Understanding bookings in "Enquiry" or "Potential lost bookings" status

Blanca Castillo
Blanca Castillo
  • Updated

Where do I find it?

CUSTOMERS > ENQUIRIES

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What does it mean?

When a direct booking reaches payment but does not complete confirmation in time, TourCMS protects the customer and payment record by moving the booking into an enquiry state rather than deleting it.

Symptom

An operator may see direct bookings from the webshop or API missing from confirmed bookings. Instead, they appear in Enquiries or as Potential Lost Bookings, even though payment was successfully processed through a gateway such as Stripe or Spreedly.

Root cause

This behaviour is linked to the TourCMS temporary booking lifecycle and API timeout handling:

  • Temporary bookings: Every booking starts as temporary. If the customer reaches the payment page but the connection times out, or if the supplier API does not respond within the expected timeout limit of up to 20 seconds, the booking remains unconfirmed.
  • Auto-safety mechanism: To protect customer data and payment records, the background worker converts the temporary booking into a Potential Lost Booking enquiry when payment was reached but confirmation did not finish in time. Staff receive an email notification, and the record is retained for 14 days instead of being deleted.

 

What should I do?

Use the steps below to review the case, confirm the payment, and prevent the issue from recurring.

  1. Manually convert the enquiry

    In TourCMS, go to CUSTOMERS > ENQUIRIES and open the Potential lost booking. If the payment is confirmed in the payment gateway, such as Stripe or Spreedly, promote the enquiry to a Confirmed Booking by selecting Bring in as a new booking.

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FAQs

Why can a paid booking appear as a Potential Lost Customer?

Because the payment step was reached, but the final booking confirmation did not complete before the timeout. TourCMS keeps the record as an enquiry so the team can review it instead of losing the customer and payment context.

Should I create a new booking immediately?

No. First verify the payment in the gateway and check whether the booking already exists in TourCMS. If payment is confirmed and no confirmed booking exists, manually bring the enquiry in as a new booking.