I have an overbooking: what do I do?

Two guests have booked the same property for overlapping dates. Work through it in this order: confirm it is a real overbooking, decide which stay you keep, cancel the other one on the channel it came from, then clear the flag in Smoobu so your availability is correct again.

Most bookings that show the status Overbooking in Smoobu are not this. If yours appeared right after you connected a channel, or after a period when a channel was not delivering bookings, it is almost certainly a leftover rather than two real guests. My imported bookings look wrong (Overbooking / 1 guest): did something break? covers that case and is the faster read.

First, confirm it is real

You have a real overbooking when two different bookings, with two different guests, cover overlapping dates on the same property.

Open your Bookings list and filter Status > Overbooking. Open each booking behind the flag and compare the guest name, the dates and the property. If there is only one real booking, nothing is double-sold and My imported bookings look wrong (Overbooking / 1 guest): did something break? tells you how to clear the flag.

Decide which booking you keep

Smoobu cannot make this choice for you, and the cost of cancelling differs by channel. Before you decide, check what cancelling costs you on each channel: penalties, your listing's performance score, and whether the channel expects you to find the guest somewhere else to stay. Those rules belong to the channel, not to Smoobu.

If you have another property free for the same dates, moving one booking to it is usually better for everyone than cancelling.

Cancel the booking you are not keeping

Cancel it on the channel it came from, in that channel's own extranet or app, not only in Smoobu. A cancellation you make only in Smoobu does not tell the channel, and the guest keeps a confirmed booking on their side. How do I cancel a booking? covers what Smoobu does and does not send onward.

Contact the guest yourself as soon as the cancellation is in. They booked in good faith, and hearing it from you is better than seeing it from the channel.

Clear the overbooking in Smoobu

Once only one booking remains for those dates, open the booking that is still flagged and click the circular Book Again button on its details page. This is the step that matters: it re-fires the booking, including the availability update back to the channel. Without it the channel can keep holding the wrong availability even though your Smoobu calendar looks right.

Why it happened

• Two channels confirmed within the same minute, before Smoobu could close the dates on the second one. This is the classic cause and the hardest to prevent.
• Dates were blocked only on the channel, not in Smoobu. Smoobu is the master calendar: the next time it sends availability, anything it does not know about is reopened. See Enter a direct booking or block dates yourself.
• Availability was added back in the channel's extranet after Smoobu had closed those dates. While a channel is connected, manage availability in Smoobu and not in the extranet, or you reopen inventory Smoobu believes is closed.
• A booking arrived during the import gap. Preparation days between bookings are added after a booking imports, so they cannot protect against a second booking that arrives on another channel in those few moments. See Block preparation days between bookings.

Stop it happening again

Enter every direct, phone and email booking in Smoobu as soon as you take it, and block dates in Smoobu rather than in a channel's own calendar. Both are covered in Enter a direct booking or block dates yourself. If a channel is connected, treat Smoobu as the only place you change availability.

Related articles

• My imported bookings look wrong (Overbooking / 1 guest): did something break?
• Enter a direct booking or block dates yourself
• How do I cancel a booking?
• How does Smoobu keep my calendars in sync?

Still stuck?

If these steps didn't fix it, contact the Smoobu team: open the Help menu to open a ticket or book a call slot, or use the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner. To get the fastest answer, please include:

• Your Smoobu User ID (in the profile-icon menu, top right).
• The property name or ID, if it's about one property.
• The Booking ID, if it's about one booking (Bookings, then View more).
• The channel name, if it's about channel sync (Booking.com, Airbnb, Vrbo, and so on).
• A short step-by-step: what you did, what you expected, and what happened.
• Screenshots or a short screen recording of the problem.
• Your browser and operating system, if something looks wrong on screen.