Can I charge for a booking?

What has to exist first

Besides an account, systeme.io lists three things.

• A calendar event, already created.
• An order form or payment page.
• A price plan.

Notice what is not on that list. There is no separate booking page type and no calendar product type. A paid booking is built out of the ordinary selling parts.

How the offer is assembled

All of it happens in the page settings of the order form, before the editor is opened at all.

1. Scroll to Choose offer type and select Digital product.
2. Name the digital product.
3. Click the plus icon to add resources, and pick Calendar events from the dropdown.
4. Select the specific event being sold.
5. Set the price plan, then save.

A calendar event is a resource, in the same list as courses, course bundles, tags and communities. That is why the build looks like selling any other digital product until the element goes on the page.

The element is a different one

The ordinary Calendar element takes no money. An order form needs the Paid calendar element dragged onto it instead.

It builds a two step flow rather than the three of a free booking. The visitor picks a slot, then enters their details and pays on the same screen. There is no confirmation step inside the element, because the funnel's own thank you page does that job.

Both steps are editable from the left panel of the editor: a headline, a sub-headline, the button text, and whether the clock reads 12 or 24 hour. The Save button is in the top right corner and the page has to be saved before leaving it.

After payment the buyer follows the normal order page route. If the funnel has upsell or downsell pages they go there next, and if it does not they land on the thank you page.

The one page that will carry it

The order form, and nothing else in the funnel.

So a paid booking cannot ride along on somebody else's checkout. It cannot be the tick box added to a course purchase, and it cannot be the offer made on the page after one. It needs a checkout of its own.

That is worth knowing before designing the funnel, because a coaching call is exactly the kind of thing people try to attach to a bigger sale.

The rule that catches people out

By default, the booking confirmation email goes out as soon as the payment process starts. Not when it succeeds. systeme.io's wording is that it is sent even if the payment later fails or is cancelled, which leaves a confirmation sitting in somebody's inbox.

There is a setting for it. Under Settings, then Notifications, then Sales, switch on the option to send the booking confirmation email only after payment is completed. systeme.io states it works with every payment provider, naming Stripe, PayPal and Mollie.

Switch it on before the first paid booking rather than after the first awkward email.

What the price can be

An ordinary price plan does the work. systeme.io documents three types: a one-time payment, a subscription, or a fixed number of payments. Its article on selling bookings says to set up a price plan and names no restriction on which type.

Where a paid booking shows up afterwards

In the same Bookings tab as the free ones, with one extra column. The Payment column reads Free for an unpaid event and Completed for a paid one, so the two kinds are told apart at a glance.

The emails are the same as a free booking too: a confirmation to both sides straight away, then the reminders on the schedule set on the event.

Taking payment at the moment of booking is available on the free plan, through Stripe or PayPal.