What happens the moment you press Reserve

Before anything is written

• You have to be signed in. Signed out, the button reads Sign in to book, and the server refuses the booking anyway — the gate is not just the button.
• A card on your account. Until you add one the booking box reads Add a card to book instead of Reserve, and the server refuses without it — on a request as well as an instant booking, so a host never approves a stay that had no way to be paid for. A company's card counts too, but only when you book the trip for that company.
• The dates and the price are worked out again on the server. Whatever number the page was showing is ignored.

Booking for work

Tick This trip is for work in the booking box and two optional boxes open: Purchase order and Cost centre. If you belong to a company on Kabora, Book it for appears as well — choose the company, or Just me.

Whatever you fill in is printed on your receipt, on your trip page, and on your host's copy of the booking, as one line: "For work", then the company, then the purchase order and cost centre. Untick the box and none of it is kept. See "Travelling for work, and booking for a company".

If it is refused

Refusals name the host's own rule rather than saying "unavailable": a three-night minimum, the hours or days of notice needed before arrival, a calendar only open so many months ahead, turnover nights kept free around every stay, or a day of the week a stay cannot start or end on. If the nights are simply taken, the exact dates are listed under the message.

Twelve booking attempts in ten minutes is the allowance, counted by the connection you are on rather than by your account. The thirteenth is refused, with a message saying how long to wait.

Pressing the button twice for the same place, the same dates and the same email address does not make a second booking — you land on the one that already exists.

If it goes through

You land on your trip page, not a confirmation screen you then have to navigate away from. That page is where the booking lives from then on.

• On a request, it is headed Waiting on your host, and nothing is charged. Payment happens on that same page after the host accepts.
• On an instant booking, the dates confirm when the payment goes through — not before.

An unpaid booking holds nothing

Your nights are not taken off sale while a booking waits to be paid. Somebody else can book the same dates, and if their payment goes through first, yours is given up in that moment and Kabora emails you to say so. That happens inside their payment, so it is not something that can run late or be switched off.

There is a deadline written for unpaid bookings — 24 hours from booking, or two hours before check-in, whichever comes first. It is switched off. A job can apply it on the hour, but it is not running, so an unpaid booking does not tidy itself away: it sits there showing you a stay to pay for, and showing your host a booking that may never happen, until somebody else pays for those nights.

So pay as soon as you can. Until the payment lands, the dates are not yours.