Classes and workshops: a group booking is not an appointment
One appointment for one person and one session for ten look alike and behave nothing alike — in capacity, in cancellations, and in what happens when a session does not fill.
4 min read
Plenty of businesses run a class as a series of private appointments at the same time. That works until the first session fills, and then it breaks in every direction at once.
Three real differences
- Capacity. A session has a number of places, and the system needs to know how many remain — not merely whether the hour is taken.
- The session exists before anyone books. An appointment is created when a customer books; a session sits on the schedule and people join it. That is inverted, and it changes how you build the timetable.
- A cancellation does not free the hour. When one person drops out the session still runs — a place opened. With two people left, whether to go ahead is your call, not the system’s.
The deadline is the setting that matters
A group session deserves a cancellation deadline for a simple reason: a drop-out two hours before gives nobody else a chance to join, while two days before does. It is a setting group sessions have and ordinary appointments do not — that difference is deliberate.
In Sagarnu group sessions are a capability switched on per business, and it is off by default. A business that has not enabled it sees only ordinary services. How it works.
Common questions
Can a class have a waitlist?
Not at the moment. The Sagarnu waitlist is built for individual appointments, and a group-session service is excluded from it. For a full class the old method still applies — note who asked and go back to them when a place opens. That is a known gap rather than a setting to hunt for.
What is the difference between a group session and several appointments at the same time?
Several appointments at one time is a clash the system is supposed to prevent. A group session is one entity with capacity. Simulate a class with parallel appointments and every double-booking guard works against you.
Want this to run itself?
Online booking and automatic reminders — nothing to install.