Bug fixMarketing siteMembershipsBilling·2026.09.15·2026-09-15

A flash-sale or offer place is held for 3 minutes with a live countdown

Paying for a limited offer now holds the client's place for exactly 3 minutes, shown as a live countdown at the card step. Too slow, and the place is released and they are told to contact the venue. A payment that somehow lands late is refunded automatically and the venue is alerted.

# A flash-sale or offer place is held for 3 minutes with a live countdown

When a client reaches the card step to pay for a limited flash sale or offer,
Booking Bible holds their place — and their allowance under that offer — for
**exactly 3 minutes**. They see a live countdown ("Your offer is reserved for
2:47") while they enter their card details, on the web checkout, the
hotyogacph buy modal, and the mobile app. The countdown is driven by the
server's clock, not the client's device, so it stays accurate even if their
phone's clock is wrong.

This applies everywhere a client can start this kind of checkout: a recurring
membership offer, a one-off pass or class-pack offer, and the same offer
started again after leaving and coming back.

**If they are too slow:** at zero, the place is released back to the offer and
the pay button is disabled. They see a clear message that their reservation
expired. If places are still available and they are still eligible, they can
start again. If not — the offer sold out in the meantime, or they had already
used their one allowance under it — they are told this offer can no longer be
completed online and to **contact the venue**, who can sell it to them
directly at the desk.

**At the desk, staff can almost always still complete the sale.** The point of
sale holds a place for the same 3 minutes and shares the same authority as the
online checkout, so a desk sale can never quietly oversell an offer that a
client is buying online at that moment. But a desk sale that runs past its 3
minutes is not simply refused: if the place is still free, the till takes it
back automatically and the sale completes as normal. Only when the offer has
genuinely filled up in the meantime does staff need to decide — they can
complete the sale anyway, which is recorded as a deliberate override, or
decline it. If a card payment had already been taken when the place turned out
to be gone, the till never hands out the pass on top of it: the charge is
refunded on the same automatic obligation as a late online payment.

**A payment that lands too late is refunded automatically.** In the rare case
a card payment goes through just after the 3 minutes ran out, Booking Bible
never keeps that money for a place that may have already gone to someone
else. The charge is refunded automatically, the client sees the same "contact
the venue" message, and the venue is notified so staff can complete the sale
for the client at the desk instead.

**There is no grace period, and this matters for MobilePay and slow bank
approvals.** The 3-minute window is exact, on purpose — the owner asked that a
late payment never be accepted. Most card payments finish in a second or two,
so this is invisible in practice. But a payment method that can take longer to
finish confirming — **MobilePay, or a card that needs an extra bank approval
step (3-D Secure)** — can still be "in progress" when the 3 minutes run out.
If that happens, the client's card or MobilePay account IS charged (the bank
already approved it), and Booking Bible immediately refunds it in full and
tells the client to contact you. You are notified as soon as this happens, so
you can complete the sale for them at the desk. Nothing is lost financially —
the client gets their money back automatically — but it does mean a client
paying by MobilePay or with a slow bank-approval step is slightly more likely
to see this message than one paying by ordinary card.

**This is not a one-second edge case — it can take a few minutes for a very
late payment to be caught, though the money is always given back.** Booking
Bible's own automatic check for abandoned reservations runs every 15 minutes,
not every 3. That check's job is to close out an old attempt at the payment
provider itself; it does NOT decide whether a late payment is accepted — that
decision happens the instant anyone tries to complete the sale, whenever that
is, and it always refuses. So a payment could, in an unusual case, still be
sitting "in progress" with the provider for a few minutes after the 3-minute
mark before that cleanup check reaches it — but the moment it is ready to
turn into a booking, Booking Bible refuses it and refunds it, every time.
Nothing here is ever both charged AND kept as a booking.

**When an offer is completely full, the client is told plainly.** A client
who tries to buy an offer that has no places left at all (not a reservation
that expired — one that was never available to begin with) now sees "This
offer is fully booked" instead of a technical error, with nothing charged.

