Square Appointments (Bookings API) vs TheFork B2B API

Square Appointments (Bookings API)

The Bookings API lets an agent working for a Square seller search availability and create, change and cancel appointments, with a public OpenAPI spec, appointment OAuth scopes and idempotency keys. It acts for the venue. Seller-level writes need Plus or Premium, services with a no-show fee can't be booked through it, and it hasn't changed since September 2024.

TheFork B2B API

A venue-side API with a generated OpenAPI 3.1 schema, an llms.txt written for agents and nine OAuth scopes down to read-only availability. It acts for restaurants and their vendors, not diners, needs partner approval, cannot take card guarantees, and has no public status page, changelog or published prices.

Square Appointments (Bookings API)

1. Act for the seller. This API books into one Square seller's calendar, not across businesses
2. Call RetrieveBusinessBookingProfile and check support_seller_level_writes before trying to create or cancel a seller-level booking
3. Call SearchAvailability first, then CreateBooking with the service variation ID and version, team member, location and customer
4. Send a fresh idempotency_key on each create, update or cancel, and pass booking_version when cancelling
5. Check no_show_fee on the service. A service with a non-zero fee must be booked by the customer elsewhere

TheFork B2B API

1. Read hasPaymentGuaranteeRequirement in the timeslots response before booking, since the API cannot take a card
2. Check the status field after creating a reservation and treat REQUESTED as unconfirmed
3. Send the timeslot datetime unchanged as mealDate, because times are the restaurant's local time
4. Check for an existing reservation before retrying a failed POST, as no idempotency key exists and 409 signals DOUBLE_BOOKING
5. Cache the access token for its 8,600 seconds and do not request a new one while it is valid