We have recently introduced some further checks in the School Gateway App to prevent club sessions being overbooked. As part of this work, we have introduced a ‘reservation’ system, which will reserve a club session for a parent/child in the background once they reach the payments stage of the booking process. Once a successful payment has been made, this reservation is then converted into an actual booking for the session.
At this point if another parent has also booked and paid at the same time the club places this parent is trying to book may no longer be available, however the payment may still go through.
If any parents book a session and reach the payments stage, but do not complete the payment, currently this reservation will still be against their name and will not expire, and it will be counted against the place limit on the club in the School Gateway App.
As a result of this, the visibility of sessions to parents in the School Gateway App may not reflect the number of completed bookings, as the reservations are still in the background and will also be counted.
To confirm, if parents are completing the payment process when making their bookings, the place will be taken as normal. It is purely if the parents are abandoning the payment process that a booking would remain reserved and will not expire.
Please note: any abandoned reservations (older than 25 hours) are released overnight, so these places should be visible again in the app for the time being.
As an immediate workaround, if parents login to the website version of School Gateway (https://login.schoolgateway.com/0/auth/login - this can also be accessed via their device), they will see the true number of places available to book, as this version does not currently factor in the reserved places. They will then be able to book up to the maximum number of places you have specified for your club.
We have also now introduced a new report (accessed via Dashboard > Management Reports > Clubs > Under booking of limited places clubs) which will allow you to view how many of these abandoned reservations are currently in the system and also which children they are linked to. We feel this will enable you to target specific parents who may not be fully completing the booking/payment process for your club sessions.
A future development will allow these reservations to expire after a certain period of time, which will then allow another parent to book onto the session on the App. Unfortunately, we are unable to advise of a timescale for the release of this update at this stage.