FAQ Q125: How can I be sure the bookings are authentic?

You can change the way the reservations are confirmed in Resources > Reservation Process. Note that a reservation with the Reserved flag (even before confirmation) still makes the resource unavailable to other customers (it's a separate option which can be changed on the same page).

There are five ways of confirming a reservation:

• AUTO: no verification is done, all reservations are automatically confirmed
• MODERATOR (default): the admin or moderator must manually confirm each booking
• PASSWORD: users must know the password in order to enter reservations. This is a great model if you have regular customers and if you want to make sure new customers first contact you offline and so get the password.
• MANUAL: only admins/moderators can enter reservations, no online reservation is possible for customers
• OBLIGATORY / OPTIONAL PAYMENT: customers can immediately confirm their own orders with an online payment, either for the full amount or for a fixed pre-payment fee. In case of OBLIGATORY PAYMENT the reservation will not go through without the payment (you'll see such reservations in the not completed list) and in case of OPTION PAYMENT the reservation will be immediately confirmed when an online payment is received, otherwise the admins will need to confirm it manually.

Please note that whatever the confirmation method is, you can still define pre-approved users whose reservations will be always confirmed immediately. This should be reserved to your trusted customers.

If you want to avoid spam reservations, you can add a CAPTCHA field to your reservation form and you can change the reservation process settings of your resource to require email address verification. To avoid typos in the email address entered by the customer, you can also add a 'repeat email' field to the reservation form.