Booking and Scheduling

Mayhem's booking tools connect a product to real availability, so shoppers can reserve a time instead of arranging it with you after checkout. They work for appointments, classes, overnight stays, rentals, and scheduled pickup windows. Availability, capacity, and time zones are checked for you, which helps prevent double-booking and cuts down on back-and-forth messages.

Start under Account → Bookings, then open Calendars. A calendar represents whatever gets reserved: you, another staff member, a room, a rental unit, or a pickup counter. Give it the correct time zone and capacity, then use Availability to set its regular weekly hours and any one-off closures or extra openings. Create separate calendars when resources have different schedules or can be booked independently.

Next, edit the product and enable Scheduling on the Details step. Choose appointment, date range, or pickup window; select the calendars the product can use; and set the timing, notice, and advance-booking rules. You can also charge per appointment, attendee, night, or pickup window, add fixed fees, require your approval, and offer cancellation refunds. A per-appointment price is one price for the whole booking, no matter how long it runs or how many people attend. The editor shows what shoppers will pay. Rental products must have scheduling enabled and at least one calendar before they can be published.

The shopper chooses an available time on the product page, adds the booking to their cart, and checks out. Bookable products do not have a buy-now button. Mayhem briefly holds that time while the order is being completed, then creates the reservation and shows its details on the customer's order page. Use the Agenda and Calendar views under Bookings to review upcoming reservations, approve or decline requests, and cancel a booking when needed.

Each calendar can also have a public booking link for free, product-less meetings. Enable Let anyone book this calendar from my storefront while editing the calendar, then copy the link from the Calendars list. Use the regular product booking flow whenever a reservation needs a price, product-specific rules, fees, or checkout.

Cancellations and Refunds

Shoppers can cancel a booking from their booking page. The refund follows the cancellation policy you set on the product: a full refund before your free-cancellation cutoff, then the percentage you chose after it. Refundable fees, such as deposits, are always returned in full. If the product has no cancellation policy, only refundable fees are returned.

When you cancel a booking or decline a request, the shopper is refunded in full.

How the refund reaches the shopper depends on how they paid:

• Card payments handled by Mayhem: Mayhem refunds the original card automatically. Card refunds can take 5 to 10 business days to show on the shopper's statement.
• PayPal: Mayhem sends the refund from your connected PayPal account automatically.
• CCBill (Mayhem Red): Mayhem support issues the refund. You do not need to do anything.
• Payment links and other manual payments: Mayhem does not handle the payment, so you need to refund the shopper yourself. The shopper is told to expect the refund from you.

If an automatic refund cannot be completed, Mayhem support takes it over and the shopper is told so.

Booking Emails

• When you approve a booking request, the shopper gets a confirmation email.
• When a booking is canceled or a request is declined, the shopper gets an email saying who canceled it and how much will be refunded.
• When a shopper cancels, you get an email with the refund amount and whether you need to do anything.
• If a refund's status changes later, for example when a card refund finishes processing or support takes it over, the shopper gets an update.

Payouts for Booking Orders

If Mayhem pays you out for card or CCBill sales, the payout for a booking order waits until the shopper can no longer get money back. That happens when the appointment ends, or sooner if your cancellation window has closed and no refund would be owed. Requests still waiting for your approval stay on hold.

If the booking is canceled, the payout is released once the refund is settled, and you are paid only the part that was not refunded. See Rolling Reserve Program for how refunds come out of your payout. PayPal sellers are paid by PayPal directly, so this hold does not apply to them.