Video made with v1.1.1. Booking Activities is constantly evolving.
Main features
★ = Unique feature only Booking Activities has.
Editor
★ WYSIWYG: Visually build your plannings
★ Drag and drop events directly on the calendar
★ Group your events to easily sell bundles, subscriptions, seminars, or events spreading on several days
Create repeated events (with desired frequency and exceptions dates)
Unlimited calendars, activities, events and bookings.
Permission management system: your managers manage only their own calendars and reservations. E.g.: You can set up Booking Activities for a marketplace(Booking Activities can only be managed from the backend).
Booking forms
Fully customizable forms in a WYSIWYG editor
Shortcodes to display reservation forms or simple calendars
★ Display events from multiple schedules and activities at once
★ One-click booking: just pick the desired event(s) on the calendar and click on “Book”!
Custom action when you submit the form or when you click an event: make a reservation, ★ add a product to cart, redirect to a URL
Pick multiple events and book them all at once / ★ add them all to cart at once
★ Seamless login / registration: embedded in the form and processed with the reservation. You can also book without account, or display a login form only with a shortcode.
100% responsive: looks great on mobiles, tablets and computers.
★ Set any custom fields and any booking metadata thanks to Advanced Forms add-on
Online payments with WooCommerce
Calendars are automatically integrated to WooCommerce product pages
★ Attach multiple calendars and activities to one WC product
★ Cart expiration system: bookings in the shopping cart are temporary
Auto-validation when payment is completed
★ WooCommerce order status and its bookings status are smartly bound
★ Automatic refunds by WC coupon or via the gateway (if allowed)
Manage reservations
Find all your bookings at a glance on a calendar and in a list. Use dynamic filters, sorting, and custom columns
Drag and drop to edit. Click to book. Works both with a shortcode and WooCommerce.
WYSIWYG calendar editor. Simply drag and drop events. Click on events for additional settings (availability, repetition...).
Create daily, weekly or monthly repeated events. You can add exception dates to the repetition.
Grouping your events is simple: just select multiple events and click on 'Add a group'. Or select an existing group and start editing it right away.
Create and customize your booking form. You can combine events and settings of multiple schedules. You can make each form unique.
Use a shortcode to display a booking form (or a calendar alone). Your customers can log in or register as they book, they can also book without account.
When a customer clicks on a grouped event, the whole group is selected. If the event is part of several groups, the customer has to choose one from a dialog.
There is also an option to allow your customers to pick multiple events of their choice at once.
Easily bind a reservation form to a WooCommerce product. You can set a different event calendar to each variation.
A reservation form appears automatically on desired WooCommerce product pages.
WooCommerce cart expiration system: when time is up, bookings are cancelled and cart emptied. You can also disable it.
Your bookings are displayed on a calendar, when you mouseover an event, and in a list that you can filter, sort and customize. Manage your bookings: change state (cancel, validate), reschedule, refund...
Synchronize your bookings and display them in your Google Calendar events' description
Customers also have their booking list and calendar thanks to a shortcode. They can cancel, reschedule or ask a refund by their own (if you allow them).
Your customers can manage their bookings from their WooCommerce orders as well.
Orders status are bound to their bookings status. If bookings are cancelled / booked / refunded, so do the order (and vice-versa).
Email notifications are automatically sent to the customer or the administrator when they need to be informed of a change.
Make your emails look just like you want thanks to the HTML editor and special tags. You can also choose to deactivate a notification.
I am not an activity provider, can this plugin still meet my needs?
Yes of course. It is basically a reservation system based on event scheduling. In other words, you build your event calendar and allow them to be booked. You can find another purposes to it.
To know if it actually meets your needs, simply try it, it’s free.
If you are on a hurry, you can just check the demo website.
Or read the full features description if you are looking for something in particular.
Create and fill your first calendar
Create your first calendar
Go to Booking Activities / Calendar Editor page
Click on the big ‘+’ button
Set a title
In the “Editor” tab, you can set your working hours
Click on the dialog OK button, the calendar is loading!
Create your first activity
Click on the ‘+’ button in the ‘Activities’ area
Set a title, an availability, a color and a duration
Click on the dialog OK button, the activity is added to the list!
