Instant Book is a powerful tool for sitters, because it makes it quicker and easier for parents to book you - which in turn, results in more bookings.

When you activate Instant Book, it means that parents will be able to instantly confirm you for jobs that you’ve told the app you’re available for. They won’t have to send you a booking request, or post a job and wait for you to apply.

If you’ve got Instant Book turned on in the specific time slot they’re looking in, they’ll be shown your profile and will be able to instantly confirm the sit with you.

Think of it like an Airbnb Host, who can decide whether guests need to request their place for a booking and wait for their response, or whether they can just go ahead and confirm their booking immediately from the listings page.

Activating Instant Book

You can turn on Instant Book in your main Availability Calendar.

Here, for each time slot, you’ll get the chance to state whether or not you’d like to be available for Instant Book.

Just being marked as “Available” in a given time slot, does not mean you can be Instant Booked.

Your general availability tells the app when you’re free - but we’ll only let you be Instant Booked, if you’ve specified that you’re open to it in a particular slot.

Keeping Instant Book turned on

We want to avoid parents making Instant Bookings, only for a sitter to not actually be free.

This is why we ask sitters to reconfirm their Instant Book availability every 72 hours at a minimum.

It means we can have confidence that your Instant Book settings are really accurate.

If 72 hours go past, and a sitter’s either not updated their Instant Book settings, or not hit the refresh button on their Instant Book banner - it will be disabled.

Your settings will be saved for when you turn them back on - and your general availability settings won’t be affected.

Your Instant Book settings page

We know that for sitters, Bubble is all about flexibility and control, which is why you have a detailed settings page, which lets you decide the types of jobs you’re happy to be Instant Booked for.

On your settings page, you can set ‘rules’ around the times of jobs you’re willing (and not willing) to be Instant Booked for. For example, you can specify the minimum and maximum length of the sit, or the maximum distance you’re willing to travel.

The settings page gives you lots of control, so do check it out and make sure you’re setup to your liking. It prevents you from being Instant Booked on jobs that you wouldn’t typically want to take on.

If you’ve got more questions, check out our Instant Book FAQ page here.