# Runbook: Booking Failures

## Summary

Guide for diagnosing booking creation or status update failures (availability, overlap prevention, or validation errors).

## Symptoms

- `POST /api/bookings/` returns HTTP 400 or 500.
- `PATCH /api/bookings/<id>/` fails when confirming or cancelling.
- Users report bookings not appearing or incorrect status.

## Impact

- Customers cannot place bookings.
- Staff schedules become inconsistent.
- Notification and payment flows may not trigger.

## Quick Checks

- Confirm the request payload includes a valid `service`, `staff`, and scheduled time.
- Check server logs for booking validation errors or integrity exceptions.
- Verify that staff availability and overlap prevention rules are behaving as expected.

## Mitigation Steps

- Reproduce with a known test user and staff member to isolate data issues.
- If overlap rules are too strict, review booking validation logic and confirm time zone assumptions.
- If status updates are blocked, verify role checks and serializer permissions in `backend/apps/bookings/`.
- If notifications are expected but missing, confirm `NOTIFICATION_PROVIDER` configuration and notification records.

## Rollback / Escalation

- Roll back recent booking-related changes if failures started after a deployment.
- Escalate to engineering with the booking ID, user ID, and timestamps.

## Notes

- Booking validation and status transitions live in `backend/apps/bookings/`.
- Notifications for booking lifecycle are handled in `backend/apps/notifications/`.