Waitlist

The waitlist lets members reserve a spot for a monthly lockout studio before one is available. Members pay a deposit to join, express their preferences, and receive an invitation when a studio opens up. The deposit is applied as a credit on the first lockout invoice.

Who Can Join

Approved members are eligible for the waitlist — members can self-enroll, or staff can add a new or existing customer on their behalf. Banned members cannot join. The member must have a full legal name and valid phone number (enforced when paying the deposit, not when staff creates an entry directly).

A member can only have one open waitlist entry (invited or active) at a time across all locations. They must cancel their existing entry before joining another waitlist.

Deposit

Joining the waitlist requires a deposit payment. The deposit is a flat amount configured in Stripe — it is not grossed up with processing fees. The location absorbs Stripe's processing fee on the deposit.

Both the gross amount (what the member paid) and net amount (after Stripe fees) are tracked. When the deposit is applied to a lockout invoice, the member receives the full gross amount as a credit. When the deposit is transferred to the location, only the net amount is sent.

Preferences

Members can express what they're looking for:

• Specific studio — a named studio at a specific location
• Any studio at a location — accepts any available studio at their preferred location (default)
• Any studio at any location — accepts the first available studio across all Metrognome locations
• Preferred size — small, medium, large, or extra large (optional, informational)

These preferences guide staff when a studio opens up but are not automatically enforced — staff manually matches waitlisted members to available studios.

When more than one waiting member could take the same studio, how long someone has been waiting decides it first. Time on the list outweighs size fit and outweighs a pinned specific studio: a member who has been waiting many months outranks one who has been waiting a few weeks and asked for that exact studio. There is no cap on how much the wait counts for, so a long enough wait always wins. Size fit and a pinned studio can break a tie between members who have been waiting close to the same length of time, but neither one outranks someone who has been waiting meaningfully longer. The deposit has no bearing on the order: every waiting entry has one, so it cannot tell members apart.

Available Soon

Staff do not wait for a studio to sit empty before matching it to the waitlist. A studio is available soon when its tenant has a cancellation scheduled, when its tenant has given notice that they are leaving, or when it is empty but not yet ready for a new tenant and staff have recorded an expected opening date. Staff record notice against the studio so waiting members can be matched to it ahead of the actual move-out. Either way, the waitlist can be worked against a studio that is available soon, not only ones that are open.

Available-soon studios are also shown to the public alongside open studios, marked as available soon. The public sees the month the studio is expected to open, never the day, and sees no date at all for a tenant's notice. A studio whose next tenant is already lined up is not shown, and neither is a studio that staff have offered to a waiting member while the offer stands. Visitors can book a tour of an available-soon studio the same way as an open one.

An empty studio with an expected opening date still in the future is available soon, not open, until that date arrives.

A monthly studio that has not launched yet (Coming Soon) is also shown to the public as available soon, with the month staff expect it to open when they have recorded one. It opens for booking only when staff launch it; reaching the expected date never launches it. When the expected date passes and the studio has not launched, staff see the date flagged as passed so they either launch the studio or move the date.

Status Lifecycle

A waitlist entry moves through these states:

• Invited — invitation sent, deposit not yet paid; the entry anchors the payment link and duplicate prevention
• Active — genuinely waiting for a studio (deposit paid, or staff-created without a deposit)
• Offered - staff has soft-held a specific studio for this member; nothing changes on the member's side until staff sends the reservation invitation
• Fulfilled — member has been placed in a lockout
• Cancelled — entry cancelled; any deposit is non-refundable by default (staff may opt into a refund)
• Expired — invitation went unanswered; invited entries older than 30 days with no paid deposit are automatically expired

When a waitlist invitation is created, the entry and its payment record are created immediately in Invited status. The entry remains visible while the payment confirms (instant for card, several days for ACH); when the deposit payment succeeds the entry becomes Active and the member receives their confirmation email. If the payment fails, the entry is cancelled. Cancelling an invitation also cancels its invited entry.

When staff identify a match, they can offer a specific studio to a waiting member, putting a soft hold on it for them. The offer does not change anything the member sees: their waitlist entry looks the same until staff actually sends the reservation invitation. If the member turns down the offer, or staff withdraws it, the entry goes back to waiting. Staff can hold an offer on the same studio for more than one member at a time; whichever member completes their reservation first gets the studio, and the rest stay offered until staff moves them back to waiting.

Fulfilled entries cannot be cancelled. Only active or offered entries can be fulfilled.

Fulfillment

When a studio becomes available for a waitlisted member, staff sends them a lockout checkout invitation. The member completes the lockout checkout normally. During lockout checkout, the system automatically finds the checkout customer's own open waitlist deposit and applies the gross amount as a credit on the first invoice.

Staff can instead explicitly pick which active, deposit-backed entry supplies the credit — including one owned by a different member than whoever is signing the lockout. This covers cases like a bandmate paying the deposit while another member signs. The chosen entry is checked for eligibility when the invitation is created and checked again when the customer pays; if it's no longer eligible by payment time (its deposit was already applied elsewhere), the checkout fails and staff must issue a new invitation. This explicit selection is a staff-only capability — members choosing their own checkout never pick another member's entry.

When the first lockout invoice is paid, the deposit's net amount is transferred from the platform to the location's connected Stripe account, and the entry that supplied the credit is marked fulfilled — whether or not its owner is the one signing the lockout. A deposit applied this way is not refundable to its original owner afterward.

The deposit credit is applied regardless of whether the lockout location matches the waitlist's original preferred location.

Cancellation

Waitlist deposits are non-refundable. Cancelling a waitlist entry does not refund the deposit by default — the entry is closed and the deposit is kept.

A staff member can explicitly choose to refund a deposit at cancellation time. When they do, the refund is issued as a Stripe customer balance credit — not a direct refund to the original payment method — available to offset future charges. If the deposit had already been transferred to the location, the system must reverse the transfer first; if the reversal fails, no credit is issued and the cancellation completes without a refund (the platform never credits money it does not hold). Members cannot grant themselves a refund — the refund option is staff-only.

Expiration

A paid deposit expires 12 months after payment if the member never converts to a lockout. An expired entry is cancelled automatically and the deposit is kept, the same outcome as a staff cancellation with no refund requested. No reminder is sent before expiration.

Staff-Created Entries

Staff can add customers to the waitlist directly — no existing account required. There are two paths:

• Existing customer — search for the customer by name or email and create the entry directly
• New customer (quick-signup) — enter the customer's name, email, and phone number; an account is created automatically and a checkout link is sent so the customer can pay the deposit on their own device

The quick-signup path is designed for on-site use during tours — staff collects contact info, submits the form, and the customer receives an email with a payment link and QR code they can scan immediately.

Staff-created entries without deposit payment participate in the same status lifecycle and duplicate prevention but have no financial component — no deposit to apply and no refund on cancellation.

Notifications

When a waitlist entry is created — whether by the member paying a deposit or by staff creating it directly — the member receives a confirmation email with their preferences, waitlist ID, and (if a deposit was paid) a note that it will be applied to their first month. The location's community manager receives a notification with the member's details.