Bookings 1.8 brings overnight bookings, buffer periods, and more

Written by Justin Shreve on November 9, 2015 Blog, News, Product News.

TL;DR Version 1.8 of WooCommerce Bookings has arrived. You can upgrade via your WordPress dashboard or download it from your My Account page. But first, be sure to read and follow the upgrade instructions. Enjoy!

Bookings 1.8 comes packed with a ton of new features that help your business run smoothly. Here they are in a nutshell:

What's new in 1.8?
What’s new in 1.8?

With this release, you can now accept bookings that span multiple days. We’ve also added the ability to offer discounts when multiple people make a single booking together, and add buffer time between each of your bookings.

WooCommerce Bookings is now better than ever.
WooCommerce Bookings is now better than ever.

Here’s a closer look at some of the great new features in WooCommerce Bookings version 1.8.

Bookings extend into the next day

Prior to Bookings 1.8, products with minute or hour based durations could not extend from one day to the next. 1.8 adds that ability, meaning you can now offer overnight bookings.

For example, say your business rents out party buses. You might need to offer an overnight rental (such as 11PM to 6am the following day). Bookings 1.8 gives you the power to do this.

bookings-extend-into-next-day
A 3 hour booking starts at 11 PM and extends into the next day. Prior to 1.8, the latest this booking could start was 9 PM.

Learn how to configure your bookable product here.

Buffer periods

There are plenty of reasons you might need a buffer period between your bookings. Maybe you manage a dental office and need to prepare the room for the next patient. Or maybe you simply need a break.

1.8 allows you to set buffer periods for minute, hour, and day bookings. This allows your breaks can automatically be built into your schedule.

Products with a duration of hours or minutes can have a buffer period of set minutes, creating a fixed schedule. Products with a duration of days, on the other hand, can have buffer periods of entire days.

For example, say your business rents a product out and you ship it between customers. To give yourself time between bookings to get your product sent to the next customer, use 1.8 to set a buffer period of a few days between each.

A booking on December 2nd has a buffer day before and after. No one can book on these days.
A booking on December 2nd has a buffer day before and after. No one can book on these days.

Learn all about how to use buffer periods in the support document on availability settings.

Priorities for availability rules

Early versions of Bookings allowed you to set rules at the global, resource, and product level. Global rules would always take priority over product rules, and product rules would take priority over resource rules.

1.8 now offers more fined-grained control by letting you set priority numbers for rules. Setup your schedule the way you want it.

A rule set at the product level that will take priority over global rules with a normal priority level.
A rule set at the product level that will take priority over global rules with a normal priority level.

Learn all about how availability rules work in the documentation.

Offer discounts per person

With Bookings 1.8, you can create coupons to offer an amount off per person in a single booking.

For example, if you run an escape room business, and want to encourage customers to get more of their friends involved, you can create a coupon that offers $2 off per person. If a group of four people book an escape room mystery, they would get $8 off. If a group of ten people book, they would get $20 off, and so on.

A coupon offering $5 off per person in a single booking.
A coupon offering $5 off per person in a single booking.

Bookings 1.8 also includes…

  • Fixes for multiple bugs, improving the overall stability of Bookings.
  • A new “partially booked” indicator that works for day blocks that allow multiple bookings.
  • Adjustment to respect your WooCommerce time and date format settings.
  • Some developer improvements including translation fixes, a new get_wc_booking_statuses() function, and support for person types in create_wc_booking().

Upgrade instructions

Version 1.8 is a major update to the WooCommerce Bookings extension and contains a lot of changes. Before updating, please:

  • Update all other WooCommerce extensions
  • Create a backup of your database and site’s files (need a backup tool? We recommend VaultPress, and Woo users get the first 30 days free)
  • Test all plugins, custom code, and payment gateways with version 1.8 on a staging site if possible

Try Bookings 1.8 now, and stay tuned for even more

Ready to give the newest edition a shot? Upgrade to Bookings 1.8 via your WordPress Dashboard or My Account page, or download a fresh copy if you’re new to the extension.

That’s all the news we have for now, but we have a lot more planned! Keep an eye out in the coming months as we build upon Bookings and make it even better.

In the meantime, if there’s a particular feature or update you’d like to see, submit an idea on our ideas board.

Have any thoughts or questions about Bookings? Let us know in the comments — we’re always happy to hear from you.

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24 Responses

  1. Alvise Nicoletti
    November 9, 2015 at 6:42 pm #

    We’re all waiting for this, can you confirm you’re working on that ?

    http://ideas.woocommerce.com/forums/133476-woocommerce/suggestions/6201583-woocommerce-bookings-add-default-check-in-and-ch

    • Justin Shreve
      November 10, 2015 at 4:45 pm #

      Hi Alvise. We are not currently working on that feature, but will keep it in mind. Thanks! You could do something similar to this with hours now, since hour blocks can span multiple days.

      • Tomaz
        November 13, 2015 at 1:59 am #

        Great, thank you woo ninjas – been waiting for this!

        However, Alvise is correct – for Woocommerce Bookings to be taken seriously in the accommodation sector at least, it MUST be made more user friendly for check in and check out type arrangement. and also ability to use two calendars

        http://ideas.woocommerce.com/forums/133476-woocommerce/suggestions/7140911-two-calendar-date-picker-one-for-start-date-one

      • Usha
        November 13, 2015 at 2:06 pm #

        Thanks for sharing updates. Just one suggestion, Instead of manually entering duration the calendar should allow user to pick multiple dates while checking the availability.

