While running an online business with a booking system, it’s not difficult to set yourself up for some failure. A poor booking software, some improper payment gateways, and an unsustainable order management system can really turn down your dreams to build a self-sustainable booking website.
Almost every other WordPress booking plugin in the WordPress repository is designed to suit just one or two business cases, which makes them non-versatile. It is highly important for a bookings plugin to change its shape whenever you want it to.
An ideal bookings plugin should be reliable, easy to implement, simple to use, and shouldn’t give you much of a headache while handling multiple bookings.
Cue in, WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments
This WooCommerce appointments scheduling plugin is, in one word, eclectic. It has taken its inspirations from many real-life business cases, and thus, supports various practical implementations.
It notches right up by offering features that suit businesses like party equipment rentals, hotel room bookings, doctors appointments, spa reservations, or any other websites that require a booking system.
How much do I need to spend?
The plugin entitles a fair cost of $99 for the single site license. You can extend the number of sites as well(click here to know more). The license includes one year of customer support and plugin updates.
But there is also a WooCommerce Bookings Free plugin for you to check out. This free version of this plugin is just amazing. You can use it if you wish to set up a basic booking facility on your WooCommerce website.
But, why choose this bookings plugin at all?
No subscription or additional cost: There are no additional charges, so you just have to pay a one-time amount and you’re good to go. There are no monthly subscriptions so you don’t have to worry about paying money on intervals. And please note that the plugin will continue working even beyond its expiration date.
Quality assurance: PluginHive is a vendor at XAdapter and has over 50,000 active users. Every plugin at PluginHive undergoes a strict review process from time to time. They are thoroughly examined and tested well before releasing new versions.
30 Days 100% money back guarantee: This plugin comes with a 30 Days money back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the product. Meaning, if you do not like the plugin and how it performs, you can always claim for your money within the 30 days of your purchase date.
What are the benefits of using the WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin?
Unlike any other bookings plugin, this one is a versatile booking solution. Meaning, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you run or want to run, this bookings plugin can change its shape accordingly. This is because of the multiple features and functionalities that come along with it. Let us go through some of the major advantages of using this plugin on your WordPress-based website.
Convert any WooCommerce products into a bookable resource
Yes, you heard that right! Creating a bookable product is as simple as creating a product with WooCommerce. And once you are done with defining the product, you can define the product as a bookable one.
You offer bookings directly from the calendar
With this plugin, you get to show the calendar on the product page. Customers can select the defined booking period directly on the calendar — something that most of the bookings plugins out there do not offer.
Choose booking duration/period and show calendar range
The plugin offers four booking period — Minutes, Hours, Days and Months. So you can easily set up an appointment system consisting of each slot of 40 minutes. The plugin also allows you to show the booking period for a fixed period or a calendar range.
Calendar range booking
Allow cancellations from the customer side
WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin has a smart feature. So, with this option enabled, your customer would be able to cancel their booking(s) from the My Account page. The plugin also has a feature that lets your customers send a booking confirmation request to you. And once you(as a user) confirm this request, your customers can pay for the booking amount.
Set bookings availability
You can offer the bookings based on the availability of the bookable service or resource. For instance, you offer a certain service from Monday to Friday, but do not work on weekends. In this case, the plugin can help you restrict the bookings to weekdays only.
Restricting the bookings
Offer booking cost
We all know that setting up the booking cost can be a tough case. Especially, when you are dealing with guests in your hotel and you have to offer special resources like pre-paid WIFI and exclusive Spa. Whatever may be the case, you can set up the desired pricing options using this plugin.
In the above example, you can offer a rented item and set a base cost of $15((7+8)+(2+2)) applicable from Monday to Friday. And suppose you want to charge more on weekends then you even can set a higher price, in this case, $26((7+12)+(2+5)). Let’s see how this would appear on the product page.
You can add participants and offer resources
With this plugin, you can have a system that lets the customers mention the number of people who will be staying in your hotel room. What’s even amazing is that you can charge money on per person basis as well. The Booking Participants feature lets you do all that.
Keeping the above example in mind, let us assume that the hotel owner wants to charge extra for the guest accessing the swimming pool and personal lawn area next to their room. In this case, he or she can set up the following conditions in the Booking Resources section.
Here you have to option to automatically assign the resources to every room booking or let the customer choose. The rates can also be calculated based on per participant. Let us see how it might look on the product page.
The total booking cost is will come up to $190, as $50 is an extra charge for the Swimming pool resource.
Manage your bookings in the back-end
Bookings can be managed in the back-end just like any other normal order in WooCommerce. You would need to go to WooCommerce Dashboard and go inside the dedicated Bookings section. And once you’re in, you would be able to see the list of all the bookings made on your website. You can further have three major options to either delete, cancel or confirm a particular booking. Have a look at the following image:
So, suppose you have enabled the Requires Confirmation option and you receive a new booking. The plugin will indicate in this way, have a look.
Once approve the booking, the customer would be able to see the Pay option as shown below. This option would take them to the Checkout page where they can choose the right payment option to finalize the booking. Have a look at the following images:
Another good thing is that, if you have enabled the Allow Cancellation feature then your customers would be able to cancel the order right from the My Account page.
Final words…
Somewhere in the midst of finding the ultimate solution and struggling to build a robust booking system, we don’t realize how easy the process can become with this simple yet powerful plugin.
So, if you are thinking to add this booking functionality to your WooCommerce and expand your business in many ways then check out this plugin now.