General Booking Info

General info

I recommend to create a new trial website to test bookings, so that all the info can be easily deleted after

Our system can handle 3 types of products to be booked / hired:

  • Hire product (hammer, chainsaw, trailer), 
  • Accommodation (room, bed in dorm), 
  • Service (haircut, massage)

Our system can handle 3 types of products to be booked / hired: hire product (hammer, chainsaw, trailer), accommodation (room, bed in dorm), . I would recommend not to mix products of different types on one shopping page (although they can be on the same website)

Hire Products

Hire Products are easy to set up - You create a product and set the number of items available for hiring (e.g. 5 chainsaws), each particular item belongs to the product. 

The system manages each item independently and tracks whether it is available or not, but it's done automatically. So if someone wants to hire a chainsaw on Monday from 12 to 5 pm one item will be marked as booked; if someone else wants the same time the second item will be marked and so on until there is nothing available. It is possible to micro-manage items and their availability but in most cases it's not necessary;

Accommodation and Services

Accommodation and services require to set up products and resources to book (rooms or staff members) separately. 

To manage resources you will need a special page: Navigate Add page -> Advanced Features / Custom Databases -> Reservation System. You will see the summary of the resources when you add them on that page.

In case of services each staff member should have a set of tags defining services they can provide (like "haircut", "perm"), tags are separated by comma. 

Each service will also have tags (usually only one). So when a customer chooses a service or a few to book only those staff members will be available who have all the tags mentioned (i.e. have all the necessary skills). That implies that all the services will be provided by the same person.

A similar principle works for accommodation. In basic cases each room will have only one tag (e.g. several rooms with a tag "double room", several rooms with "single room") and each accommodation product will have one tag (two products: "Double room" and "Single room"). 

The difference is: a customer can book several rooms at the same time - several resources will be marked as booked.