How to setup basic fields in WooCommerce Bookings

Last Updated on: 2nd May 2016, 12:33 pm

In order to be able to setup your WooCommerce Bookings product, you need to know the parameters you have available. Here is my own explanation of basic WooCommerce Bookings form fields in plain english. It is neither complete nor official, and yes there can be mistakes in it. If you find any fault in this, please let me know via the comments. The official documentation is can be found here.

I hope you still find it useful. I have put all WooCommerce Bookings field names in double quotation marks.

How long?
How much time is available for 1 Booking?

• “Booking duration” defines the amount of time that is available for one booking.
  One unit of the defined amount of time here is called a Block.
• A Block can have the unit of
  Month(s)
  Week(s)
  Day(s)
  Hour(s)
• The Booking Duration can be set to fixed or variable.
  • Fixed = You predefine the available dates aka Blocks.
    Variable = your customer may choose a start date and the duration aka the amount of Blocks.

You define the When? via the rules you define in the “Availability” tab and “Global Availability”. I will come to this in a moment, but before I continue:

Keep in mind that Bookings only allows a 1-to-1 relationship, unless you enable Persons or set “Max bookings per Block” to more than one.
This means one Block allows one booking.

Independent of your Persons and “Max bookings per Block” setting: Only one Booking per Block may be added to cart in one go but you can put more then one Booking in your cart and check them all out in one purchase.

Many scenarios need a 1-to-x relationship. Imagine you want to sell a tour that has more than one seat and you need people to be able to book one Block multiple times, because they want to come in a group of six people. In that case you might have more of a ticket-sale scenario rather than a bookings scenario.

If this sounds like your use case than I recommend that you also check out our WooCommerce Box-Office plugin.

When are bookings available?
Setting available dates and time.

• “Max bookings per block” defines how many times a single block can be booked, before it becomes unavailable.
• “Minimum block bookable” = first available date from now.
  Example:
  Today is the 1st and this value is set to one day.
  The first available Block is tomorrow.
  Example 2:
  Today is 3pm and this value is set to one hour.
  The first available Block is at 4pm today.
• “Maximum block bookable” = last available date from now.
  Example:
  Today is the 1st and this value is set to one day.
  The last available Block is tomorrow.
  Example 2:
  Today is 3pm and this value is set to one hour.
  The last available Block is at 4pm today.
• “All dates are” defines if the default availability of your Blocks is set to available or unavailable.
  If set to available use “Add Range” to block undesired dates and time
  If set to unavailable use “Add Range” to allow desired dates and time
• “Check rules against” defines how availability is checked for multiple Bookings of the same Block. To Be Continued 🙂

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