Event bookings & appointments

An event is a Sellerlane product type for anything customers book a time for: a consultation, a class, a tasting, a studio session, or a multi-day rental. The buyer picks a slot at checkout, you get paid up front, and the booking lands on a shared calendar with optional meeting links. You pick the type when you create the product under Products → Add product, then fill in the Event details step.

Note

Pricing, inventory, and identifiers live on the variant, not the product — event scheduling is configured once on the product and applies to every variant. See Product types for how types fit together.

Choose a booking type

The Booking type controls the shape of the slots customers see:

• Appointment — discrete time slots for sessions or classes (the default).
• Multi-day — a span of several days for stays or rentals, bounded by a minimum and maximum number of days.
• All-day — one whole day for passes or day rentals.

Everything below is set in the Event details step, which is organised into four tabs: Basics & schedule, Booking window, Customer page, and Advanced. A live Customer preview panel shows what the buyer will see as you edit.

How availability is generated

Sellerlane builds bookable slots from one of two sources, chosen under Provider:

One event schedule

One event schedule uses a single shared schedule for the whole product — the same hours apply no matter who runs the session. This is the default and the simplest setup: pick the days, daily start and end times, and a capacity.

Team members

Team members pools availability across the host calendars you select, so the customer sees every open slot from any eligible host. By default the buyer picks which host they want. Tick Customers can choose any selected host to also offer a “no preference” option — then Sellerlane assigns an available host for them at booking time (the default host first, otherwise the next eligible host that is free; it is not a workload-balancing rotation).

Caution

Team-member mode needs at least one eligible host. If your store has a single staff member, Sellerlane selects them automatically. The “any host” option only becomes available once at least one host is selected.

Slot length, capacity, and start times

On the Basics & schedule tab you set how long each booking runs and how often slots begin:

1. Pick one or more booking lengths (durations). Common options are 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes; add a custom duration for anything else. Customers choose from the lengths you offer. Keep at least one selected.
2. Set start times every N minutes — the interval between consecutive slot start times (30 minutes by default).
3. Set the people per start time (capacity). One booking per slot means appointments; a higher number lets a class or group session fill up to that many seats per start time.
4. Choose the available days and the daily start and end times that bound the schedule.

Tip

For Multi-day bookings you set a minimum and maximum number of days instead of slot lengths. The maximum is always kept at or above the minimum.

Advanced rules: breaks, blocks, and buffers

The Advanced tab opens the full schedule builder for richer rules — recurring breaks (e.g. a lunch gap), one-off blocks (holidays or blackout dates), and buffer time before and after each booking so back-to-back sessions get a gap. When advanced rules are active, the Quick setup fields lock and a banner points you to the Advanced tab to edit them.

Store-wide buffers are set separately — see Store-level settings below — and apply to every event product unless a product overrides them.

The booking window

The Booking window tab controls when customers may book:

Setting	What it does
Minimum notice	How far ahead a booking must be made (e.g. at least 2 hours before the slot).
Bookable ahead	How far into the future slots are offered (e.g. up to 30 days).
Time zone	The zone all slots are quoted in. Defaults to your store’s time zone.
Time format	Show times on a 12-hour or 24-hour clock.

Note

Sellerlane defaults the time zone to your store’s zone, falling back to the browser’s zone if the store hasn’t set one. Slots and confirmation emails are always quoted in this zone, so customers across India see consistent times.

Meeting location and links

Under Location you decide where the session happens. Pick one of:

• Online — then choose Google Meet, Zoom, or Custom (paste your own link or join instructions).
• In person — enter an address or meetup details.
• Phone call — enter a number.
• Decide later — leave it blank for now (you must add a place or link before publishing).

When automatic meeting provisioning is enabled for your store, Sellerlane generates a unique link for each Zoom or Google Meet booking — you don’t paste anything. The link is created against the assigned host’s corresponding connected account, attached to the booking, and released to the customer under your meeting-link reveal rule.

Caution

Automatic link generation is not on by default — it has to be enabled for your store. It requires the host to connect the matching Zoom or Google account (see Connect a host). With live provisioning off, or for another meeting provider, choose Custom and paste your own join link/instructions.

