Bookings for WooCommerce 2.0 – new and improved features

Bookings for WooCommerce version 2.0 has several exciting new features plus a number of significant improvements to existing functionality.

Version 2.0 is due to be released by the end of May.

New feature: Sync your WooCommerce bookings with external services

You can now sync between Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, and other third party booking sites which use the ical calendar format. You can even sync between two or more WooCommerce sites.

This is essential for anyone who is taking bookings for their property on multiple sites. So if you have an Airbnb listing and your own WooCommerce site, you can now massively reduce the risk of double booking.

Syncing is two-way – meaning that when a user makes a reservation on an external site like Airbnb, your WooCommerce site will update availability and if a user makes a reservation on your WooCommerce site, your Airbnb site will also update its availability.

Remember that most external sites like Airbnb only sync at certain intervals, e.g. every two hours, so you may wish to manually sync if you see an order go through on your WooCommerce site. Please see the guidance for the external site in question for full details of how to do this. You’ll find guidance for particular sites below.

On your WooCommerce site, you can also manually sync calendars, either for a specific product or for all bookable products. You can also specify how often you would like your site to automatically sync, e.g. every 30 minutes.

How to set up calendar syncs

Go to Bookings > External. Enable the ‘Auto-sync calendars’ option and enter a value in the ‘Sync interval’ field. This value is the number of minutes between each sync. The minimum value is 30. Note that if you have a high number of calendars to sync, there’s a potential performance issue on your site if you sync too often.

Next, go to the Product that you wish to sync. On the Booking tab in the Product data section click the menu item for ‘External calendars’.

Check the ‘Enable sync calendars’ option.

In the table, enter the name of your external service, e.g. Airbnb, and the calendar URL from that site. There’s guidance on how to obtain this URL below. You can sync up to four calendars with external services.

Save your product.

You can now copy the URL in the ‘Export URL’ field and enter that into the correct place in your external site’s settings – guidance below.

How to get your calendar URL from an external site

You can use the links below to find out how to get a calendar URL from each external site.

• Syncing your Airbnb calendar with other calendars
• Syncing your Booking.com calendar with other calendars
• Importing a calendar to sync with VRBO reservation calendars

Your bookings will now be synced between your WooCommerce site and your external sites. Remember that syncing is not necessarily immediate – external services will only sync at the defined interval.

New feature: Improved back-end editing of bookings

You can now manually add bookings from the back-end of your site and edit existing bookings. Note: this replaces the ability to edit booking details from the order screen.

To edit an existing booking, go to Bookings in your WordPress admin. Click on the booking you wish to edit and click the ‘Edit booking’ button.

You’ll be able to enter a new start date, then a new end date, and enter a quantity if enabled for the product. Click ‘Update’ and your booking will be updated.

Manually create a new booking

In version 2.0 it’s now possible to create a new booking from the back-end. Go to Bookings > Add Booking and enter the booking details, including the product, start date, end date and quantity. You can also enter the user details and, once the booking has been published, you can then link it to a new order.

New feature: Front-end search

Your users can now search for bookable products using start and end dates. So if you have multiple products, users can find which ones are available between certain dates.

To enable front-end search, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Bookings > Search and check the ‘Enable search on archive pages’ field.

This will automatically insert a search form at the top of your shop and archive pages. Users will be able to enter the start and end dates they’d like to book, and they’ll see all your products with availability within those dates.

New feature: Back-end calendar

It’s now possible to view a single calendar that shows availability for all your bookable products in one place. Each day shows overall availability: just click on individual dates to see what bookings you have for that day and availability information for each bookable product.

To view the back-end calendar, go to Bookings > Calendar.

New feature: Automatic emails

Bookings for WooCommerce allows you to send customisable emails. You can choose to enable one or more of the following emails:

• Before a booking starts
• After a booking starts
• Before a booking ends
• After a booking ends

So, for example, if you want to send a welcome email a couple of days before a user’s booking starts, you can enable the ‘Before Booking Starts’ email and enter 2 in the ‘Days’ field. Your email will be automatically sent two days before the start of the booking.

You can enter content for the email. If you wish to dynamically include the booking ID or the start date, you can use the following tags: {booking_id} and {date}. This will be automatically replaced with the correct data in the email itself.

To enable emails, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails. You’ll see the four emails at the bottom of the list. Just click into each one to enable and edit it.

What else is new?

The new version of the plugin also includes the following enhancements and new features:

• A new Bookings menu item allowing you to see all bookings on your site
• Bookings are now filterable in the back-end by user and product
• A new cart-expiry setting to ensure products don’t get held in users’ carts
• Improved navigation in Product data > Bookings

If you have any questions about the plugin, just post them in the comments below and we’ll get straight back to you.