Create your first event
Drag an activity from the list and drop it on the calendar
Drag and drop the event to move it
Mouseover the event and click on its settings wheel to edit its properties
Congrats! You have created your first event schedule
Display a reservation form
Make sure to have at least one calendar, one activity and one event at a future date
Go to Booking Activities / Booking forms page
Select the desired form or create a new one
Click on the setting gear on the “Calendar” field to set the calendar(s) to display (and many other settings)
Copy the shortcode given in the “How to integrate this form” area (it looks like [bookingactivities_form form=""])
Past this shortcode in any post or page you like
Go on this post / page frontend, the booking form appears!
/!\ Reservation forms displayed via shortcode are not bound to WooCommerce at all. If you want to bind a WC product to a calendar, check “Use it with WooCommerce” in this FAQ.
Display the calendar only
Make sure to have at least one calendar, one activity and one event at a future date
Go to Booking Activities / Booking forms page
Select the desired form or create a new one
Keep the “Calendar” field and remove all the others (like “Login/Register”, “Quantity” and “Submit” fields)
Copy the shortcode given in the “How to integrate this form” area (it looks like [bookingactivities_form form=""])
Past this shortcode in any post or page you like
Go on this post / page frontend, the calendar appears alone!
Display user’s booking list
Make sure the user has bookings and he / she is logged in, otherwise it will not show anything
Past this shortcode in any post or page you like: [bookingactivities_list]
Go on this post / page frontend, the booking list appears!
Depending on BA settings and bookings dates, actions like cancel or reschedule may appear. Try them!
Use it with WooCommerce
Make sure to have at least one booking form with one event available at a future date You also need to activate WooCommerce and create one product
Go to Products / Your Product
In ‘Product data’ area, check ‘Activity’, a new ‘Activity’ tab appears
In ‘Activity’ tab, bind the desired booking form to the product
Go on this product page on the frontend, a booking form appears!
For Variable Products, you need to check the ‘Activity’ checkbox and set a calendar and an activity for each variation.
Does this plugin accept reservation online payments?
Yes, you can accept payments for bookings through WooCommerce. Booking Activities is perfectly integrated to WooCommerce:
Booking forms will appears automatically on product pages
A cart expiration system is implemented to make sure that bookings in the shopping basket won’t stay in the basket forever, taking the place of someone else
Bookings are automatically validated when the payment is received, or cancelled if not
If you change order quantity or state, so do the bookings, and vice versa
Should I accept payments for bookings?
Here is a pros and cons analysis:
PROS:
Customers are engaged, if they book, they come.
Saves time: customers have already paid.
Customers can come without money, they can offer the activity to a relative
Automatic cashing, billing, accounting and stats
CONS:
May discourage customers, depending on the type of activity you provide and your target
Takes more time for customers, and more diffult process, higher cart abandonment rate
You will have to do much more development, administrative and legal procedures, and you will have more expenses (bank commission, maintenance …)
We recommend to accept online payments since it’s a great way to automate your business management and make it grow.
Events are not “Booked” after booking form submission, they are “Pending”, why?
Don’t worry, the reservation is well registered. Now, it is up to you to turn it to “Booked” right away or when your customer comes, or when your customer gives you the money…
But you can just turn the default booking status to “Booked” in Booking Activities settings.
Note that if you use WooCommerce and online payments, booking status turn automatically to “Booked” if the payment is complete, or “Cancelled” if not.
Cart expires but events are still booked
A bot cleans expired bookings hourly. So just wait up to 1 hour.
Usually, users are still on your website when their bookings expire, if so, they are immediatly removed.
Else, they will be cancelled later, with the others in that case.
My events appear to be booked, but no bookings appear in the list
Temporary bookings (such as In cart events) take active slots but may not appear in the booking list.
Go to the “Bookings” page, under the “States” filter select “Delivered”, “Booked”, “Pending” and “In cart”.
Then, just click on “Apply Filters”. Now you can see all kind of active bookings.
Cancelled bookings disapeared from the list, I need to see them!
Go to the “Bookings” page. Under the “States” filter, select all the available status.
Click on “Apply Filters” and then you will be able to see inactive bookings (cancelled, expired, removed, refunded, refund requested).
Email notifications are not sent
If you enabled “Asynchronous email” option in Booking Activities settings (“Notifications” tab), emails will be sent the next time someone (anyone) loads any page of your website.
Then, you only need to refresh or visit any page of your website and then check your inbox.
If you disable “Asynchronous email” option, then the loading will last until the email is actually sent.
