Every completed External Booking generates an invoice automatically. You can access visitor invoices directly from the dashboard or under Manage » Invoices. For a full guide to visitor invoicing, see Non-Member/Visitor Invoicing.
You can also see a history of their invoices if they are repeat visitors under Manage » Contacts » click on visitor name » invoices.
Tracking Revenue and Bookings
All External Bookings revenue flows into your Analytics dashboard. Track income and booking data under Analyze » Revenue and Analyze » Bookings. Your main Dashboard also shows a daily External Bookings summary, including a count of any bookings awaiting your approval.
Questions? Reach out to us at support@cobot.me.