Bookings, Appointments, Reservations and Rentals

+1

I'm seriously looking for this solution. Pls keep us posted for update on this.

I have been on the lookout for a plug-in like this also. My business leases moving equipment. I have found reservation booking forms, but most are property management or tours. I need a tool that:

1. Makes a reservation in week increments.

2. Deducts the packages of items from a single pool of equipment.
(ex. inventory consists of 200 widgets, packages of 25, 50 or 100 widgets are available, customer 1 leases 50 for a week, customer 2 leases 100 the same week, leaving 50 in the pool for that particular week, customer 3 would like to lease 100, the calendar will only allow for the 50 or the customer has to select another date.
Think of how a construction equipment leasing company would lease and track 25 jackhammers or a car leasing company would track one model of its cars.

3. It should also allow for non-rental items to be added to the cart. (up-sale items that are consumed not rented.)

I currently use Cart66 and Gravity Forms together and this is the only function I am missing. I have no way to stop over booking for the equipment other than manually calling the customer and changing their reservation dates, which needless to say, is never a good thing.

I have been exploring Checkfront the last few days, but it has its limitations.

It doesn't allow for "add to cart", it simply makes a reservation and moves to the payment portion of the checkout. It also doesn't allow for packaged amounts to be pulled from the same pool of inventory.

+1 here as well.
To be able to increase time required depending on service selected would be awesome.
D

@dunskii

eagerly awaiting your add-on, sounds great

@dunskii - I can save you a lot of time and money by telling you that your proposed plugin, as you describe it, will never exist.

I respect the fact that you have thought it through, I particularly like advanced ideas such as displaying alternative options when a particularly slot is not available, but I have watched so many people lay out their grand booking plugin plans and they always, always, always get sucked into the trap of over-complicating it, of loading layer after unnecessary functionality over the one feature that people have spent years begging for. I totally understand the reason why this happens - developers feel that a product must, in order to justify charging money for it, have a bunch of features.

Please believe me when I say that, within the context of WordPress, all that is missing is one vital feature: the ability to see what date/time slots are available, select a slot or range of slots and to be able to reserve those slots by completing some sort of action, such as payment. Everything else is bullshit because it only obscures the only function that matters.

Your plan involves hiring someone else to do the coding - well, here's my prediction for what will happen: it will take a lot longer than you think but, week by week, there will seem to be good progress as your coder completes the various bells and whistles you outlined. The one thing that will never seem to arrive is the booking functionality and, after missing his tenth deadline, your coder will abandon the project. What you will end up with, at best, is a fancy property listings plugin with no booking functionality.

You see, everything else is relatively straightforward and, really, can be better handled by other, existing plugins. The one feature that no-one has actually managed to deliver, despite the huge and obvious demand, is the booking part. This is because it is harder than it initially seems and WordPress developers often have false confidence about what they can do, mainly because they have found everything else in their careers relatively easy. If you want to see just how many years it is possible to waste on this delusion, just look at the sad story of Ciaran McBride, the developer of StayPress.

So, what I am suggesting is that you ask your coder to focus on the booking feature and ONLY the booking feature - no glossy logo, no clever use of Custom Post Types, JUST the booking feature. If he actually manages to deliver that, have the confidence to go straight to market with that one feature - you will be shocked by how many people will rush to buy it, as long as it is simple enough and well enough coded to be able to use it with Gravity Forms or other plugins.

I know, I know, it sounds crazy but, having followed this particular niche for years, there is no doubt in my mind that this is the biggest blind-spot in the world of commercial plugins. No-one knows quite why, but there is some sort of disconnect between plugin developers and their potential customers, they don't pay attention to what non-coders are asking for, they don't read threads like this, so, they don't get how desperate a substantial swathe of business people and professionals are to find a way to handle bookings and reservations without manual intervention and they don't have the imagination to envision how entirely new, person-to-person markets that will bloom once you allow WordPress sites to handle this stuff.

That is not a criticism of coders, it is just a reality of how different types of people think. That is why bridging figures such as Steve Jobs are so important, because they see the bigger picture, but they are incredibly rare. If you are going to do this, try to have the crazy Jobsian confidence that your single-feature plugin will be the biggest disruption for years in the WordPress universe, believe that just doing this one simple thing will be worth thousands of dollars to tens of thousands and, eventually, millions of people - bookings, appointments, reservations, rentals and events, these are all actions that propel people, facilitate interaction, save time and, most importantly, make money. There is not a single Web designer working today who has not had to turn down at least one client because they cannot currently provide this functionality.

