Immediately after activation, the WP Booking Panel plugin automatically creates the Appointment booking and My bookings pages. From the WordPress admin side, they look empty. But do not delete them in any case, because the first one will automatically publish a gallery of your services for booking appointments, and the other will serve as a login page for clients and employees.
In order to start working with the plugin, you need to enter your license key. The key should be received by email along with link for downloading the archive of plugin files.
Please note that the key is valid only for the domain name that you entered in the form on the website WP Booking Panel
To get the most out of the plugin you need to configure it accordingly.
Notifications about new orders, booking confirmations, etc. will be sent to this address. By default, the address of the site administrator will be used. But if in your business the site administrator and the business administrator are different people, then it will be more expedient for you to change this email address so that important information goes directly to the appropriate person.
Depending on your business model, you'll need to configure your service provision address by selecting one of three possible options.
The specified address will be automatically added to the email messages to your customers about the booking details.
To ensure that automatic email messages from your website are always delivered to the addressee, the plugin provides simple integration with a third-party email delivery service Sendgrid. Just specify the API key that you will receive in your account on the Sendgrid website. Already in the free tariff plan you will have 100 sent messages per day.
If your site already has automatic email delivery set up, just leave this field blank and the plugin will use the native WordPress wp_mail() function.
To prevent your client from accidentally forgetting about the booked visit, the plugin can send a reminder via SMS at the time you set up. To enable this feature, you need an account on the Twilio service, as well as to set up a daily cron task (for a non-specialist it may seem something very complicated, but in fact it is very simple).
Sending SMS is a paid option, for each SMS sent Twilio will charge a small fee according to the country. We estimate that on average, just one booking saved in this way can cover the annual cost of all SMS messages.
WP Booking Panel allows you to easily enable accepting online payments for your services by payment cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay using Stripe payment processing platform.
The plugin supports both live and test payment modes. That is, you can first check the payment settings in test mode, and if everything is in order - start accepting real payments.
To do this, you just need to enter the appropriate keys that you will receive in your Stripe account. The list of countries where Stripe is available can be found here - https://stripe.com/global
If you practice receiving partial or full advance payment for your services, you can set this up very easily in the same section.
It is worth knowing that the administrator has the ability to mark the received payment for the order in manual mode, even if online payments are not configured.
The plugin provides the ability to edit the data and work schedule of any employee, temporarily or permanently block the possibility of booking this particular employee when placing an order by customers.
After adding the first employee, you will be able to configure his working schedule, i.e. specify the beginning and end of the working day, days off, lunch break if necessary.
When adding a new employee, the plugin creates an employee account so that the personal work schedule of bookings is always in his smartphone. Login details are sent automatically to the email address of the respective employee.
If it is important for your customers to be able to choose a specific service performer when making a booking, check the corresponding box. Then your client will be able to see free dates for booking of all employees who perform this service. Including the specific employee to whom he is accustomed. This option is important, for example, for beauty salons or clinics.
Does the price of your services depend on certain parameters? And would you like the price for such a service to be calculated on the fly right on the site when making a booking?
The WP Booking Panel plugin has this feature. You can create the required number of parameters templates for different types of services. When adding or editing the price of a service, there is an option "Price with parameters", by selecting which you can specify the amount by which the price will increase when the customer selects a certain option. Thus, the price for the order is dynamically calculated.
A template of parameters for calculating the price of house cleaning services is already included.
The use of promotional codes is one type of effective sales promotion.
In the WP Booking Panel plugin, you can set up any number of promo codes for both a percentage discount and a discount for a certain specific amount. The promo code will dynamically reduce the amount of the service booking for the customer who enters the promo code when placing the order.
Services added by the WP Booking Panel plugin administrator are published on the site automatically. You can publish any number of services. Each service is assigned to the appropriate category.
In addition to the "Book service" page, where the full gallery of added services is published, you can place the "Book" button anywhere on your website. This is done with the help of the corresponding short code of the service whose booking button you want to place.
After activating the plugin you will have two preset categories "Category 1" and "Category 2". Change their names to the ones you need. You can also add any number of new categories or delete unnecessary ones.
Since the services are linked to performers (employees or subcontractors), you will initially need to add at least one employee in the "Settings" section.
To edit a service, simply change the existing data to those that are current at the moment and click the "Save" button. If you only need to change the photo of the service - just upload a new image file (you do not need to press the "Save" button in this case).
To boost sales, you can apply promotions for certain services. In this case, it is a reduction in the base price of the service by a specified percentage, which is valid for the period of time you choose. Such a service gets a red badge with a percentage discount, which will be shown to your customers during the promotion period.
Adding and editing promotions is related to services, so it is possible when manipulating a particular service. The discount is applied only to the base price. Therefore, if you use a price with parameters, the discount is not applied to the added value of the option when the customer chooses this option.
In the "Orders" section you will see all bookings of your services, you will be able to mark payments (including partial payments) in manual mode, approve bookings, assign employees if necessary.
You can find the required order by customer's name or surname, order number.