  2. allmyhoney
    November 9, 2015 at 6:44 pm #

    Great to see woobookings get some love. I have a scenario that I have been looking into for a good while now. I have 3 hairdresser saloons and basically I have different staff in all 3 saloons of course. Each saloon manager should only see their own staff and services and bookings of course – is this now possible with product vendors? That a vendor only sees their own bookings calendar and not all bookings?

    Ideally of course I want the user to just choose 1 hairdresser ( a staff member not a person option in woobookings and possibly from a dropdown menu which would make the most sense) and then choose the service they want which I believe would be resources. Right now I have Person name showing but there is a selector option which I have set to maximum of one but it just does not seem to make sense to have a selector option for a person here. So maybe this has changed in V1.8

    Looking forward to testing this version out.

    • Justin Shreve
      November 10, 2015 at 4:43 pm #

      It sounds like maybe the easiest setup for this is to have each hairdresser be a resource with their available times and then use the product Addons extension to have them select a service. Or you could set up each hairdresser as a resource and have each service be a separate bookable product.

      For the vendor question – nothing has changed in 1.8 related to vendors. Vendor roles should not have access to other vendor bookings, however. https://support.woothemes.com/hc/en-us/articles/202894359-Bookings-Use-Case-Multi-Vendor-Shop-Example-with-Product-Vendors contains a help article that might help you get a setup like this.

      • allmyhoney
        November 10, 2015 at 9:56 pm #

        Unfortunately, still vendors can see all bookings in the calendar from other vendors. I will open a support ticket around this but the calendar needs to be unique to each vendor essentially and right now its not. Also every vendor can see all resources added to the calendar which of course is confusing when you use resources as people in my case. Vendors do not have a clue who all these resources/people are, they again should only see their own resources/people here.

        When using product addons there is no way to see that Hairdresser James was selected and therefore he should not be able to be selected at that time again. So product addons is limited in this sense.

        I am not sure how setting up each service as a separate bookable product would work from a user prespective. essentially a user will look to choose their hairdresser and then what they need done – that is the nature of the business. I would not mind reversing this of course but the user seeing say a page with 12 products on it and then going to a place to choose the person would not really be elegant in my opinion.

        I guess the limitation here is that there are a few attributes needed in certain bookable products. I basically need 2 resource types – one for hairdresser and one for service. I will troubleshoot over a ticket but I did this about 9 months back and no joy then, I just thought maybe this might have been part of this newer release here.

  3. Ovidiu
    November 9, 2015 at 7:44 pm #

    I’m looking to build a site for car rentals, can this plugin be used or do you know about an alternative?

    • Justin Shreve
      November 10, 2015 at 4:37 pm #

      Hi! Yes! You can use the Bookings plugin to setup blocks for car rentals.

      • ovizii
        November 10, 2015 at 9:43 pm #

        Awesome, thanks. Would that be a per car booking or could I even setup car classes and assign a number of cars (=assets to each class)?

  4. Jon Mullins
    November 9, 2015 at 9:35 pm #

    Hi,

    I have just updated to the new version and my 2 hour bookable sessions from 9 – 5 has changed to display 3 sets of each time? Is this a bug or is it just me?

    Jon

    • Justin Shreve
      November 10, 2015 at 4:36 pm #

      Hi Jon, I just pushed a bug fix release for a bug that could cause some extra sessions to show up. Can you see of that fixed your issue?

      • Justin Shreve
        November 10, 2015 at 5:12 pm #

        (I pushed the bug fix but the version may take a bit to show up – once you are on Bookings 1.8.1 you can see if the release fixes your issue — otherwise, please contact support)

        • totola
          November 10, 2015 at 9:56 pm #

          1.8 is bugy !!!! where is 1.8.1 ?????

  5. Nina
    November 10, 2015 at 5:16 am #

    Is it compatible with gravity forms add-on?
    Does it sync with iCal 2 ways?

    Thanks

    • Justin Shreve
      November 10, 2015 at 4:52 pm #

      Hi Nina. There is no specific integration between Gravity forms and Bookings in this version (if you are talking about compatibility like the suggestion mentioned here. You should be able to use both plugins at once, though.

      Bookings does not sync with iCal 2 ways. There is a Google Calendar integration built in but it is not 2 ways.

  6. Brad Griffin
    November 10, 2015 at 6:41 am #

    Great Job Ninjas!! Updates, bug squishing, and staying up with feature requests is why we all keep coming back!

    • Justin Shreve
      November 10, 2015 at 4:53 pm #

      Thanks Brad! Hope you enjoy the new version!

  7. Martiboy
    November 10, 2015 at 5:43 pm #

    Excellent great update, except when booking multiple classes in one order and if you need to cancel just one class within that order the whole order is cancelled 🙁

  8. Ron
    November 10, 2015 at 7:59 pm #

    I have multiple sessions showing up but am not seeing the 1.8.1 update. Not in my wordpress admin and not in my woothemes downloads.

  9. Gaz
    November 10, 2015 at 11:04 pm #

    Great Job!
    New features, updates and support are some of the reasons why I have been using WooTeam Products for a long time.

  10. Andreas Lemke
    November 11, 2015 at 1:09 pm #

    Great Job is now better than ever.

  11. Chris Backe
    November 28, 2015 at 3:51 am #

    Hi Justin,
    Am evaluating this plug-in for a client. The aim is to provide a platform for a number of people (around 15-20) to provide services vis appointment at an event. People choose the event, choose the person whose services they want, then pay.

    Ideally, the service providers would be able to login to change their availability, while the buyers would be able to leave reviews afterwards. I’m pretty sure this is all possible from within Woo, but would kindly confirm that, and how it could be accomplished? =)

  12. louisa krause
    July 4, 2018 at 10:09 pm #

    Niice thats realyl great job
    New features, the reasons why I have been using WooTeam Products for a long time are updates and support (y) .