Nothing I have said here is new. There are thousands of threads around the Internet discussing this need and just look at this discussion, 7 months old but still constantly hovering at or near the top of the Feature Request forum, by far the biggest thread in the entire forums with 79 posts and no signs of slowing. Someone will eventually do it but it can only come from someone smart enough to focus on what is actually being requested and confident enough to go to market without all the trimmings. What kills me is that a talented coder could probably knock this out in a couple of weeks but, instead, will spend months making another Twitter, SEO, affiliate or fancy comments plugin that no-one will buy.

@Chris Hajer - I don't see how that StackExchange discussion will do anything but waste people's time; nobody on that thread seems to have a clue, it is basically just a load of guys chasing points and badges by quickly searching Google or the WordPress.org repository for plugins with the word "booking" in their titles.

Almost all the options discussed in that thread are not actually booking plugins, they are just online services wrapped in a plugin, completely useless for anyone who wants to run a serious booking site, that is why so many people are coming here, to this thread, asking for a real booking plugin because we've already dismissed all the fake options.

Also, Chris, why would you highlight the Online Booking Calendar, which has always been overpriced, restrictive, poorly maintained and has not be updated since WP 2.8? People keep bringing it up because it ranks highly when you do a Google search for WordPress booking plugins, but I challenge anyone to show me a single review of it or even just one example of a real business using it.

This thread, right here, has already discussed Online Booking Calendar at length and pointed out that, even if it did work, on features it is all but useless unless you buy one of the extremely expensive versions.

Just to clarify, the function of this thread is to demonstrate that there is a strong, consistent demand for real WordPress booking plugin and to encourage the Gravity Forms team (or any other talented developers who happen to pass by) that there is real money to be made - so far, with over 80 posts (by far the longest thread in these forums), I believe the demand has been credibly demonstrated and hopefully, one day, we will be able to buy a booking plugin for WordPress that works. For now, however, you need Joomla to create that type of site.

+1 from me too!

I would certainly be among the ones ready to pay for a working, functional, customizable booking plugin. Got a few client projects needing for this solution.

Personally I don't have the skills nor time to make such a solution my self. And why try to invent the wheel again.

@donnacha, thanks for your thorough commenting about the other plugins trying to achieve the functionality this thread is looking for. I found my self comparing the same options too, but many of them just don't do the trick. I would not want to give my client something I don't see even close to a robust booking solution.

+1
I am looking for a simple but flexible hourly scheduling plugin. It needs to be able to have times added by "viewers" of the website.

It also need to be displayed on a separate page (no back end editing) that a "user" of the site can freely edit and change the dates and times, add, and delete the inputs by the viewers.

I am using a combination of these 4 plugins: Role Scoper, WP-Members, Peter's login redirect, and of course Gravity Forms.

If there are any suggestions please reply.

I have not been able to find anything suitable, so If Rocket Genius does create this I will hold out and purchase.

Another +1 for GF add-on. I have a few web design clients who I know would want this.

+1 For this, nothing I tried workd so far...

subscribed!

And another +1! Given what Rocket Genius has already achieved with Gravity Forms I think they would be the ideal crew to create a booking add-on for Gravity Forms or a stand-alone booking plugin and you can add me to the already long list of customers who would definitely buy it.

+1 Subscription

Very courious where & when this discussion will end (I guess when RocketGenius somehow gets it done ;-)).

Subscribed!

if this was added on as a feature to gravity forms, this would just make this plugin the best ever!!

I have subscribed!!

+1 Here too - Really +10 - It seems everyone working in the hospitality industry are eagerly awaiting a solution.

@banddolero - Shout Out to Pippin for his excellent work in Custom Post Types and Taxonomies. I'm using his stuff in conjunction with GF + Paypal to jury-rig a class schedule.

@dunskii We have experimented with Event Espresso and was left with a very bad taste for many of the issues mentioned by @donnacha. They have tried too hard to meet the exact needs of too many people - in the process not doing anything as well as you would hope.

iThemes just announced they are beta-testing an events plugin that seems to incorporate Gravity Forms out of the box:

http://ithemes.com/2012/04/11/sneak-peek-new-builder-events-block/

Has anyone tried it yet?

+ 1 for this to be a GF add-on or standalone product. As extensively detailed above, we've all seen various other plugins come and go with promises that they are finally the solution. It has to be a Rocket Genius product for me to be able to put my faith in it at this point.

+1 for Kickstarter on this too, I'd donate right now. I know Carl and co are very busy as it is, but if a suitably talented developer can be brought in to work on this, I reckon there's no lack of potential customers to pay for it to get done this way. If it's really just a couple of weeks work as @donnacha thinks, to get the one core feature (checking the booking against the database for availabillity, making the booking, changing the availability of those dates) up and running, NO bells and whistles required, surely that investment is worth it for all parties given the market potential of this.

+1
How is Easy Reservations plugin?

+1 as an add-on for Gravity Forms. Would be extremely helpful!!! Looking forward to hearing about some progress toward this in future subscription updates.