You can also filter orders for a certain period, by booking status, by category, by specific service, by employee and payment status. You can use one filter, several filters or all of them at once.
The WP Booking Panel plugin uses two types of statuses, the booking status for a specific service (which can be part of an order) and the payment status for an order (which can contain several service bookings). For convenience, booking statuses are labeled with colors.
To open the booking management card, just click on the corresponding booking. You will see detailed information, as well as booking management buttons, a button for assigning an employee if necessary, payment history, information about the applied promo code, and links to all other bookings, if any, in this order.
By clicking the button in the last column of orders, you will open a window with the payment history for the corresponding order. Payments received online are marked automatically. The administrator also has the ability to mark received payments manually.
The WP Booking Panel plugin also provides the ability to refund online payments if necessary. That is, if the payment is received through Stripe, then accordingly, the return of such a payment is made by the administrator at the click of a button.
The "Calendar" section displays all bookings of your services in the form of an interactive table, the left column of which is employees, and the top line is the opening hours of your company. If in the "Settings" section, you have specified that the client can choose a specific employee, all new bookings will be displayed in the row of the selected employee. Otherwise, bookings will be placed in the "Not assigned" line at the time selected by the customer.
Clicking on a booking will open the corresponding booking management card, which you can read about above. You can also change the booking time during the day, for example, from 10.00 to 16.00, by simply dragging the needed booking to the desired time with the mouse.
This section also controls the initial booking for customers. By default, it starts tomorrow. With this setting, customers will not be able to book a visit today for today.
In order to keep your online booking calendar always up-to-date, the WP Booking Panel plugin allows the administrator to add bookings on their own (for example, for those clients who called you by phone or make an appointment for the next visit directly in your beauty salon or clinic).
There is no need to enter customer data every time if they have already been added to the database. Just start filling in the name field, and a list of all customers will appear below, from which you can simply select the one you need - and all the data will be automatically entered.
Simply drag a booking that does not have an assigned performer to the row of the corresponding employee with the mouse and approve the action by clicking the green button.
If you are that one employee, it will be more convenient for you to use your WordPress admin account instead of your employee account - and right on your smartphone.
opens the booking management card
changes the status to "Completed" and sends an email to the client about the possibility to thank with a tip for a job well done (if online payments are activated)
This section is mainly used for quick access to your customer contacts.
When you add a new client, an account will be created for them, where all their bookings will be displayed. Access data will be sent to the client by e-mail automatically.
For new customers who book your services online, accounts are created automatically.
You can edit all customer contact details except for the email address.
With WP Booking Panel, you can export your customer database to a CSV file. In this case, the phone numbers will be immediately in the international format required for SMS campaigns.
In their account, the employee sees their current schedule by default, as well as the number of bookings for the next 7 days, which are shown on colored badges on the corresponding dates. Approved bookings are marked in green. Those bookings that require an employee to accept them are marked in orange. To see the schedule on a particular date, you just need to click on it.
opens basic information about the booking
changes the status to "Completed" and sends an email to the client about the possibility to thank with a tip for a job well done (if online payments are activated)
is used to decline the execution of the booked service, after which the booking is transferred to the "Not assigned" category and receives the "New" status
opens a blocked day for bookings
Most customers will book your services online using their mobile devices. The WP Booking Panel plugin provides customers with a simple and intuitive booking process on both desktops and smartphones.
Depending on the date and employee selected, customers see the available appointments. You can add several services to the same order, use a promotional code for a discount, and the price of the order will be recalculated automatically. When a client makes a booking for the first time, an account will be created for him/her, and he/she will be authorized to it immediately after placing the order.
All repeat orders by logged-in customers will be made without the need to re-enter their data.
If online payments are activated on your side, the client can pay for the booked services with a payment card, Apple Pay or Google Pay in his account.
It is worth knowing that the administrator has the ability to mark the received payment for the order in manual mode, even if online payments are not configured.
In their accounts, customers have the opportunity to thank you with a tip for a job well done.
The customer will receive an email notification about this possibility as soon as the employee marks the booked service as "Completed".
The bottom line is that your booking system site automatically creates, numbers, accepts payments, prepares for download, and emails gift cards in PDF format. And you don't have to pay printing and design costs anymore.
The button for ordering a gift card is set with the same short code as the button for an appointment booking. If you need to disable the gift card order button for a particular service, in the editing of the corresponding service, select the "Disable gift cards for the service" option in the "Validity of gift cards" settings.
You can get this information in your twilio.com account as shown by the arrows in the screenshot below.
We suggest using the free service cron-job.org. Create an account and click the "CREATE CRONJOB" button. Then simply paste the link from the corresponding section of the WP Booking Panel plugin settings into the URL field. Carefully configure the execution schedule, preferably as shown below.
In your account in Sendgrid, in the Settings > API Keys section, click the Create API key button and copy. A specific feature of Sendgrid is that the key will be displayed only once.
In your account in the Stripe as shown by the arrows. After activating your account for accepting payments in the live mode, add the live key in the WP Booking Panel settings and turn off the test mode.
