Rental Products for WooCommerce expand the default product functionality for WooCommerce products so that customers can also rent them. In this guide, we’ll go through how to manage rental product orders.
Orders list
↑ Back to topIn WooCommerce > Orders, you’ll see a list of all orders. This is standard WooCommerce behavior and includes both rental and non-rental orders.
If an order includes rentals, it will display an “includes rentals” label next to the order number, making it easy to identify rental-related orders at a glance.
Filter orders
↑ Back to topYou can also filter the orders list by rentals using the rentals filter.
Latest rental orders
↑ Back to topYou can go to the Rentals > Dashboard to get a quick overview of your latest rental orders. This part of the rentals dashboard displays the latest rental orders for quick access.
Flagged rental orders
↑ Back to topIn the Rentals > Dashboard page, you can also get a quick overview of your flagged rental orders. These are rental orders that may require action, such as rental products that haven’t been returned by the due date. This section of the rentals dashboard displays the flagged rental orders for quick access.
Managing orders
↑ Back to topOrders containing rentals are managed similarly to normal orders with a few key differences:
- An information banner on how to manage rental orders is shown in the managing rental orders section when adding/editing an order.
Note: this information will only appear if the Managing rental orders option hasn’t been disabled from the screen options. - The banner changes depending on the overall settings you have applied for rentals. Below is an example of how it looks in the managing rental orders section – the information shown on the screenshot may differ for your store due to the settings you have applied.
- We don’t include this information in this document to avoid confusion, as it can differ depending on the settings you have applied.
Payments and refunds
↑ Back to topPayments for orders containing rentals are processed the same way as non-rental orders. The customer pays the full order total, including any security deposits, during checkout.
If you wish to issue a refund, you can refund the entire order or partially refund specific items, including security deposits. In both cases, if the original payment method was a card, your payment provider’s usual transaction fees and terms apply, just as with non-rental orders.
For details on processing refunds, refer to the Managing Rental Orders section shown when adding/editing an order.
When using the security deposits feature in this extension, the customer is charged the full amount (including any deposits) at checkout. This extension does not support payment holds or pre-authorizations for deposits (e.g. temporarily holding an amount and charging it later).
This functionality has been explored but is currently not feasible due to limitations from most payment providers, who typically allow payment holds for only around 7 days. If a customer places a rental order more than 7 days in advance, the hold would expire before the rental begins.
While some gateways may allow extended holds (up to 30 days), this depends on factors such as:
- The payment provider
- Your business’s merchant account setup
- Card types used
- Rental period timing
These dependencies make it too unreliable to support broadly within the extension.
You may wonder how platforms like Airbnb manage this; they use custom agreements and bespoke payment integrations, allowing longer holds and delayed charges. This is not possible with this extension, as payments are taken at checkout, following standard WooCommerce behavior.
If you are using the Deposits & Partial Payments for WooCommerce plugin, payments are handled according to that plugin’s settings.
For card payments, make sure your WooCommerce payment methods are configured to authorize and capture payments immediately. This is usually the default setting. Using an “authorize now, capture later” setup is not recommended, as most providers only allow a short window for capturing payments. If the rental start date is too far in the future, the capture window may expire.
We recommend testing your payment scenarios in a staging or development environment using your payment provider’s sandbox tools. This helps ensure you’re familiar with the process, transaction fees, and behavior before going live.
Inventory Management in Rental Products
↑ Back to topThe inventory shows the rental stock totals of all published rental products. There are two views available:
- date view and,
- live view
You can search, print, and export the list using the search field and buttons.
To view a product, click the product title button to open it in a new tab:
Date view
↑ Back to topShows estimated rental stock totals for the date set. Rentals are considered when the rental dates (including any return days thresholds) have passed, regardless of whether marked as returned or not.
As the inventory can be used to view rental stock totals for dates in the future, the rental stock totals assume that rentals will have been returned by the expected return dates (including any return days thresholds).
Live view
↑ Back to topShows rental stock totals for the current date and time. Rentals are considered out unless marked as returned or canceled.
Negative rental stock totals
↑ Back to topNegative rental stock totals can occur temporarily when the product has had rental stock reduced and more than the new level was already reserved. Once those reserved rentals have been returned, the negative rental stock levels will rectify.
Different availability than the actual inventory
↑ Back to topThere are a variety of factors that determine the availability of a rental product.
This can mean that the totals you see in the inventory do not match the availability a customer sees when choosing a rental on specific dates/quantities, such as accounting for the return days thresholds of rentals prior to the dates they have selected.
In addition to the above, availability may also differ from the inventory due to immediate rental stock replenishment in settings.
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.