Bookings during an event

The moment you create an event, your availability splits in two. The days of the trip are blocked at home, so nobody can book your usual studio while you are away. In their place, the event opens its own booking window using the working hours you set on it, not your normal weekly schedule.

That is the whole point of an event. Your Tuesday hours at home have nothing to do with the hours you keep at a convention, so the event carries its own, in the venue's timezone. A client booking a slot on your trip is offered times that exist at that venue on that day.

The blocking is a switch you control. Block off event days on your home calendar is on by default, with two options under it: block the entire date range including days you unticked, and clear any manual availability you had already put on those days. Both are recommended and both are on by default.

On your booking form, an event turns up as somewhere to book alongside your studios. It shows its name, its venue and the dates you are there, so a client picking where to be tattooed sees Berlin, 14 to 19 March next to your home shop and chooses between them.

Events are listed by start date, soonest first, and one drops off the list on its own once its last day has passed. If an event is the only place you are currently taking bookings, the form selects it for the client automatically.

Every event has its own booking switch, separate from your general books. The dot in the corner of the event card tells you where it stands: green for open, red for paused. Beside it is the number of bookings the event has taken so far.

Use the ellipsis on the card for Pause Bookings and Open Bookings. Pausing pulls the event off your booking form immediately and leaves everything already booked exactly as it is. It is the right move when a trip fills up, or when it is looking shaky and you would rather not take more money against it yet.

If you want to announce a trip before you take bookings for it, turn Open books for this event right away off when you create it and set a date and time instead. Books open themselves at that moment.

Allow clients to request flash tattoos is a per event switch, which is what you want, because taking flash at a convention and taking it at home are different decisions. Turn it on for the event and clients can ask for a design from your gallery for those dates.

Your designs themselves can also be tied to particular places. If a design is limited to certain locations, it only comes up for those, so a piece you can only tattoo at home does not get claimed while you are on the other side of the world. That is set on the design in Flash Manager.

Bookings made against an event land in your Requests inbox like any other, and they carry the event with them, so you always know which trip a client is asking about. Approve, propose different dates, take a deposit, decline: it is the same flow you use at home.

• •The count on the event card goes up as bookings come in, so you can see how a trip is filling at a glance.
• •Filter the Events screen by whether books are open, by type, or by location when a convention season starts stacking up.
• •Search by name or venue from the box in the Events header.

The day after an event ends it moves itself to the Past tab. Nothing is deleted and nothing is archived by you. Past events keep their bookings, so you can look back at how a trip actually went before deciding whether to do it again.