Do you want your customers to book an appointment directly from your WordPress site? Many businesses need an appointment booking WordPress form that allows customers to book an appointment online easily. This article will show you the best WordPress appointment and booking calendar plugins.
Looking to build an online appointment booking system? Managing appointments for your services can be a hassle. By setting up an appointment booking system, you can easily allow your clients to schedule appointments on your website without your involvement.
In this article, we’ll show you how to make an appointment booking system with WordPress.
Booking Calendar WordPress Plugin Option + Usage Guide
The Booking Calendar plugin provides a great booking system for your website. Quickly check availability and receive reservations for your property or services in an easy-to-use reservation system with a clean and streamlined interface.
Your website visitors can check the availability of properties (like apartments, houses, hotel rooms, etc.) or services you offer and book within a minute for a whole day, multiple days, or a specific period (in the free version). Booking Calendar ). Different editions of WP Booking Calendar offer hundreds of features to do almost any booking function for your business.
- Pick dates in a calendar (can be customized to suit your website design)
- Optional. Select an available time slot on your booking form to book.
- Complete booking form fields (configurable – change field labels, enable/disable or set as desired)
- submit reservation
Admins (as well as your guests) will receive notification emails about new bookings. They can approve or reject them in an easy-to-understand, elegant manage bookings panel (ability to view all bookings by day/week/month) Calendar overview mode – timeline or only in the subscription list).
Appointment Booking WordPress Calendar
With all the different booking plugins, making an appointment booking system with WordPress is easy. You can choose BirchPress or WP-Forms for the best results for appointment scheduling.
BirchPress is the best choice if you need a complete appointment booking plugin for your site. It lets you manage your appointments directly from your WordPress dashboard.
You can choose WP-Forms to integrate your appointments with your favorite standalone booking platform. WP-Forms is a complete online form builder. With its Zapier integration, you can connect your appointment booking form with any web application that supports Zapier.
Here’s a tutorial on how to make a client booking form with WP-Forms and manage your appointments with Google Calendar, for example.
In our tutorial, we’ll use BirchPress to make an appointment booking system with WordPress.
Getting Started with an Appointment Booking System
To set up an appointment booking website with WordPress, you’ll have to purchase a domain name and web hosting.
A domain name is your website’s address on the internet, like Google.com and visualmodo.com, and web hosting is where your website content files are stored online.
Step 1: Install and Configure BirchPress
The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the BirchPress plugin. After the activation, head to the plugin settings by navigating to Appointments » Settings and start configuring your booking system.
In the settings page, you can find a few different sections:
- General: Firstly, customize available options, including time zone, currency, default calendar view, etc.
- Form builder: Secondly, here, you can customize your appointment forms.
- Notifications: Set up a notification to service providers and your clients. Emails are sent when an appointment is booked, rescheduled, or canceled.
- Payments: You can set up your payment settings in the Payments tab. BirchPress allows you to collect payments via PayPal. For more payment gateways, you’ll need to install WooCommerce integration.
- WooCommerce: Enable WooCommerce integration in this section.
- Custom code: Finally, Add custom code to your BirchPress plugin.
Localization: Booking & Appointment in WordPress Calendar
If you offer your service at multiple locations, then you can manage appointments for all your locations from your WordPress admin. All you have to do is add locations in BirchPress and allow users to choose the correct location when they book an appointment.
To add a location, go to Appointments » Locations. Then click Add Location.
Then, you can specify more details about your location, including a phone number, address, zip code, etc.
Booking & Appointment in WordPress Variables
Next, you’ll want to add service providers or your staff. If you’re a solo provider, then you only have to add yourself as the service provider.
If you want to manage appointments for your entire firm for your tax consultancy business, then you’ll need to add each consultant to your booking system.
Adding providers to your booking system is easy. So, navigate to Appointments » Providers and specify the details of your providers.
You can specify the name and description of each provider in the editor. Then assign the services each provider can perform in the Services box. When you scroll down the page, you’ll see several meta boxes, as follows:
- Additional Info: Specify the email address of the provider.
- Calendar integration: BirchPress works with the calendars you already have, including Google, iCal, iPhone, Android, and Outlook. You can import and sync your appointments automatically.
- Days off: Specify your days off in the calendar
- Work schedule: Choose a city and add a schedule for each provider.
Adding Form
To add a service in BirchPress, go to Appointments »Services and specify your details. On the right-hand side, you can specify the locations where you’ll be performing this service and the providers who can handle it.
Finally, scroll down the page and adjust your service settings per your needs.
Publishing
Now that you’ve set up all the details regarding your services, it’s time to publish your appointment booking form.
A booking form can be embedded in a page post and widgets via shortcode. Once published, your clients can easily check your availability and book appointments online quickly.
To publish a booking form, create a new page in WordPress. Then add the following shortcode to the editor wherever you want to embed the form: [bpscheduler_booking_form]
Alternatively, you can add an appointment directly from your WordPress dashboard by going to Appointments » New Appointment.
Here’s what a sample booking form looks like:
You can also check the calendar to view and manage your bookings by visiting the Appointments » Calendar.
Conclusion
We hope this guide helped you make an appointment to book a WordPress system with WordPress. For more plugins, check out our guide on the best appointment booking WordPress theme.
