How to manage checkout sessions

A checkout session starts the moment someone begins filling in a form and adds something to their basket, whether that's a package or an individual product. As they add more items or remove them, the session updates automatically to reflect what's in the basket at that point.

How a session holds stock

While a session is active, the items in that basket are held against the stock and availability for those products. This stops someone else booking the same date, time, or allocation while the first person is still deciding. If a customer keeps adding to their basket, the session stays alive and the hold continues.

A session lasts for 15 minutes without activity. Every time the basket changes, that 15 minute window resets. If the customer closes the form, abandons the page, or simply doesn't finish checking out, the session expires after 15 minutes of inactivity and the held stock is released back into general availability.

Why stock sometimes looks unavailable

A common issue is a customer or team member seeing that all stock for a given date and time is booked, when it isn't really sold out. This usually comes down to one of two things. Someone may have been running test bookings and left a session open, holding stock that looks booked but isn't. Or someone else genuinely has an active session in progress and is partway through booking those items right now.

In both cases, the stock frees up once the session expires, so it's worth checking whether an active or recently expired session explains the gap before assuming there's a real availability problem.

Where to find sessions

Go to reports and click the sessions tab. This opens a table of all checkout sessions, both active and expired.

What the sessions table shows

The table can be sorted by column, and includes:

• Whether a session has expired or is still active and due to expire

• The name of the form the session belongs to

• Identifying details such as job IDs

This lets you see at a glance what sessions are currently in progress, which ones are about to expire, and which have already released their stock back into availability.