Practical example: long waitlist with rare cancellations

Real-life example: long waitlist, rare cancellations

Judit runs a 10-seat therapy group. The group stays full most of the time, and her waitlist usually has 20–30 people.

The challenge is not demand. The challenge is what happens when one seat opens once in a while. She used to manage this in email, and the same problems kept coming back:

• two people were sometimes promised the same seat,
• it was hard to see who had already been offered a place,
• she had to call someone back and retract an offer.

Now, after a cancellation, the system sends one timed offer to the next person in line. If they accept, the seat is finalized immediately. If they do not respond in time, the offer expires and moves to the next person.

In daily work this means:

• no double promises for the same seat,
• every step is logged and traceable,
• no mental overhead to track the queue manually.

The next morning she sees a clear status: either the seat is filled or the next offer is already out. No limbo, no chasing people by phone.

For this workflow, the Pro plan is usually the practical fit: especially if you want waitlist handling with timed offers for rare openings.

If this is your daily reality, continue with what is waitlist management, then compare the sibling scenarios scarce capacity high demand and large event constant rebalancing, and finish with the related article why use a waitlist a decision system when events are overbooked for broader context.