Dev – Replace deprecated UTF8 PHP functions as of PHP 8.2
1.16.25 – 2024/11/29
Fix – Select2 could be applied to non select elements
1.16.24 – 2024/11/22
Feature – Add compatibility with some deposit plugins for WooCommerce (Beta)
Fix – Events not appearing on reschedule calendar under certain circumstances
Fix – Add aria-label for booking status icons and booking action buttons
Fix – Clean possibly corrupted repeated events
Dev – Improve availability div HTML structure in the group of events selection dialog
1.16.23 – 2024/11/14
Fix – Some texts may not be translated after switching / restoring language with WPML, Polylang or qTranslate-XT with WordPress 6.7
1.16.22 – 2024/11/13
Fix – Row number per page may be incorrect in List Tables
Fix – Plugin was not translated with WordPress 6.7
1.16.21 – 2024/10/18
Tweak – Reassign the bookings’ owner and booking forms’ author to the selected user when a user is deleted
Fix – Block Cart item total may be incorrect when changing quantity if price was set dynamically with add-ons
1.16.20 – 2024/10/16
Tweak – Display the grayed out number of places (like before 1.16.9) if “unavail.” text is set to “{current}” in Settings > Messages tab.
1.16.19 – 2024/10/01
Dev – Bump version to refresh WP repository
1.16.18 – 2024/10/01
Tweak – Do not automatically change the quantity value according to min and max after the customer manually changed it
Dev – Add the bookacti_wc_cart_item_price hook to change a cart item price having a booking
Dev – Improve product selectbox compatibility with different variable product types
1.16.17 – 2024/09/13
Fix – PHP error when a logged in user tries to validate the log in form
Fix – AJAX pagination in admin booking list
Dev – Remove div container for WC cart item remove link to improve compatibility with third party plugins
1.16.16 – 2024/09/05
Tweak – Increase PHP version requirement to 5.6 or later
Tweak – Change the login button type from “button” to “submit” when only the login field is displayed
Fix – Unit name was displayed in availability area even if “Show unit in availability” option was OFF
1.16.15 – 2024/08/13
Fix – PHP error when generating coupon as a refund for a booking if WC was 9.0+ and WC Legacy REST API plugin was not installed
1.16.14 – 2024/08/08
Tweak – Reactivate WC add to cart button on product page after 10 seconds to improve compatibility with third-party AJAX add to cart
1.16.13 – 2024/07/17
Fix – Error message not displayed in the booking forms list if the form author user has been deleted
Fix – Booking bulk action did not take into account the “created_from” and “created_to” filters
1.16.12 – 2024/07/16
Dev – Add booking filter “created_from” and “created_to” (as URL parameter only, no GUI)
Lib – Update FullCalendar to 6.1.15
1.16.11 – 2024/06/26
Fix – Events may be displayed twice if the calendar opening was a past date, and if “Past events” option was OFF
Fix – “unavail.” mention was hidden on small events
1.16.10 – 2024/06/19
Tweak – Try to support Polylang via its compatibility API with WPML
Fix – Multiday events may not be correctly rendered in Day Grid views with Trim option
1.16.9 – 2024/06/11
Tweak – Display “unavail.” on events that cannot be booked even though they are not full. This text can be customized in the Settings > Messages tab.
Fix – WooCommerce cart expiration countdown is now visible in WC cart block
Fix – Old booking data were not passed to reschedule notification
Lib – Update FullCalendar to 6.1.14
1.16.8 – 2024/05/28
Tweak – Add {calendar_title} notification tag
Fix – PHP error with some WC add-ons due to missing third argument in woocommerce_coupon_is_valid hook
Fix – Multiday events may not be correctly rendered in Day Grid views with Trim option
Dev – Add template_title, template_active, creation_date and expiration_date parameters to booking group objects
Lib – Update FullCalendar to 6.1.13
1.16.7 – 2024/05/01
Tweak – If “Show only first event of groups” option is ON, display only the groups starting with the selected event in the dialog to select a group of events
Fix – Groups of events may be incorrectly generated
Fix – Improve compatibility between “Trim” option and “Show only first event of groups” option
1.16.6 – 2024/04/29
Fix – PHP error when loading a booking list including a booking refunded with a WC coupon on the backend
1.16.5 – 2024/04/17
Fix – PHP error when changing booking group status
Fix – PHP warning when cart contains non activity products, or when cart content is null
Fix – “Booking form location on product pages” option is now compatible with WP Blocks
Tweak – Encapsulate the cart form in a div when “Booking form location on product pages” option is set to “Full width” (non blocks)
1.16.4 – 2024/04/12
Fix – “At the earliest” option was based on events ending time instead of their starting time
Fix – Change activity text color in calendar editor according to Display Pack add-on settings
Fix – Make sure cart item quantity matches booking quantity and prevent checkout otherwise
