What’s new at Baluu — June roundup

Our last update was a big one — Junno and Daniel, our AI assistants, went live across Baluu. We haven’t slowed down since. Here’s everything that’s shipped in the weeks after: deposits, a full waiting-list overhaul, stackable discount codes, calendar invites that keep themselves up to date, a proper roles system, and a long tail of checkout fixes.

💰 Deposits — take a part-payment now, collect the balance later

A long-requested one. Tickets can now be configured to charge a deposit at checkout instead of the full price — with the remaining balance tracked, chased and collected without you lifting a finger.

Two ways to collect the balance — send the customer a secure Baluu payment link by email, or mark it as paid in person.
Automatic reminders — a daily reminder when the balance falls due, plus one polite overdue nudge. We never auto-cancel a booking over an unpaid balance.
Full visibility — a new outstanding-balances filter and balance column in your bookings, deposit-aware order confirmations, and refunds that respect what’s actually been paid so far.
Works everywhere — staff-created (external) bookings can take deposits too, and customers can even ask Junno to pay their outstanding balance in chat.

Deposits are rolling out in beta now. If you’ve been faking deposits with workarounds, this one’s for you — drop us a line at support@baluu.io and we’ll help you set it up.

⏳ Waiting lists have grown up

Waiting lists used to be one-size-fits-all. This month they got a proper overhaul:

You’re in control — a new Waiting Lists settings page lets you choose who gets notified when a seat frees up (nobody, just that date, or the whole course), and optionally cap how many people can join the list per date.
Customers choose their flexibility — joining a list can mean “this date” or “any available date” — their pick.
Term-level waiting lists — customers can now wait for a whole term, or ask to hear about any new term you publish. Term waiters show up in your dashboard waiting-list view alongside everyone else.
Reliable notifications — we fixed long-standing bugs in freed-seat emails and added de-duplication and a cooldown, so a whole-term cancellation no longer risks an email storm.
Sold out ≠ dead end — sold-out dates now suggest other available dates and similar experiences on your booking pages.

Unconfigured accounts behave exactly as before — open the new Waiting Lists settings page to switch on the new controls.

🏷️ Stack multiple discount codes

By popular demand: checkout can now accept more than one discount code on a single order. It’s off by default — enable discount stacking in your basket settings and customers can combine codes at checkout. Staff can stack codes on external bookings from the dashboard too.

📆 Calendar invites that keep themselves up to date

Booking confirmation emails now carry a real calendar invite, so the session lands straight in your customer’s Google, Apple or Outlook calendar. And unlike a plain “add to calendar” link, it stays in sync: reschedule the booking and the event moves; cancel it and the event disappears. No RSVP noise for you, no stale events for them.

Rolling out now for single-session bookings, with more booking types to follow.

👥 Roles & permissions, done properly

We’ve overhauled the dashboard role model so each role sees exactly what it should:

General staff get a calendar-focused dashboard with full session management (edit, cancel, reschedule, attendees) — while earnings and income stay hidden.
Managers can now edit their team — invite, remove and change roles for anyone except the owner.
View as — owners and admins can preview the dashboard exactly as a given role sees it, straight from the sidebar.

🤖 AI corner — Junno & Daniel keep learning

Since last month’s launch, our AI assistants have picked up new skills:

Junno (your customer chatbot) can now join waiting lists and take balance payments in chat.
Daniel (your dashboard assistant) can answer how-do-I questions straight from the Baluu help centre — without using your AI credits — plus restore cancelled bookings and export customer & booking CSVs on request.
Custom instructions — teach Junno and Daniel your tone of voice and house rules from the AI Chatbot settings.
Bring your own AI — our MCP server is now in early access with step-by-step connection instructions, so you can plug Claude, ChatGPT and other AI tools straight into your Baluu data (read-only).

🧭 Discover — our marketplace, all grown up

Our consumer marketplace has been rebranded as Discover and now lives at discover.baluu.co.uk. It’s had a big month: dark mode, worldwide location filtering (country → city → area), better search, and a serious SEO push — all of which means more eyes on your listings, at no extra cost to you.

The selected date/time card now stays visibly highlighted through checkout.
Fixed the date list showing “No dates available” on first load.
Fixed an unresponsive checkout for free products.
The terms & cancellation policy shown at checkout now come from your default Booking Policy.
Listings show a duration range (e.g. 60–90 min) when sessions differ, and tickets can carry their own duration.
Customer accounts have a new Bundles tab and a clearer Manage button.
Trial and drop-in settings for termly courses are now managed in one place.
Price display fixes on the embeddable book-now components.

🗓️ Quality-of-life for your team

Restore a cancelled booking — un-cancel in one click (Daniel can do it too), with seats handled correctly.
Optional refund emails — choose whether customers get an automatic refund notification (still on by default).
Extra recipients on session emails — add up to 5 ad-hoc recipients when emailing a session’s attendees.
Appointment buffers fixed — before/after buffer times are now separate settings, and overlap detection respects them.
Reschedule fixes — confirmation emails no longer occasionally go missing after a reschedule, and bookings on an archived ticket type can be moved again.

🔒 Privacy & data hygiene

You can now hard-delete customers who have no bookings or data — with a preflight check that tells you exactly what would be affected — deletion previews are much faster, and deleted or anonymised customers can no longer be accidentally booked from the dashboard.

🔧 Reliability work

The transaction (VAT) report now counts commission actually taken, not just records created.
Fixed waiting-list counts, a contact-page crash for venues without photo galleries, and a batch of dashboard polish (hover states, label truncation, tab spacing).

What’s next

Queue-mode waiting lists — first-come-first-served seat claims with a countdown window.
Richer guest details at checkout — ask questions about every attendee, not just the buyer.
Deposits over chat — Junno taking deposit bookings end-to-end.

As ever — questions, feedback, or want early access to anything above? Email us at support@baluu.io.

Thanks for being a great partner.

— The Baluu team

What’s new at Baluu — June roundup: Deposits, smarter waiting lists, calendar invites, and more