Not every customer books online. When someone rings up or walks in, you can build their basket for them — classes, the joining fee, a club top — and hand them a secure payment link to pay themselves. You never take card details, and their places are held while they pay.
Where to Find This
Navigate to Services → Customers → All Customers and open the Assisted Checkouts tab. Its description reads "Bookings taken by phone or at the counter — compose the basket for a customer and send them a secure payment link."
Taking money is its own permission. The tab only appears for team members whose role grants access to the checkouts area — a colleague with customer access alone won't see it. It isn't tied to your plan tier. With view-only access to that area you can see the list but not create, resend or cancel anything (a view-only banner says so).
You can also start one straight from a customer: on the Contacts tab, each customer row has a card icon with the tooltip Create assisted checkout. Starting from there fills the customer's details in for you.
Places Are Held Before Payment
This is the one part of Bizzly where places are reserved before any money changes hands. When you create an assisted checkout, the seats in every class on it are held for that customer for up to 24 hours, or until the link is paid or cancelled.
That matters two ways: the customer can't lose their place while they find their card, and a link left unpaid is holding capacity you could be selling. The list makes both visible — see Chasing and Cancelling Links below.
This is the opposite of the ordinary website basket, where nothing is reserved until the customer presses Checkout. Create assisted checkouts for people who intend to pay, and cancel the ones that go quiet.
Creating a Checkout
Click Create assisted checkout. The window that opens has three parts.
- 1
Find the customer
Type into Customer — "Search by name or email…" — and pick them from the results. Someone you've invited but who hasn't signed in yet is listed with an invited badge.
Nobody matching? The note explains that the search only covers your own members, and Customer not found? Add them opens a short form to add them there and then (an existing Bizzly account with that email is linked automatically).
The customer needs an email address on file — that's where their record and receipts go. To send the link by text or WhatsApp they also need a phone number; without one you'll be told so.
- 2
Build their basket
Three blocks appear, each working the same way — choose, see the price, click Add. Everything you add lands in the Basket at the bottom, where each line can be Removed.
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Classes — start with Who is this for? (the child, pet or student, or the account holder where your site doesn't book per person; Add a child creates one). Then narrow by venue if you run several, pick the Class, the Pack, and — depending on the pack — the Day or Joining from date. The live price appears with the session count, pro-rated exactly as it would be for the customer online, and Add puts it in the basket.
A camp sold by the day rather than as a whole week shows a Day dropdown ("Choose a day…") listing the days still to come in that block. Until you pick one, the price reads "Pick a day to see the price" and Add stays unavailable — a per-day place is priced for its day, so choosing it is what produces the amount. If a day in the block has already run, it isn't offered.
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Fees — your account-level fees, each marked once per family or ongoing membership. Once added the button reads In basket.
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Shop — pick an item, a variant if it has them, and a quantity. Sold-out items and variants are shown but can't be chosen.
The Basket totals what will be charged, and lists any ongoing subscription amount separately underneath.
If the customer hasn't paid your joining fee yet, adding their first class puts it in the basket for you — its own line, with a Remove button like any other. Adding a class you've marked Not with this product under Joining fee on first purchase? doesn't do that, so composing a taster booking never charges someone to join; the fee arrives with their first ordinary purchase instead. Remove it once and it isn't pushed back in while you carry on building the basket. See Account Fees: Joining and Registration Charges.
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- 3
Choose how they pay
Under How should they pay? pick one of:
- Email them the link
- Text them the link (SMS)
- WhatsApp them the link
- I'll share it myself (read out, copy, or show the QR)
Then click Create checkout. The window becomes Payment link ready, showing the link itself, a Copy link button, a QR code the customer can scan from your screen, and a line telling you when the hold and the link expire.
You never type a price. Every amount comes from your catalogue, and the same checks a customer would face online run against their account — eligibility for the class, the once-per-family rule, capacity, and the one-subscription-per-basket rule. If something can't be sold to them, you're told before the link exists.
What the Customer Receives
- By email — a payment request listing every line, the total, and when the link expires, sent to the address on their account.
- By text or WhatsApp — a short message: "Hi [name], [your business] here. Your payment link for £45.00: [link]", with the expiry added.
- Shown on screen — nothing is sent; you read the link out, copy it to them, or let them scan the QR code.
The link goes only to the details already on the customer's account — never to an address typed into the form — so a payment link can't be misdirected.
Paying opens the same secure checkout the website uses. From that moment everything behaves like an ordinary basket: sessions are booked, credits granted, the receipt emailed. See How the Basket and Checkout Work.
Chasing and Cancelling Links
The Assisted checkouts list shows every one you've created, with a count in the heading and, where any are outstanding, the line: "2 checkouts awaiting payment — places are held until they pay or the link expires."
Each row shows the Customer, Total, Status, Created and Expires:
While a checkout is awaiting payment and hasn't expired, four actions are available to anyone with write access:
- Copy link — puts the payment link on your clipboard ("Link copied.").
- QR — opens a Scan to pay window with the code and the link beneath it.
- Resend — sends the link again the same way ("Sent — the customer has the link again."). If sending fails you're told to copy the link instead — the checkout itself is unaffected.
- Cancel — ends it and frees the seats, confirming how many: "Cancelled — 3 held places released."
Links that simply run out are cleaned up automatically, releasing their places without you doing anything. Refresh re-reads the list.
Tips
- Cancel dead links early on a class that's filling up — the places come back on sale immediately.
- Reach for the customer row shortcut when you're already looking at someone: the card icon on their row opens the wizard with their details filled in.
- Read the link out only when you must. Email, text and WhatsApp all leave a record you can resend; "I'll share it myself" doesn't send anything.
- One basket, one payment. Add the season pack, the joining fee and the kit to the same checkout rather than creating three links.
Related Articles
- How the Basket and Checkout Work - What happens after they pay, and the basket receipt
- Purchase Rules: Who a Purchase Is For - The once-per-family and per-member rules applied here too
- Account Fees: Joining and Registration Charges - The fee this wizard adds for you, and how to keep it off tasters
- Your Customer List - The Contacts tab this sits beside, and adding a customer