Consent, privacy and deleting someone

Somebody at the desk is ticking boxes on a client record because the client asked them to. Which box they tick decides whether that client gets their reminder on Friday.

Three groups, in this order

Press Edit on a client and scroll past their details. The boxes are grouped, and the grouping is the point:

Appointment messages — confirmations, reminders, and anything that changes about a booking they made. This is operational: it's about their own appointment, and it isn't marketing.

Marketing consent — campaigns, offers, everything else. The line under it says only tick these if the client has actually agreed to them, and it means it. This is the box a client's permission actually lives in.

Privacy and access — two things that aren't consent at all. Exclude from AI features keeps this client out of everything the assistant reads or writes (see What the AI is told about your clients), and Block from booking online is a sanction.

They're last, and separated, for a reason: a blocked client is a decision about somebody's behaviour, and it sat one line away from being ticked by accident on a list of consent checkboxes.

Blocking someone from booking online

Ticking Block from booking online stops that client's email and phone number getting through your public booking page — and their portal stops offering bookings too, so there's no side door. What it doesn't do is stop you: they can still be booked at the desk, by someone making a judgement.

Deleting a client

What that does is take the record out of circulation. They disappear from your list, from search, from filters, and from the audience of anything that sends messages. What it doesn't do is rewrite history: the sales they were part of stay in your takings, and the appointments they had stay on the days they happened.