Event Booking Overview

Cognivox provides an event booking system that allows businesses to configure events and enables Cognivox to answer enquiries, check availability and take reservations from callers.

Event bookings are separate from normal employee appointments. Instead of checking an employee's calendar, event bookings use the capacity, packages and booking options configured for an event.

The Event Booking Process

The normal event booking process is:

1. Create the event.
2. Configure the event dates and venue.
3. Set the overall event capacity.
4. Set the dates during which bookings may be accepted.
5. Create one or more packages.
6. Add booking options to the packages.
7. Configure prices and capacity for those options.
8. Make the event active.
9. Cognivox can then handle enquiries and check availability.
10. A customer chooses an event, package and option.
11. Cognivox checks current availability.
12. A reservation is created.
13. The required capacity is reserved while payment is outstanding.
14. Once payment is recorded, the booking becomes confirmed.

Events

An event represents something that customers can book.

Examples include:

• Conferences
• Seminars
• Training events
• Meetings
• Residential conferences
• Business events
• Other organised events

Each event can contain information including:

• Event name
• Description
• Venue
• Start date and time
• End date and time
• Booking opening date
• Booking closing date
• Overall event capacity
• Packages
• Booking options

An event must be active before it can normally be offered for booking.

Packages

Packages define the different ways customers can attend an event.

For example, a conference might offer:

• Conference Only
• Conference and Accommodation
• Weekend Package

An event can contain multiple packages.

Each package can then contain one or more booking options.

Booking Options

Options define the choices available within a package.

For example, a Conference and Accommodation package might contain:

• Single Room
• Double Room
• Twin Room

Each option can have its own:

• Name
• Description
• Price
• Currency
• Pricing basis
• Capacity
• Active status

This allows different parts of the same event to have independent prices and availability.

Overall Event Capacity

Every event has an overall attendee capacity.

For example:

Event Capacity: 100

This means a maximum of 100 attendee places can be allocated to the event.

Cognivox tracks the use of that capacity using:

• Reserved — attendee places held by reservations awaiting payment.
• Confirmed — attendee places belonging to confirmed Cognivox bookings.
• External — attendee places allocated outside Cognivox.
• Available — attendee places that remain available.

Available capacity is determined from:

Capacity - Reserved - Confirmed - External

For example:

This prevents Cognivox from accepting more attendees than the event can accommodate.

External Attendees

Bookings do not have to originate through Cognivox.

An event organiser may also receive bookings through:

• Telephone calls handled manually
• Another website
• Another booking system
• Direct allocations
• Offline bookings

These attendee places can be recorded as External Attendees.

External attendees consume the overall event capacity but are not Cognivox booking records.

For example, if an event has capacity for 100 people and 20 places have already been allocated elsewhere:

Capacity: 100
External: 20
Available: 80

Cognivox will therefore only consider the remaining 80 attendee places available.

Option Capacity

Individual booking options can also have their own capacity.

This is separate from the overall event capacity.

For example:

Event Capacity: 100
Single Room Capacity: 5

The event may still have plenty of attendee capacity while all five Single Rooms have already been allocated.

Cognivox therefore checks both:

1. Overall event attendee capacity.
2. Capacity of the selected booking option.

A reservation can only be created when the required capacity is available.

Reservations

When Cognivox creates a chargeable event booking, the booking initially becomes a reservation awaiting payment.

Its status is:

Awaiting Payment

The required capacity is reserved immediately.

This prevents another booking from taking the same capacity while payment is outstanding.

Reservation Expiry

Reservations can have an expiry time.

If payment has not been completed before the reservation expires, Cognivox can release the reserved capacity so that it becomes available for another customer.

This means unpaid reservations do not permanently consume event capacity.

Confirmed Bookings

When the required payment has been recorded, an Awaiting Payment reservation becomes:

Confirmed

The attendee places move from Reserved occupancy to Confirmed occupancy.

The places were already being held for the customer, so confirming the booking does not consume the capacity a second time.

Payments

Payments received for an event booking are recorded against the booking.

Payment information can include:

• Amount
• Currency
• Payment method
• Payment reference
• Payment date
• Notes

Payments received outside Cognivox can also be recorded.

For example:

• Card payment taken by telephone
• Bank transfer
• Cash
• Cheque
• Another externally processed payment

Once the full required payment has been recorded, the booking can become confirmed.

Customer Emails

Where a customer email address has been provided, Cognivox can send emails during the booking process.

A reservation email can confirm:

• The event
• Package and option
• Number of attendees
• Booking reference
• Amount due
• That payment is still required

Once payment has been recorded, a payment confirmation email can confirm that the booking is now confirmed.

Recalculating Occupancy

Cognivox normally maintains Reserved and Confirmed occupancy automatically as bookings move through their lifecycle.

The event administration screen also provides a Recalculate Occupancy facility.

This rebuilds Cognivox occupancy from the underlying booking records.

It can be useful when:

• Existing bookings pre-date occupancy tracking
• Booking information has been imported
• An administrator wants to verify the occupancy figures
• Booking counters need to be synchronised with the booking records

Recalculation does not change the configured event capacity or External Attendees.

Event Bookings Are Separate From Appointments

Event bookings and employee appointments are different Cognivox functions.

Appointments use:

• Employees
• Employee availability
• Calendars
• Appointment durations

Event bookings use:

• Events
• Overall event capacity
• Packages
• Options
• Attendee numbers
• Reservations
• Event payments

Cognivox keeps these workflows separate so an event reservation cannot accidentally be treated as an employee appointment.

What To Do Next

The next help article explains how to create and configure an event using the Booking Events administration page.