Description: We operate a hair salon with a custom booking system built on the Square Bookings API. We use the API to create, reschedule, and cancel appointments programmatically (via our iOS app and web admin dashboard).
The problem:
Every time we make a change through the API — reschedule a time, adjust duration, or cancel Square automatically sends email/SMS notifications to the client. There is no way to suppress these through the API.
This is a problem because:
- Minor adjustments shouldn’t notify clients.
When the salon owner extends an appointment by 15 minutes to reflect actual time used, or adjusts the price,
the client doesn’t need to know. The automated notification creates confusion (“Did my appointment change?”).
- Our system already handles notifications.
We have our own push notification and email system that sends contextual, branded messages. Square’s automatic
notifications are redundant and sometimes contradictory.
3. The feature already exists in the Square Dashboard.
When creating or modifying a booking through the Square Appointments app/dashboard, there is an option to disable client notifications. This capability just isn’t exposed through the API.
Requested change:
Add an optional boolean field
suppress_customer_notifications
(or similar) to these Bookings API endpoints:
- POST /v2/bookings
(CreateBooking)
- PUT /v2/bookings/{booking_id}
(UpdateBooking)
-POST /v2/bookings/{booking_id}/cancel
(CancelBooking)
Example:
{
“booking”
: {
“start_at”
:
“2026-04-01T14:00:00Z”
,
“version”
:
3
,
“appointment_segments”
: […]
},
“suppress_customer_notifications”
:
true
}
When
true, Square would skip sending the automatic booking confirmation/change/cancellation email and SMS to the customer, matching the behavior already available in the Square Dashboard UI.
Use cases:
- Salon adjusting appointment duration after the fact to reflect actual service time
- Batch rescheduling appointments (e.g., salon closure) where the business sends one combined notice instead of individual Square emails
- Systems with their own notification pipeline that want full control over client communication
- Price/service corrections that don’t affect the client’s scheduled time
Impact: This is a common request from businesses using the Bookings API for custom integrations. The workaround today is to ask clients to ignore Square emails, which is unprofessional.