Booking Use Case: Party Equipment Rental (Using Persons and Resources)

Let customers rent a quantity of chairs in a chosen color for one day. Use a resource for each color’s stock and a person-type field for the number of chairs. In this setup, “persons” represents equipment units, not people.

Scenario

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A party supply store has 200 black chairs, 200 white chairs, and 200 gold chairs. Each chair costs $1.50 for a one-day rental. A customer who reserves 150 white chairs pays $225, leaving 50 white chairs available for that date. The black and gold stock remains available separately. These example prices are in US dollars before tax; use your own prices, currency, stock, and rental dates.

Before you begin

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Install and activate WooCommerce and WooCommerce Bookings. Confirm your WordPress time zone, store currency, taxes, and actual chair stock. Use a test store to check pricing and availability before accepting reservations. This example covers one-day rentals; collection, delivery, and return arrangements are handled separately.

Set up the rental product

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Create a one-day bookable product

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1. Go to Products > Add new product and name it Party Chair Rental. Choose Bookable product in Product data. Select Has persons and Has resources.
2. Select Virtual if, as in this example, checkout does not calculate shipping charges. Explain collection or delivery arrangements in the product description.
3. In General, set Booking duration to Fixed blocks of, 1, Day(s). Leave Requires confirmation? unchecked for direct booking.
4. In Costs, set product-level Base cost and Block cost to 0. Leave the cost rules empty until you add the optional seasonal fee below.
5. In Availability, set Max bookings per block to 200 and All dates are… to available by default. Choose advance-booking limits that suit your business. Add closure or buffer rules if needed, then test them with your rental dates.

You can also start with the Equipment Rental template. Review and replace its example settings with the values below. Do not assume that a template’s existing tables or chair resources match your stock, and do not rename a resource that other products still use.

Set up a resource for each chair color

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1. Open Resources. Enter Chair color in Label and choose Customer selected under Resources are….
2. Leave Share max bookings per block? unchecked. Each color needs its own stock allowance, rather than one shared limit across all colors.
3. Beside Add/link Resource, choose New resource, select the button, and name the resource Black chairs. Repeat for White chairs and Gold chairs. If a resource already represents this same physical stock, link that existing resource instead of creating another copy.
4. Expand each resource row and set its Base Cost and Block Cost to 0. Save the product.
5. Select Edit resource beside each color. Set Available Quantity to 200, or the number you actually own, and select Update. Return to the product. Leave resource availability rules empty if all colors follow the product’s rental dates.

Resource availability is shared across every product that links the same resource. Use the same resource for the same physical chairs; separate copies would allow that stock to be booked twice. To rent more than one color, customers add a separate booking for each color.

Use persons for the chair quantity and price

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1. Open Persons. Set Min persons to 1 and Max persons to 200.
2. Select Count persons as bookings so each chair consumes one unit of the selected resource’s available quantity.
3. Leave Multiply all costs by person count unchecked. A person type’s own cost already scales with its quantity; this setting would also multiply product-level fees by the number of chairs.
4. Select Enable person types, then select Add Person Type. Expand the row and set Person Type Name to Quantity of Chairs, Base Cost to 1.50, Block Cost to 0, Min to 1, and Max to 200. Keep only this one person type for the example.
5. Select Publish, or Update for an existing product.

The person-type maximum limits one booking’s requested quantity. The selected color’s remaining resource stock can impose a lower limit. If you stock fewer than 200 of a color, enter that actual quantity on its resource.

Customer experience

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Customers open the rental product, enter 150 in Quantity of Chairs, choose White chairs, and select an available date. Outside the optional seasonal-fee period, the one-day booking costs $225: 150 × $1.50. They select Book now and complete checkout to reserve the chairs.

Check the quantity, color, date, and total in the cart and order confirmation. A temporary cart reservation can hold stock during checkout; abandoning the cart is not a completed rental order. For multi-day rentals, configure and test the duration and pricing separately rather than assuming this one-day price applies per day.

Add a seasonal fee once per reservation (optional)

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1. In Persons, confirm that Multiply all costs by person count remains unchecked.
2. Open Costs and select Add Range. Choose Range of months, from May to August.
3. For the rule’s Base cost, choose + and enter 100. Leave the rule’s Block cost at + 0. Save the product.
4. Test a rental date inside and outside that range. The fee is added once to each qualifying booking, after the chair price is calculated.

Selection	Outside May–August	May–August
1 chair	$1.50	$101.50
150 chairs	$225	$325
200 chairs	$300	$400

With the all-cost multiplier enabled, the $100 product-level fee would also be multiplied by the chair count. For 150 chairs, that would produce $15,225 instead of $325. Separate bookings, including separate chair colors, each receive their own qualifying fee. This is not a single fee for the whole cart. See Costs for Bookable Products for other pricing rules.

Verify pricing and stock

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On a quiet test date outside May–August, verify the following before accepting customer rentals:

1. Check quotes for 1, 150, and 200 chairs: $1.50, $225, and $300 respectively. A request for 201 should be rejected.
2. Create a test reservation for 150 white chairs. You can use Bookings > Add Booking and Don’t create an order for this booking, or your store’s test checkout. Confirm that the booking is active.
3. Refresh the product. On that same date, 50 white chairs should remain bookable for $75, while 51 should be unavailable. Black and gold chairs should retain their separate stock allowance.
4. If using the seasonal fee, repeat a price check on an available May–August date: 150 chairs should cost $325 before tax.
5. Cancel the test booking, then refresh and verify that its reserved chairs become available again.

If the result differs

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• Stock does not decrease by the number of chairs: select Count persons as bookings and check that the test reservation is active, not cancelled.
• White-chair bookings also use black or gold capacity: clear Share max bookings per block? and confirm each color links to its own resource.
• The seasonal fee is multiplied: clear Multiply all costs by person count. Keep the per-chair price on the person type and the once-per-booking fee on the product cost rule.
• The quote includes extra charges: review product, resource, person-type, and matching cost-rule values. For this example, the only per-chair charge is the person-type Base Cost of 1.50.
• No dates are available: check the default availability, closure rules, booking window, buffers, and remaining resource stock. Another product using the same resource can reserve that stock too.