In Cart Bookings

An In Cart booking is a temporary reservation created when a customer adds a bookable product to their cart. It holds availability while they shop, but it isn’t a confirmed booking or proof of payment. The customer may still be shopping or may have abandoned the cart.

Use this guide to find these reservations and release availability when needed. You’ll need WooCommerce Bookings active and permission to manage bookings.

View in-cart bookings

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1. Go to Bookings > All bookings.
2. Select the In Cart status link above the list.
3. Check the booking ID, product, start date, and end date before clearing a reservation.

If the list is empty, there are no matching reservations. Clear any search, date, or product filters to check the full list. See All Bookings for the list controls and other booking statuses.

Clear reservations to restore availability

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In-cart reservations count against availability, even though checkout hasn’t been completed. Clearing a reservation releases its hold. Other bookings, availability rules, resource limits, and capacity can still make that slot unavailable.

Automatic expiration

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By default, Bookings schedules each in-cart reservation to expire 60 minutes after it’s created. This is a timeout for the reservation, not a countdown that restarts whenever the customer browses another page. A developer can customize the timeout.

Expiration depends on your site’s scheduled tasks, so removal may happen later than the scheduled time. When the customer’s cart next loads, Bookings removes the expired item and displays a notice explaining that the booking was removed due to inactivity. The customer can select an available slot again.

Clear expired reservations

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If old reservations remain, use the tool that targets expired bookings:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Status > Tools.
2. Find Clear expired In Cart bookings and select its Clear button.
3. Read the result message, then return to the In Cart list and check whether the expired reservations were removed.

This tool targets reservations older than the expiration period; it doesn’t clear every customer session. If expired reservations keep accumulating, ask your host to check whether scheduled tasks are running, and contact support if the problem continues.

Clear selected reservations

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1. Go to Bookings > All bookings and select In Cart.
2. Select the checkbox beside each reservation you want to clear. You can use the same method for one reservation or several.
3. Choose Move to Trash from Bulk actions, then select Apply.
4. Read the result message and check that the selected bookings are no longer in the In Cart list.
5. Check the product’s booking calendar for the affected date and time. The slot is available only if no other booking or availability rule blocks it.

If you moved the wrong booking, open Trash from the bookings list and use Restore where available. Recheck availability before telling the customer they can proceed. Restoring a record doesn’t guarantee that an expired cart session can complete checkout.