Bookings 1.8 comes packed with a ton of new features that help your business run smoothly. Here they are in a nutshell:
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.
Here’s a closer look at some of the great new features in WooCommerce Bookings version 1.8.
Bookings extend into the next day
↑ Back to topPrior 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.
Learn how to configure your bookable product here.
Buffer periods
↑ Back to topThere 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.
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.
Learn all about how availability rules work in the documentation.
Offer discounts per person
↑ Back to topWith 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.
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 increate_wc_booking().
Upgrade instructions
↑ Back to topVersion 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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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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m looking to build a site for car rentals, can this plugin be used or do you know about an alternative?
Hi! Yes! You can use the Bookings plugin to setup blocks for car rentals.
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)?
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
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?
(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)
1.8 is bugy !!!! where is 1.8.1 ?????
Is it compatible with gravity forms add-on?
Does it sync with iCal 2 ways?
Thanks
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.
Great Job Ninjas!! Updates, bug squishing, and staying up with feature requests is why we all keep coming back!
Thanks Brad! Hope you enjoy the new version!
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 🙁
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.
Great Job!
New features, updates and support are some of the reasons why I have been using WooTeam Products for a long time.
Great Job is now better than ever.
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? =)
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) .