This replaces the previous 30-minute hold and the older rule that quietly kept
a late payment even when it pushed the offer over its limit. Nothing here
changes normal, on-time checkouts.

Next update

Invoice permissions are enforced everywhere, and Undo recovers instead of sticking

A staff role allowed to create invoices but not to manage them can no longer cancel, delete, credit or mark an invoice paid. Undo no longer gets stuck saying a change is already being undone, and when it cannot tell whether a change was reversed it says so instead of repeating it. Nothing else changes on your screens.

# A flash-sale or offer place is held for 3 minutes with a live countdown When a client reaches the card step to pay for a limited flash sale or offer, Booking Bible holds their place — and their allowance under that offer — for **exactly 3 minutes**. They see a live countdown ("Your offer is reserved for 2:47") while they enter their card details, on the web checkout, the hotyogacph buy modal, and the mobile app. The countdown is driven by the server's clock, not the client's device, so it stays accurate even if their phone's clock is wrong. This applies everywhere a client can start this kind of checkout: a recurring membership offer, a one-off pass or class-pack offer, and the same offer started again after leaving and coming back. **If they are too slow:** at zero, the place is released back to the offer and the pay button is disabled. They see a clear message that their reservation expired. If places are still available and they are still eligible, they can start again. If not — the offer sold out in the meantime, or they had already used their one allowance under it — they are told this offer can no longer be completed online and to **contact the venue**, who can sell it to them directly at the desk. **At the desk, staff can almost always still complete the sale.** The point of sale holds a place for the same 3 minutes and shares the same authority as the online checkout, so a desk sale can never quietly oversell an offer that a client is buying online at that moment. But a desk sale that runs past its 3 minutes is not simply refused: if the place is still free, the till takes it back automatically and the sale completes as normal. Only when the offer has genuinely filled up in the meantime does staff need to decide — they can complete the sale anyway, which is recorded as a deliberate override, or decline it. If a card payment had already been taken when the place turned out to be gone, the till never hands out the pass on top of it: the charge is refunded on the same automatic obligation as a late online payment. **A payment that lands too late is refunded automatically.** In the rare case a card payment goes through just after the 3 minutes ran out, Booking Bible never keeps that money for a place that may have already gone to someone else. The charge is refunded automatically, the client sees the same "contact the venue" message, and the venue is notified so staff can complete the sale for the client at the desk instead. **There is no grace period, and this matters for MobilePay and slow bank approvals.** The 3-minute window is exact, on purpose — the owner asked that a late payment never be accepted. Most card payments finish in a second or two, so this is invisible in practice. But a payment method that can take longer to finish confirming — **MobilePay, or a card that needs an extra bank approval step (3-D Secure)** — can still be "in progress" when the 3 minutes run out. If that happens, the client's card or MobilePay account IS charged (the bank already approved it), and Booking Bible immediately refunds it in full and tells the client to contact you. You are notified as soon as this happens, so you can complete the sale for them at the desk. Nothing is lost financially — the client gets their money back automatically — but it does mean a client paying by MobilePay or with a slow bank-approval step is slightly more likely to see this message than one paying by ordinary card. **This is not a one-second edge case — it can take a few minutes for a very late payment to be caught, though the money is always given back.** Booking Bible's own automatic check for abandoned reservations runs every 15 minutes, not every 3. That check's job is to close out an old attempt at the payment provider itself; it does NOT decide whether a late payment is accepted — that decision happens the instant anyone tries to complete the sale, whenever that is, and it always refuses. So a payment could, in an unusual case, still be sitting "in progress" with the provider for a few minutes after the 3-minute mark before that cleanup check reaches it — but the moment it is ready to turn into a booking, Booking Bible refuses it and refunds it, every time. Nothing here is ever both charged AND kept as a booking. **When an offer is completely full, the client is told plainly.** A client who tries to buy an offer that has no places left at all (not a reservation that expired — one that was never available to begin with) now sees "This offer is fully booked" instead of a technical error, with nothing charged. This replaces the previous 30-minute hold and the older rule that quietly kept a late payment even when it pushed the offer over its limit. Nothing here changes normal, on-time checkouts.