Fix – Incorrect {price_raw} and {price} notification tags value when used with WooCommerce and Booking Activities add-ons
Fix – Hide “Select all … items” button when no bookings are selected in backend booking list
Dev – Use CSS classes to hide empty weeks when “Trim” option is active, so developers can change their appearance
1.16.3 – 2024/04/05
Feature – Filter the booking list by booking (group) ID
Fix – Weeks may be hidden even if they have events if “Trim” option is active
Fix – “Show only first event of groups” option should be hidden when Group Category = None
1.16.2 – 2024/04/04
Feature – Allow administrators to change the booking forms author
Feature – Filter the booking form list by ID, title and author
Tweak – Display an error message in the booking forms list if the form author is not allowed to manage the displayed calendars
Tweak – Hide weeks on Day Grid views if all the days are empty if “Trim” option is active
Fix – Notification not sent to administrators when an administrator reschedule a booking
Fix – Incorrect booking status displayed in WC notification after completing a failed order
Dev – Remove data conversion for updates from versions prior or equal to 1.14.3 (you need to update Booking Activities to 1.15 before updating it to 1.16)
1.16.1 – 2024/03/26
Fix – Notifications not sent after changing a booking (even if “Send notifications” option was ON)
Fix – Prevent performing any booking action if no bookings are selected
Fix – Browser may hang after deleting a lot of bookings (bookings were correctly deleted)
Fix – Site setting “Are started groups of events bookable?” was not taken into account (but group category setting was)
Fix – Started group events were not grayed out if not bookable
Fix – Make “Trim” option compatible with “Show only first event of groups” option
Feature – Add an option to allow customers to reschedule a booking to a different activity and / or to a different calendar (in Calendar Editor > the activity settings > Availability tab)
Feature – Add an option to allow administrators to reschedule a booking to a different activity and / or to a different calendar (in Settings > Cancellation tab)
Feature – Add an option to select the activities a booking can be rescheduled to (in Calendar Editor > the activity settings > Availability tab)
Feature – Send only one notification for multiple bookings / for WC order (the “Asynchronous notifications” option must be ON in Settings > Notifications tab)
Feature – Manually send a notification from the backend booking list (in the Actions column)
Feature – Allow customers to manage their bookings without being logged in by using an authentication key in the URL of the page displaying the [bookingactivities_list] shortcode (see {user_auth_key} notification tag)
Feature – Add the {user_auth_key} notification tag (to be used as the user_auth_key URL parameter value, e.g.: yoursite/my-booking-list/?user_auth_key={user_auth_key})
Tweak – “Customer” booking filter: List the customer emails from booking made without accounts
Tweak – “Customer” booking filter: Display the bookings made with and without account by the selected customer (need a page refresh, not working with AJAX)
Tweak – You cannot display events from a calendar that the booking form author cannot manage
Tweak – Remove “When to load the events?” option, you can use the bookacti_booking_system_default_attributes hook to set auto_load to 0 (after page load (default)) or 1 (on page load (not recommended, support no longer provided))
Tweak – Unselect an event by clicking it again (even if multiple events selection is deactivated)
Tweak – Export bookings included in groups if the booking list is filtered by event and if export settings are “One row for each booking of the group”
Fix – Booking filters may not be correctly applied after reloading the bookings page
Fix – Deleting an activity deleted it from all calendars instead of removing it only from the current calendar
Fix – Decode HTML entities before displaying WooCommerce price
Fix – Incorrect bookings retrieved if booking_group_id_operator filter was set to “OR” and no booking ids where provided
Fix – Selected user ID was displayed in user selectbox instead of proper label
Fix – English was used instead of site locale in javascript if site locale code had no underscore
Fix – (WIP) Support WooCommerce Cart Block: validate cart item quantity and change booking quantity accordingly
Fix – (WIP) Support WooCommerce Checkout Block: change booking status after checkout
Dev – (WIP) Declare WC Cart and Checkout blocks as NOT supported by Booking Activities and its add-ons for now (use WC Cart and Checkout shortcodes instead)
Dev – Functions to update and delete Booking Activities objects metadata now allow multiple object ids
Dev – Refactor async notifications scheduling
Dev – Lots of hooks and functions have changed, especially regarding booking actions, test and update your custom code consequently