How customers book an appointment and how you confirm it

In WashPro the customer books it themselves: they find you on the map, pick a time and send a request. Nothing is settled until you confirm. This page covers what both sides see, how confirmation and cancellation work, and what you still have to do on the day.

One thing must be set up first: your location

Customers find you through the nearby businesses list, and that list works on location. If your location is not set you never appear, and no bookings reach you. You pick it on the map during setup, and you can change it later in Settings. Typing an address is not enough — you have to mark the spot on the map, because distance is calculated from coordinates.

What the customer does

Opens the app and chooses I am a customer on the welcome screen. That choice sticks; the app switches to tracking mode on that phone.
Picks you from the nearby businesses list.
Taps Book, enters plate, name and phone, then selects a date and time. All three are required — a booking without a phone number is refused, because you need to reach them when the car is ready.
Sends the request and sees "Your request was sent — it will appear here once the business confirms".

Note: Customers do not need an account to book. Leaving that barrier out is deliberate: forcing sign-up on a phone loses most bookings at the very first step.

Your side: confirm or decline

Requests land on the Appointments screen. Each row shows the plate, the customer's name, their phone number and the requested time. You have two options:

Confirm — the booking is settled and the customer's screen shows "Confirmed".
Decline — the customer sees "Declined" and can try another time.

Leaving a request unanswered is also an answer, just a poor one: the customer stays on "pending" and cannot tell whether to come. Even on busy days, going through requests once a day noticeably reduces no-shows.

Cancellation works both ways

Customers can cancel from their own My appointments screen; you are notified and can resell the freed slot. You can cancel a confirmed booking too — when your plans change, cancelling costs less than leaving someone at the door.

Protection against fake bookings

Because the booking screen is open to everyone, it would be easy to abuse. Three guards run quietly:

No second request while the same customer already has one pending with you.
No new request while the same plate has one pending — this stops the same car being booked repeatedly under different names.
Too many requests in a short time are throttled.

Without these, one person could fill your entire day in an afternoon. Customers see these messages on their own screen; nothing reaches you.

On the day: you still open the job

A confirmed booking does not replace opening a job. When the car arrives you open it from the board as usual — read the plate, pick the services. A booking is a promise; a job is what actually happened. Keeping them apart is what keeps your till and reports honest.

Tip: The booked customer's plate is already in the system, so reading it brings up their past jobs and their loyalty card status if they have one.

Common mistakes

Not marking the location on the map: filling in the address field and skipping the map. You never appear in the list, and it looks like "bookings are not coming" when the system is working fine.
Letting requests pile up: a pending booking reads as "uncertain" to the customer, and most of them do not turn up.
Treating the booking as the job: forgetting to open a job when the car arrives. That car then appears nowhere in the day's till or payroll.