If your customers get the message "Delayed payment for booking - booking invalid", it means that the seat they wanted to book is no longer available, because they took longer than 10 minutes to pay for the booking and other customers successfully booked and paid for it.
In this article:
Why this happened?
When customers book online, Bookeo reserves the seats they are booking for 10 minutes, to give them time to pay via PayPal. A timeout is necessary because, without it, customers that start a booking but do not complete the payment would block the seats and therefore they would not be available for other customers or for you in your Bookeo Calendar.
Seat blocked for booking in progress in Bookeo calendar (appointments, personal lessons, and Open schedule tours)
Seat blocked for booking in progress in Bookeo calendar (workshops, classes/courses/events, tours/activities).
If customers take longer than 10 minutes to pay, AND after that 10 minutes another customer books those seats, when the first customer eventually pays, the seats may no longer be available, and:
- the first customer would get the message Delayed payment for booking - booking invalid message
- you would get a message in your Bookeo Homepage Delayed payment for booking - booking invalid
How can I avoid this problem?
It is rare for this problem to occur because Bookeo explains with a clear message that the slot/seat will only be held for 10 minutes, just under the pay now button.
However, if you're concerned about this, consider using a full payment gateway, like Stripe or Square, where customers input their card number directly on the booking page. This is usually faster than PayPal.