If you’re looking to have a quick overview of your rental products’ current availability or if you want to schedule your products’ maintenance ahead of the return date, you can navigate to your WooCommerce store’s admin dashboard, and then on the Rentals > Calendar page to find the calendar version of your rentals stock.
The calendar can be configured to display in the following modes, which affect the rows displayed in the calendar:
- Simple – Displays each order as a row
- Detailed – Displays each rental item within an order as a row
You can change which mode is used by using the dropdown menu at the top of the page.
If the calendar is heavily populated due to high order volumes, consider using simple mode, and/or use the toggles, filters, and search functionality to filter the rows to what you are looking for.
In addition, if the calendar takes a significant amount of time to load, this is likely due to high order volumes and/or under-resourced hosting. To improve performance, we recommend archiving old, completed rentals using the archive rentals setting in Rentals > Settings > Advanced tab.
Rows
↑ Back to topIn Detailed mode, the calendar displays a row for each rental order item, or each rental order in Simple mode.
Each row has a title containing:
- Quantity*
- Product name*
- Product ID*
- Order ID
- Customer name
- Order status
- Return expected suffix**
*Only available when using Detailed mode – simple mode does not include this as the rows are orders, not items within orders.
**Not available for items within an order that have a 0 return days threshold.
Each row can be clicked to open the associated order in a new tab. If a row title is cut off due to overlap with another row, you can hover over it to view the full title.
When using detailed mode, the rental and return expected rows span multiple days to reflect the full rental and return period. If an item in the order has a 0 return days threshold, a return expected row will not be shown, as the return date is the same as the rental end date.
When using simple mode:
- An order with a rental starting on a specific date will display a row on that date.
- An order with a return expected on a specific date will display a separate row on that date, labeled with a “return expected” suffix.
- Rows do not span multiple days.
If the order involves in-person pickup/return, the times are not shown in the row, as the event reflects the entire order rather than individual rentals.
Color keys
↑ Back to topWhen using detailed mode, there are four colors applied to the rows:
- Current – Rentals that span the current date/time, except where already returned or due to be returned
- Future – Upcoming rentals
- Returned – Completed/returned rentals
- Not returned – Rentals that have not been returned and are due
When using simple mode, there are two colors applied to the rows:
- Not completed – Rental orders not yet set to a completed order status
- Completed – Rental orders set to a completed order status
You can see the color keys at the top right. Hover over the color keys for further information.
Filters
↑ Back to topYou can filter the rentals in the calendar by using these filters:
- Color key
- Order status
Search
↑ Back to topYou can search the rentals in the calendar using the search field. This returns matches for the row title, so you can search for rows containing:
- Product*
- Order
- Customer
*Only available when using detailed mode – simple mode does not include this as the rows are orders, not items within orders.
Views
↑ Back to topThe default view shown is the month calendar. Υou can change the view to one of the available views below:
- Month calendar
- Month list
- Week calendar
- Week list
- Day calendar
- Day list
Toggles
↑ Back to topYou can toggle rows within the calendar using the toggle buttons.
- Toggle rentals – Shows/hides rentals rows in the calendar (rentals are rows for the rental period, excluding the return expected period).
- Toggle returns expected – Shows/hides returns expected rows in the calendar.
- Toggle rows limit – On calendar-based views, the number of rows shown are limited, and you must click on the More link to reveal more. The toggle rows limit removes the limit and therefore displays all rows with no view more link.
Archived rentals
↑ Back to topIf you have the archive rentals settings enabled via Rentals > Settings > Advanced, then archived rentals will not be displayed in the calendar by default. If you wish to include/exclude archived rentals, you can do so by clicking the Include/exclude archived rentals button.
Calendar feed
↑ Back to topYou can also enable a calendar feed setting via Rentals > Calendar > Feed.
This allows you to subscribe to a calendar feed to view rentals in your chosen calendar application.
For more details, see the related information in the section below. Once activated, a calendar feed button will appear on the Calendar page. You can use the calendar feed URL to subscribe to the calendar in your chosen calendar application.
Upon clicking the calendar feed button, you will see a prompt showing the calendar feed URL; copy this URL.
Then, subscribe to this calendar feed URL via your chosen calendar application. For example, for the calendar application in macOS:
- Open the calendar application.
- Click File from the top menu and select New Calendar Subscription:
- Paste the calendar feed URL previously copied and click Subscribe:
- On the next screen, you can enter a calendar name, and configure more settings, such as how often you want the calendar to refresh.
- Once done, rentals will now show in your calendar application:
Other calendar options may have different configuration settings, but generally, most calendar applications include the above settings as a minimum.
The calendar feed is designed to allow you to see rentals outside the Rentals > Calendar page.
Note: The connection between your site’s calendar and your local calendar is a one-way sync. That means that changes made in your local calendar application will not reflect in your Rentals > Calendar dashboard. Every refresh of the feed URL will set the calendar back to the state of the rental data on your site’s calendar page.
Disabled dates
↑ Back to topConfigure specific dates to be disabled for rental, used in addition to any dates automatically disabled where there’s no availability.
Field type
When managing disabled dates and editing products, a Date picker is used to allow you to select the dates. If you have a large number of dates to manage, it may be preferable to use the textarea field to quickly paste in your disabled dates data into the field rather than picking them.
If you change this setting, the fields above will reflect your chosen type after saving the settings.
Disable rental dates
Disable rentals on specific dates. Used in addition to any disabled rental dates set at the product level.
Upon clicking the field above, previously disabled dates appear light gray in the calendar. Click on a date again to enable.
Disable rental start/end dates
Disable rental start/end on specific dates. Used in addition to any disabled rental start/end dates set at the product level.
Upon clicking the field above, previously disabled dates appear light gray in the calendar. Click on a date again to enable.
Feed
↑ Back to topThis setting generates a calendar feed hourly in ICS format, which can be used in a calendar application that allows subscription to calendars via URL.
This allows you to view events from the Rentals dashboard calendar in your chosen calendar application. The calendar is not navigable from the frontend of your store, and the calendar URL includes a unique ID, however, it is possible that someone could access this URL. Therefore, only non-identifiable information is included in the calendar feed.
Note: although the calendar feed is regenerated hourly, the refresh frequency is controlled by your calendar application. After enabling this setting, it can take up to one hour for the feed to generate on the URL. Until then, the URL will return a 404 response code. For details on how to subscribe to this feed URL, see the Calendar feed section.
More information
↑ Back to topDo you have more questions? You can click here to return to the Rental Products for WooCommerce’s Getting Started table of contents.
You didn’t find what you were looking for? We’d love to hear from you and help you with any questions you have.