@Mike-and-Paige0 As a host who has never used IB, I just want to say not to be scared of booking requests. The guest may not meet your IB requirements, i.e. they are new to the platform and have no reviews yet, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily red flags. It's just a matter of sufficiently communicating with the guest to make you feel at ease that this guest doesn't throw up any red flags.
I understand that having requirements for IB bookings is a safeguard for hosts who don't ordinarily communicate with guests before a booking is confirmed, but personally I can tell you that I have never had a bad guest in 3 years of hosting, and many of those guests wouldn't have met IB requirements. I judge primarily by how a guest communicates, whether they have bothered to write up a little blurb about themselves on their profile, and if they do have reviews, of course I read those.
I've also had several single female guests who've told me they would never IB- they want to have some communication with the host before committing to a booking so they don't have any red flags come up for them.
Also- it doesn't sound like you understand the difference between a booking request and a inquiry. For booking requests, you must either accept or decline within 24 hours. For inquiries, you do not need to either pre-approve or decline. Just answering the guest's inquiry message within 24 hours is all that's required of you. Even if you pre-approve an inquiry, the guest has to then go on to book, it's not automatically confirmed like a request is if you accept it..