Live provider calls run after the order transaction commits. While Zoom or Google is slow, the booking shows meeting generation as pending rather than holding inventory/order locks open. A provider error is recorded as Meeting failed, retried by background recovery, and surfaced in Needs attention. The buyer is never shown a missing link as ready.

Connect a host for meeting links

Each host connects their own account from their staff profile. Connect the account that matches the selected meeting type:

1. Go to Settings → Users & Permissions and open the staff member who will host events.
2. In the Connected Accounts section, click Connect Zoom for Zoom or Connect Google for Google Meet/Calendar, then complete sign-in.
3. The badge changes to Connected. You can Disconnect at any time.

Until the matching account is connected, provider-managed bookings assigned to that host show as needing attention. See Staff accounts for adding and managing team members.

The customer page

The Customer page tab tunes what the buyer sees:

• Show start time, Show end time, Show duration — toggle which details appear on the booking.
• Confirmation message — a short note shown after the customer books.

When a meeting link is involved, the join URL is released according to your store’s meeting-link reveal window (part of the auto-fulfillment policy): the link appears on the buyer’s order page — and in reminder emails and the calendar file — only once the start time is within that window. See Auto-fulfillment for the reveal setting.

Reminders and calendar files

Sellerlane emails the buyer a reminder roughly 24 hours and 1 hour before the session. Each booking also offers a downloadable iCalendar (.ics) file so customers can add it to their own calendar; the join link is embedded in the file only once the reveal window has opened.

The Events dashboard

Open Orders → Bookings for the Events calendar — your operational view of every reservation across the store.

• Calendar — month or week view, colour-coded: blue for confirmed, grey for canceled, red for a failed meeting link. Click any booking to open its actions.
• KPIs — Total, Upcoming, Completed, Canceled, and Meeting failed counts for the current window.
• Needs attention — surfaces sessions that need action: meeting failed to provision, starting in under 24 hours with no link, or no host assigned.
• Host workload — bookings per host, and a host filter to focus the whole view on one person.

Note

The calendar window is capped at 250 bookings. If a busy view is truncated, a banner tells you to switch to week view, narrow the dates, or filter by host.

Actions on a booking

Click a booking to open its actions panel:

1. Regenerate meeting link — stage a fresh link for the same time and host. Sellerlane creates and durably records the replacement before it schedules the old provider meeting for deletion, so an outage does not destroy the working link first. Each regeneration uses a new provider idempotency scope.
2. Reschedule to — move the booking to a new date and time.
3. Reassign host — hand the session to a different team member.
4. Cancel booking — cancel with an optional reason.

Each action has a Notify customer of changes checkbox (on by default) so the buyer is emailed about reschedules, reassignments, regenerated links, or cancellations.

Tip

Customers can also request a reschedule or cancellation themselves through self-service, subject to your approval rules. See Self-service.

Store-level settings

Beyond per-product configuration, Products → Event settings holds defaults that apply across every event product:

• Service buffers — enable a store-wide buffer before and buffer after every booking (in minutes, hours, or days) so sessions never run back-to-back.
• Blocked emails — a list of addresses that are not allowed to book any event, for blocking abusive or no-show customers.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause and fix
Booking shows Meeting failed	The host’s Zoom account isn’t connected, auto-provisioning isn’t enabled for your store, or the link couldn’t be generated. Connect the host’s Zoom, then Regenerate meeting link from the booking — or set the booking to a Custom online link.
No host assigned in Needs attention	A team-member booking landed without a host. Open it and Reassign host.
Can’t publish the event	A required field is incomplete — the wizard blocks save and lists the issues (e.g. a missing location or no duration selected).
Customer can’t see the join link yet	The meeting-link reveal window hasn’t opened. The link releases automatically as the start time approaches — see Auto-fulfillment.
Slots show in the wrong time	Check the Time zone on the Booking window tab; it defaults to your store zone.
Some bookings missing from the calendar	The 250-booking cap was hit. Narrow the date range, switch to week view, or filter by host.

Next steps

Add a product

Create the event product end to end in Add products.

Staff & hosts

Add team members and connect their calendars in Staff accounts.

Meeting-link timing

Control when join links appear in Auto-fulfillment.

Customer self-service

Let buyers reschedule or cancel in Self-service.