How to add shift booking to my site?

Do you want to manage appointments and reservations on your WordPress site?

We recommend the perfect plugin to manage appointments on your own website. Fully integrated with WooCommerce, WordPress and Google Calendar. You will be able to accept appointment reservations free of charge.

Bookly is a plugin for WordPress that allows the automatic online management of reservations. It is the most widely used in the world and also has a PRO version that offers a greater number of functions. Only the PRO version, as is often the case with all free components that have a premium version, is paid.

Features

Automate your company, office or business with professional digital tools. Keep your calendar neatly organized and reduce no-shows with advanced notifications and reminders. Offer free quotes or receive payments with any existing money transaction system (note: receiving payments is only possible in the PRO version).

Installation is so easy that anyone with basic knowledge of WordPress can do it. Download the plugin and install it on your WordPress to start offering your clients the convenience of being able to book appointments online.

After these steps, and once the plugin is activated, we can see a screenshot of information. Logically, at first there will be no reservations, and therefore the screen we see will be similar to the screenshot below.

First step: load services and professionals

We go to the Calendar option to find the following window. This is where we will upload our staff and the services they practice. For example, if our business were a SPA, we would enter the masseur and his possible days/times, the person in charge of maintaining the whirlpool and free shifts, the aromatherapist and his schedule, etc.

We will click on the green button "Add Personnel" to enter each professional of our business. Once this is done, we will deal with the Services.

Something interesting is that the time interval that will run before the professional can receive another appointment can be determined. For example, in the screenshot below we see that a massage session lasts 45 minutes, and then 15 minutes will have been allocated until Adela Vargas can receive the next client. It is understood that in this space, for example, the room is sanitized and prepared for the next user.

returning to Calendar With our services and employees loaded, we can begin to assign the days and times available to each one. In the example below we see that the masseuse Adela Vargas has hours available both on Wednesday and Thursday, from 8:45 am to 4:15 pm with capacity for one person at a time. To the extent that our users book the shifts, the calendar will show the corresponding line as taken, and will show the name of the corresponding client.

Embedding the Appointment Booking Widget for our users

We may embed the booking widget on any page of our site, new or existing. Let's look for the Widget in our builder, be it Elementor, Gutenberg or another. In the example we will use Gutenberg as it is the native WordPress site builder.

Note that what we will insert is actually a shortcode, that is, a call to Bookly through a line in code: [bookly-form]

After saving the changes we can see the online reservation form.

As we mentioned, just add the call [bookly-form] via HTML wherever we need it on our site for the form to be presented online. This call works regardless of which site builder you use, so compatibility is guaranteed.

conclusion

Bookly is an easy and powerful plugin, designed to make appointments possible for your users through your own website.. Its versatility covers any type of business, from hairdressers or photography sessions to asset management and transportation. We can test the basic version of Bookly for free on our WordPress site and decide for ourselves how satisfied we are. If we like it and it is necessary, we can access the PRO version and all its additional accessories for USD89.

Please note that online payments, unlimited number of staff and services, and the ability to install plugins are NOT AVAILABLE in the free version. For more information on the features available with the Bookly PRO plugin, please refer to the following online demo (in English).

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Good luck, and thanks for reading.