Along with the online booking option, the need for online rental services has gained traction. Therefore, online shop owners have found a potential market offering rental services for their bookable products!
The Rental System addon of the Booking and Appointment for WooCommerce Plugin transforms your ordinary WooCommerce store to make it function like a Rental system.
Please note that this addon is only for the Multiple-Nights booking type.
1. Installation
2. Setting up Rental Settings for a product
3. Quick Start Guide
4. Sale and Rent
5. Change log
1. Installation
Download the zip file and install it from the Plugins > Add New Page
Activate the plugin in your WordPress admin area.
You will find a “Rental Settings” tab in the Booking Metabox below the Persons Tab.
2. Setting up Rental Settings for a product
Go to the Edit Product Page of your product.
Select the ‘Multiple Nights’ booking type in the Booking type dropdown.
Go to the Rental Settings tab. In this tab, you will find fields such as:
- Book prior days of start date: This will disable the number of days mentioned here before the starting date of the Multiple-Nights booking. This will take place after reaching the lockout. In this instance, it is set to 1.
- Book later days of end date: This will disable the number of days mentioned here after the end date of the Multiple-Nights booking. This will take place after reaching the lockout. In this instance, it is set to 1.
- Flat Charge per day: This field lets you include the last day of booking in the amount calculation. Hence the last day of booking will be counted in the days of booking.
- Allow Same-day booking: This allows you to have your check-in date as your check-out date. This field will be displayed only if the Flat charge per day field is enabled.
Important Note: The number of days entered in the Book prior days of the start date and Book later days of the end date will be disabled after placing the order.
For instance, you’ve made a booking for the dates 3rd July 2021 to 6th July 2021.
The last day of booking gets included in the amount as the Flat charge per day setting is enabled.
After placing the order, the dates 2nd July 2021 and 7th July 2021 will be disabled.
The days disabled will have the label Unavailable for Booking.
3. Quick Start Guide
- If you wish not to disable any days after placing an order, enter 0 for the Prior days to book before the start date and Later days to book after the end date.
- If you want only Later days to be disabled after the end date, enter 0 in the Prior day to book before the start date.
- If you want the check-in and check-out date to be the same, enable the Flat charge per day field and then enable the Allow Same Day booking.
4. Sale and Rent
Using the Sale & Rent functionality, online shop owners can make their products available for customers for purchase or rent.
After activating the Rental System Addon, an Allow Sale and Rent option will appear under the General tab of the Booking Metabox found on the Edit Product Page.
When you enable the Allow sale and rent option, you will be asked to choose the mode for the product as Sale, Rent, or Both as shown below:
Allow sale and rent option appears under the General tab
Let’s understand these 3 modes – Sale, Rent, and Both with an instance of a Prop Shop that sells different props.
Let’s create a Multiple Nights product – Christmas Cap for this.
a) Sale Mode
If you select the Sale option in Choose mode as shown below, the product will be available for only purchase:
Choose the mode set as Sale
Therefore, on the frontend product page, you will see an Add to Cart button displayed which the customer needs to click to make the purchase of that product:
Frontend display of product when the Sale option is selected
b) Rent Mode
If you select Rent mode, the Enable Booking option gets enabled automatically.
This will allow customers to select a date for renting the product on the front end.
Choose mode selected as Rent
When the Rent option is selected, it will display a booking calendar for the Rent Date and End Date for renting:
Frontend display of product when the Rent option is selected
c) Both Mode
When you select the Choose mode option as Both in the backend, the ‘Default mode should be’ setting will appear with 2 selections- either Sale or Rent which can be set as per the business requirement.
When Both mode is chosen, Enable Booking option and Purchase without choosing a date option both, will get enabled automatically as shown below:
The default mode should be selected as Sale
With this mode, the customers can either purchase the product or rent it.
For customers to select from these 2 options, there will be 2 buttons – Sale and Rent which will be displayed on the front end by enabling the Sale and Rent On Product Page option.
This setting can be enabled under Booking & Appointment > Addons > Rental System Tab > Settings as shown below:
Sale and Rent On Product Page option enabled
With this, the customers can choose whether they wish to purchase the product or rent it.
Additionally, when you select the Both option, Default mode with 2 selections – Sale and Rent gets displayed.
This option allows the admin to select the default mode of the product, i.e. if they want the product to be rented by default or sold.
1) Default Mode – Sale
When Sale is selected in the Default mode should be option, the Sale button on the frontend product page will be enabled by default for the product Christmas Cap and an Add to Cart button will be displayed for purchasing the product as shown below:
The sale button is enabled by default
2) Default Mode – Rent
Similarly, when Rent is selected in the Default mode should be option, the Rent button on the frontend product page will be enabled for the product Christmas Cap.
The booking calendar will be displayed for selecting the dates for renting the product as shown below:
The rent button is enabled by default
Please Note that if the customer wishes to change the selection from Sale to Rent or Rent to Sale, they can do so on the product page depending on his requirements.
For instance, if the default mode is set to Sale and the customer wishes to rent the product, they can click the Rent button and the booking calendar will be displayed to add the Rent Date and End Date for the product.
Changing Labels
If you wish to change the labels for the Sale and Rent buttons, you can do so under Booking & Appointment > Addons > Rental System.
Add appropriate text in the Sale Button Text and Rent Button Text fields:
Changing labels for Sale and Rent buttons
The text for Sale can be changed to BUY NOW and that of Rent can be changed to RENT NOW.
These will be changed on the frontend product page as shown below:
Changed labels will be displayed
To conclude, using this addon allows the customer to decide whether they wish to purchase a product or rent it.