Managing Booking Events

The Booking Events area is where you create and manage the events that Cognivox can offer to customers.

An event contains the main information about what is being booked, including:

• Event name
• Description
• Venue
• Start and end dates
• Booking opening and closing dates
• Overall attendee capacity
• External attendees
• Packages
• Booking options
• Availability

Once an event has been configured and made active, Cognivox can use its information when handling event enquiries and reservations.

Opening Booking Events

Open Events from the Cognivox administration menu.

The Event Directory displays the booking events configured for your company.

From here you can:

• Add a new event
• Edit an existing event
• Review event dates
• Review the venue
• Review the number of packages
• See whether an event is active
• Delete an event where deletion is permitted

Select Add Event to create a new booking event.

Event Name

Enter a clear name for the event.

For example:

Moriel Scottish Conference

The event name is customer-facing information and may be used by Cognivox when speaking to callers.

Use a name that customers are likely to recognise.

Description

Enter a useful description of the event.

The description can provide additional information that Cognivox may use when answering customer enquiries.

Include information that helps identify or explain the event, but avoid putting package-specific information here when it belongs within a package or option.

Venue

Enter the location where the event will take place.

For example:

Gartmore House

The venue forms part of the event information available when handling enquiries.

Where appropriate, use a venue name that customers will recognise.

Start Date and Time

Set the date and time at which the event begins.

This is the actual start of the event and is different from the date on which bookings open.

For example:

23 October 2026 at 08:00

Cognivox uses the event date when identifying events and presenting relevant event information to customers.

End Date and Time

Where the event runs for a defined period, enter the date and time at which it ends.

For a multi-day conference, the start and end dates define the duration of the event.

Booking Opens

Booking Opens determines when customers may begin booking the event.

Before this date and time, the event can exist in Cognivox but bookings are not yet open.

This is useful when an event has been configured in advance but reservations should only begin from a particular date.

Booking Closes

Booking Closes determines when new reservations should stop being accepted.

Once the booking closing time has passed, Cognivox should no longer treat the event as open for new bookings.

The booking closing date is separate from the event start date.

For example, an event taking place on Friday may have bookings configured to close on Wednesday.

Event Capacity

Event Capacity is the maximum number of attendees that the event can accommodate overall.

For example:

Event Capacity: 100

This means that a maximum of 100 attendee places can be allocated across the entire event.

Event Capacity is an overall limit. Individual package options may also have their own capacity.

Cognivox checks the overall event capacity when accepting reservations.

Understanding Event Occupancy

The event editor displays the current occupancy of the event.

The important figures are:

• Reserved
• Confirmed
• External
• Occupied
• Available

These figures provide an overall view of how much of the event capacity has already been allocated.

Reserved Attendees

Reserved represents attendee places currently held by Cognivox reservations that are awaiting payment.

For example:

Reserved: 3

means three attendee places are currently being held for unpaid reservations.

Reserved places count against event capacity because they must not be offered to another customer while the reservation remains valid.

If an unpaid reservation expires, its reserved attendee places are released.

Confirmed Attendees

Confirmed represents attendees belonging to confirmed Cognivox bookings.

For example:

Confirmed: 25

means 25 attendee places have been confirmed through Cognivox.

Confirmed attendees continue to consume event capacity.

This figure is maintained by the Cognivox booking system and should not normally need to be entered manually.

External Attendees

External Attendees allows you to account for places that have been allocated outside Cognivox.

This is important when Cognivox is not the only source of bookings for the event.

External bookings might include:

• Telephone bookings handled manually
• Bookings received through another website
• Bookings received through another booking system
• Places allocated directly by the event organiser
• Offline registrations

For example, suppose:

Event Capacity: 100

and 15 people have already booked through another system.

Set:

External Attendees: 15

Cognivox will then treat those 15 places as occupied when determining the remaining event capacity.

Updating External Attendees

External Attendees can be changed as bookings are received or cancelled through other sources.

For example:

If another five people book externally, change External Attendees from 10 to 15.

The resulting capacity becomes:

This allows Cognivox to continue making availability decisions using the true overall event occupancy.

Occupied Capacity

Occupied represents the total attendee capacity currently allocated.

It consists of:

Reserved + Confirmed + External

For example:

The event therefore has 45 attendee places currently allocated.

Available Capacity

Available represents the number of attendee places still available.

It is determined from:

Event Capacity - Reserved - Confirmed - External

For example:

Cognivox will not accept a reservation requiring more attendee places than are currently available.

Recalculate Occupancy

The event editor includes Recalculate Occupancy.

This function rebuilds Cognivox-managed occupancy using the actual booking records stored for the event.

It recalculates:

• Reserved attendee occupancy
• Confirmed attendee occupancy
• Package option reserved occupancy
• Package option confirmed occupancy

It does not change:

• Event Capacity
• External Attendees

Those remain under administrator control.

When should I use Recalculate Occupancy?

Under normal operation, Cognivox maintains occupancy automatically.

Recalculation is useful when:

• Existing bookings were created before occupancy tracking was introduced
• Booking information has been imported
• You believe an occupancy figure may be incorrect
• You need to synchronise the event with its underlying booking records

For example, if an existing confirmed booking contains one attendee but the event shows:

Confirmed: 0

select Recalculate Occupancy.

If that booking is valid and confirmed, the event should then show:

Confirmed: 1

Changing Event Capacity

Event Capacity can be changed when necessary.

For example, if a larger room becomes available, the event capacity might be increased from:

100 to 120

The additional places then become available for booking, subject to package and option capacity.

You should not reduce the capacity below the number of places already occupied.

For example, if 80 places are already Reserved, Confirmed or External, the event cannot safely be reduced to a capacity of 70.

Cognivox protects existing allocations when event capacity is updated.

Active Status

An event has an Active setting.

Use this setting to control whether the event should currently be available through the booking system.

An active event can be considered for booking when its other booking conditions are also satisfied.

Making an event inactive is useful when:

• The event has been withdrawn
• Bookings should temporarily stop
• Configuration is not yet complete
• The event should remain in the system but should not currently be offered

Deactivating an event is generally preferable to deleting an event that already has booking history.

Saving an Event

After making changes, select Save Event.

When an existing event is saved, Cognivox preserves booking-managed occupancy such as Reserved and Confirmed attendees.

This means administrative changes to the event do not reset existing booking occupancy.

Before saving, check that:

• The event name is correct
• The venue is correct
• Start and end dates are correct
• Booking opening and closing dates are correct
• Event Capacity reflects the actual maximum attendance
• External Attendees reflects bookings received elsewhere
• Packages and options are configured correctly
• The Active setting is appropriate

Deleting an Event

Take care when deleting booking events.

An event with existing attendee allocations should normally be retained rather than deleted.

If an event is no longer available but booking history exists, make the event inactive instead.

This preserves the event and its relationship with existing booking information.

Event Capacity and Option Capacity

Overall Event Capacity and individual option capacity perform different jobs.

For example:

Event Capacity: 100

might represent the maximum number of people the venue can accommodate.

A Single Room option might separately have:

Single Room Capacity: 5

Even if the event has 50 attendee places remaining, Cognivox cannot offer another Single Room when all five Single Rooms have already been allocated.

Both capacity levels therefore need to be configured correctly.

Next Step

Once the main event details and overall capacity have been configured, the next stage is to configure the ways customers can book the event.

The next help article explains Event Packages and Options, including pricing, pricing basis, option capacity and availability.