+1

+1 On this developemnt

+1

+1

+1

+1 Waiting this happen

@donnacha - Excellent post! I've come to exactly the same conclusion, though I believe WP is capable of handling this task.

As for Gravity's upcoming new product, do we really need another membership solution for digital downloads? There are so many already! It's such an easy solution it seems a bit of a cop out and just a fast way to leverage the reputation of GF to make even more money.

I could be wrong of course, and maybe their memberships product will be broad enough to offer the ability for charge people to post. Like a lot of things with GF, we'll just have to wait and see, though I suspect what I'm looking for will require an even longer wait as it appears in a future version.

On the subject of which, I saw a thread about pay to post on the WP support forum and one developer was questioning why you would charge anyone to post content on your site. This is the sort of myopic attitude we're up against.

Moving back to bookings, if anyone does take up the challenge of this then they'll have a sizeable and profitable business on their hands and will, if they play their cards correctly, be able to build an entire ecosystem serving so many use cases and niches around their core product.

Of the theme shops, Woo seem to have shrewdly repositioned their service by offering a core product such as WooCommerce and building premium extensions for it. Very clever!

Theme shops such as AppThemes and Templatic have built some decent core functionalities which they should be bundling up into stand alone products then creating an ecosystem around them. Time will tell if the penny drops for these guys.

@ktrusak - sounds like an interesting hack, it would be good to see an example of it in action.

+1 Support!

Would love to hear any updates on this?

Again today I have a new client project that requires a tour booking platform and I find myself back on this thread getting more and more depressed about this massive gap in the market.

I simply want tour products that can have a schedule of operation dates, each having a limit to the number of bookings accepted (stock control) and PayPal EC/IPN etc.

How dearly I wish I could free up enough time in my life to take on this project... it really is not especially complex from a coding point of view, and it is something that WordPress would be perfect for - but as has been pointed out many times, it is more complex than many had expected and will, without any question, still require a large time outlay in both design and testing.

I simply do not have enough personal demand for this to sacrifice other work (even though there is clearly a gap in the market and money to be made), so I shall stay on the side for now and see what happens.

I have had some very good success with this however.
http://wp-events-plugin.com/events-manager-pro/
You just need to totally rebuild the templates, because it looks like crap by default.

Although it is appreciated when people share the various solutions they find out there, it is vital to remember that you should never, ever spend your money and waste time on a booking solution simply based upon any individual opinion that it looks great.

Very often, in a thread like this, you get folks popping up and recommending products that the rest of us have already tried and ruled out because they simply don't work or because they are simply a bridge to yet another expensive hosted service. Even when they are actual scripts that run on your own server, the fact that they have a marketing page with screenshots that "look good", or even the fact that their demo installation seems to do what you need, that means very little unless you also have credible recommendations from actual users, deploying it in real-world conditions.

I mean no offense to @iphoenix, but I can't tell you how worrying it is to see wave after wave of newbies recommending the WordPress booking plugin on the basis of nothing more than the fact that it turned up in a Google search - worrying because a lot of people visiting this thread are desperate to find a solution and they may act upon such recommendations.

Please, before anyone else heartily recommends this horrendously expensive plugin (as much as $2,499 for a one year license, maximum 5 sites), I would very much appreciate if they could show us JUST ONE commercially active site that successfully manages to use this plugin or, what the Hell, even JUST ONE review of the premium version. If you can't manage that, perhaps you could just tell us how customers are meant to contact the mysterious Russian owner who has not updated his site in over two years, has no other plugins that we know of and who has gone to great lengths to hide his identity. Seriously, could people please understand that it is immoral to expose other people to what is quite likely to be a scam just because you feel the need to appear knowledgeable and are, therefore, willing to recommend something you haven't bought.

Just to clarify, in this thread we are interested in a WordPress plugin that allows us to handle bookings on our own servers (even if that also requires the installation of a non-WordPress script) and, most importantly, does not require you to hook it up to an external service. If anyone comes across such a plugin, and if it has not already been discussed in this thread, we would love to hear about it but, please, don't endorse it unless you have actually used it yourself OR you can point to a real-world example of it being successfully used by someone else.

For what it is worth, I stand by my belief that anyone who does manage to create a simple WordPress booking plugin, that works as well as such plugins on other PHP/MySQL CMSes, will have a multi-million dollar company on their hands ... but, again, there is something about WordPress, and its unusual business culture, that makes it unlikely that any sufficiently talented coder will ever notice how much demand there is for this.

Oh and, also, just so I don't sound as if I am entirely negative on how the commercial plugin market is developing, over the past few months I have been blown away by InfiniteWP, it has completely revolutionized how I run my business.

Waiting for more info. I think tying in with this would be great:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/booking/