How to accept bookings in WooCommerce

Write down what customers are booking, how long each booking lasts, your opening hours, blackout dates, maximum capacity and whether payment is taken immediately or after approval. Decide whether one booking represents one person, a group, a room, a vehicle or another shared resource.

Also choose your cancellation window and the timezone customers should see. Most booking problems start with unclear duration, capacity or timezone rules rather than with the checkout itself.

For a low-volume service, create a normal WooCommerce product, tick Virtual if nothing is shipped, and explain in the description that customers must request a date and time. Collect the requested slot through a checkout note or a form, then review the order and confirm the appointment using a customer note.

This route is acceptable when you handle only a few bookings and check a separate calendar yourself. It does not create real availability rules, hold time slots during checkout, prevent two customers choosing the same time or provide a booking calendar, so it becomes risky on a busy Friday.

Install a WooCommerce-compatible booking extension from Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, activate it, and complete its general settings. A proper booking extension adds a bookable product type because ordinary WooCommerce products do not contain date, duration and availability controls.

Keep WooCommerce's shop, checkout and payment settings in place. The extension should connect the chosen date and time to the cart, order and booking record rather than treating the booking as an unstructured product note.

Go to Products → Add New, enter the service details, select the extension's bookable product type and mark it as virtual if no delivery is required. Set a fixed duration or let customers choose a duration, then configure the calendar display and booking lead time.

Set the maximum number of bookings for each slot or day. If the service uses staff, rooms, equipment or other limited assets, create them as resources and attach them to the product so separate products share the same availability.

Add your weekly working hours, holidays, date ranges, minimum notice and maximum advance-booking period. Configure prices for duration, people, dates or resources where needed. If every valid booking can be accepted automatically, take payment through your normal WooCommerce gateway.

If you need to review each request, enable the product's confirmation workflow instead. Customers submit a booking request first, and you approve it before they receive the payment request. Remember that confirmation-based bookings use a separate checkout flow and cannot be mixed with ordinary products in the same cart.

Connect Google Calendar or an iCal feed if your extension supports it, then check how imported events affect availability. Set the WordPress site timezone correctly and decide whether the calendar should display the shop's timezone or the visitor's timezone. Booking emails and reminders depend on these settings.

Place a test booking as a customer, pay or submit it for approval, confirm the email, inspect the order and booking record, and try to book the same slot again. Test cancellation, refunds, capacity limits and a daylight-saving date before publishing the product.

Fast way: use WooCommerce Bookings. It provides WooCommerce-native bookable products with availability rules, resources, variable pricing, calendar integration, customer details and booking notifications, so you can configure the service instead of building the scheduling logic yourself.