How to book multiple items from the same WooCommerce product page

You might want to allow your users to book multiple items from the same page in WooCommerce – for example, if you’re hiring a room plus certain resources like chairs or tables.

In this tutorial, we’re going to look at how to allow users to hire machinery from your website, e.g. a digger or excavator, plus extra attachments – all as part of the same booking. All items could be booked separately or together. They have their own inventory levels and availability calendars.

There’s a demo product here to illustrate the concept.

Because WooCommerce doesn’t have the option to create bookable products, you’ll need extra plugins. The Bookings for WooCommerce plugin allows you to make your products bookable – users can select availability from a calendar date picker and you can manage when each product is available to book.

And, In order to have multiple bookable products on one page, you’ll also need the Pro version of the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin. This plugin allows you to add extra options to your products – including the ability to create “child products“. So products can be used as add-on options for other products.

Let’s have a look at what this means.

Book multiple WooCommerce products together – tutorial

In our example, the customer is going to be able to hire an excavator. They’ll be able to pick the dates for the rental using a calendar. They’ll also be able to hire extra attachments for the same dates from the same page.

Step #1: Install and activate both plugins

You’ll need to install and activate both plugins.

First, you can purchase then install Bookings for WooCommerce by following these steps:

• Download the plugin’s zip file by clicking on the link on your order confirmation screen or in your welcome email. You’ll receive the email automatically a few seconds after you’ve completed the purchase
• Go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard
• Click on the ‘Upload Plugin’ button
• Drag and drop the plugin’s downloaded zip file into the ‘Choose File’ area and click ‘Install Now’
• When the plugin has uploaded, click the ‘Activate Now’ button

Then, you can purchase and install the Pro version of Product Add-Ons Ultimate by following exactly the same steps as above.

Note that you need the Pro version of Add-Ons Ultimate because it contains extra features, specifically the ability to use products as options for other products. You can use just the Basic version of Bookings for WooCommerce if you only plan to run it on a single site.

Step #2: Create your products

Once your plugins are installed and activated, you can create your bookable products. In our example, we’ll create a product for one of the attachments first, then we’ll create the main excavator product.

To create a bookable product for an excavator bucket in WooCommerce:

• Go to Products > Add New
• Give your product a name, an image, a description, and so on
• Set the ‘Product type’ field to ‘Bookable’
• Then set parameters like booking unit, minimum and/or maximum booking duration, and the cost per unit
• You can also define how many units you have available to hire at any one time – so if you have 5 of this product type, enter ‘5’ in the ‘Max bookings per unit’ field

You can publish this product and it will be available to hire from your site. Repeat for as many products as you like.

Step #3: Add child products to the main product

The different attachments that we’re offering to hire along with the main excavator product are child products. This means that although they’re standalone products in their own right, they can also be used as additional options for another product.

Once we’ve created the child products, we can create our main product for the excavator itself by following Step 2 above. Enter how many excavators we have in the ‘Max bookings per unit’ field and the cost per day of the hire in the ‘Standard price’ field.

Now to add the attachments as additional bookable options:

• Click the ‘Product Add-Ons’ tab in the ‘Product data’ section
• Click ‘Add Group’ then ‘Add Field’
• Give your field a label, e.g. ‘Attachments’ and choose ‘Products’ as the field type
• In the ‘Child products’ field, select the other bookable products that you’ve already created

Now, our attachments are available to book from the same product page as the excavator. The user can choose their dates from a single calendar and select how many attachments they want. If any of the attachments are already booked out on the chosen days, they won’t be available to select.

Optionally hide child products from shop

By default, it’s assumed that your bookable child products will be available to hire separately on the site. However, if you prefer to prevent users from hiring them independently of the main product, just follow these steps:

• Set the ‘Catalog visibility’ for any child products you wish to hide to ‘Hidden’
• Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Product Add-Ons > Products and select the option to ‘Redirect hidden products’.

Now, any child products set to ‘Hidden’ will not be accessible from the shop or archive pages. See here for more information.

Manage bookings in the back end

Let’s take a look at managing your bookings in the WordPress dashboard.

Multiple booked items in the order

Once the user has placed their order contained multiple bookable items, you’ll see each product listed as a separate line item in the order. You can also link to the booking directly from the order screen.

Edit booked items

If you need to, you can edit each booked item separately – so if you need to change the dates on one item, you can do so. Just go to WooCommerce > Bookings to view each booking that you have.

You can also create bookings manually from here if you wish.

View product availability

If you want to assess the availability of your bookable items, you can do so globally or from the individual product pages.

To check availability per item:

• Go to the product page for the specific product
• In the ‘Product data’ section, click the ‘Availability’ tab
• You’ll see a calendar with availability and pricing information
• Click on individual dates for further booking information

To view a single calendar showing availability for all your bookable products, go to Bookings > Calendar. You’ll see a month-by-month view of bookings. Click on individual dates to see further information.

Further reading

You might want to check out these articles on creating rental products in WooCommerce:

• How to create a bike rental store in WooCommerce
• How to rent campervans using WooCommerce
• How to accept car bookings in WooCommerce

Book multiple items from the same page – recap

That’s how to allow users to book multiple products from the same page in WooCommerce. You just need the Bookings for WooCommerce plugin to make products bookable and the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin to add bookable child products to your main bookable product.

You can try both plugins risk free thanks to our 14 day money back guarantee. They’re compatible with all themes and page builders – and we have a world class support team ready to answer all your questions.