The WooCommerce Bookings extension allows you to set up bookable products for reservations, services, and rentals/hires. Bookings can be given customizable dates, costs and duration, and can be purchased similar to other WooCommerce products.
Installation
- Download the .zip file from your WooCommerce account.
- Go to: WordPress Admin > Plugins > Add New to upload the file you downloaded.
- Activate the extension.
Once installed and activated, a Bookings menu appears in your dashboard.
More information at: Installing and Managing Plugins.
Use cases
WooCommerce Bookings is built with flexibility in mind and aims to cover a variety of use cases with the same interface and logic. Examples of possible use cases for bookable products include:
- Booking services and appointments
- Hotel reservations, using the free WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings add-on
- Rentals/Hires
That said, there are some use cases that Bookings is unsuited for. For example:
- A one-off event tickets — an event is not a booking, and the existing Digital/Downloadable Product Handling or WooCommerce Box Office might be a better fit!
- A recurring event (i.e., every week) — Bookings is unable to handle recurring events.
Understanding how bookings works
WooCommerce Bookings adds a new product type called Bookable Product. Bookable products are given options such as availability, pricing, persons, and resources. Adding a bookable product is typically the first thing you do after installation.
See: Creating a Bookable Product
When a customer views a bookable product, they fill out the booking form and do one of two things:
- Add the booking to their cart and pay
- Enquire about bookings availability without payment, if the booking requires approval.
After checking out with a bookable product in the cart, a new order and a new booking are created. The order is used to track payment, the booking has details about the service booked and stores the customer’s information.
See: Managing bookings