Booking System - User Guide

Add Categories

To add a full list of accommodation categories (e.g. Apartment, Villa), go to Accommodation → Categories → Add new.

There are standard WordPress fields for this type of content: add a name, slug, description and probably choose a parent of the category.

When editing or adding an accommodation type, you’ll be able to see all these categories in the right sidebar and tie the needed ones to the appropriate accommodations.

Add Amenities

To see the full list of amenities for different types of accommodations, go to Accommodation → Attributes.

All amenities are listed under the area they are found in.

To create a new amenity click Add New Attribute and then to add to them click Configure Terms.

When editing or adding an accommodation type, you’ll be able to see all the Amenities in the middle bar and tie the needed ones to the appropriate accommodation types.

Accommodation

How to work with accommodations

Go to Accommodation → Accommodation types.

Due to the bespoke design of the site, the accommodation configurations are configured to enable the front end to display all the required information.

The site is built using Elementor to add extra design and functionality.

Accommodation Details

  1. Accommodation Name
  2. Excerpt – Short description
  3. Capacity – Just add capacity to Adults field

Property Details – Add Weekly Prices, Video, Location, Booking Rules, Property Manual, Owner/Management Details including Rental Permit details.

Other – Add details of View and the Bed Types

  • Notification Customer – This is where the auto notifications are added to the accommodation.
  • AISEO – Select the Social tab and set Image Source to Default Image so that the default image is shown when sharing on social networks.
  • Attributes – Add all relevant details here
  • Accommodation Categories – Set accommodation type
  • Accommodation Tags – Set tags such as Special Offer, Platinum Collection
  • Photo Gallery – Add media here
  • Featured Image – Choose your featured image

When completed select Publish

Edit the front end of the property

Once all details have been added then it’s time to complete the set up on the front end using Elementor

Click Edit with Elementor

The Elementor Edit screen will be shown.

Set up the accommodation slide show

Select the pencil in the top right of the slide show

This will open the Image Carousel editor

Select the bin to Clear gallery

Select Clear

Select Add Images

Select the correct accommodation gallery and select all pics.

Create a new gallery

Arrange the pics in the order you would like

Then select Inset Gallery

 

Scroll down and select the Details tab and click in the details description

The Text Editor will open ready for you to add your description on the left side of the screen

Add the accommodation description here.

Configure the calendar to show specific property availability.

From the Structure menu on the right of the screen – select the bottom container – Tab 3 – Shortcode

This will open the Shortcode editor on the left of the screen

The id= “29658” needs to match the accommodation post id

This is especially important when creating a new property.

Select Publish to save the updates and the accommodation set up is complete as all other information is supplied from the back end details you completed earlier.

 

 

Create A New Accommodation

To create a new accommodation –

In Accommodation Types – Hover over any existing accommodation – Select Duplicate This

.

Then the duplicated accommodation will appear next to the copied property with the same accommodation name – Draft.

Edit this to reflect all the new properties details as shown above then the new accommodation will be live.

Also when a property is duplicated the Generate Accommodation needs to be clicked to create the new accommodation.

Add Seasons

To set a new season go to Accommodation → Seasons → Add New.

Season is a specific period of time that helps differentiate rental prices depending on a time of the year. “Season” is a general term and you can label your seasons any way you want. Apply only real dates to all added seasons.

Note: as for prices for seasons, you’ll be able to set them later in Rates menu.

  1. Type the season’s title (e.g. April, June/July).
  2. Define start and end date of this season (real dates).
  3. If this “season” is limited to some specific days during a period you set, go to “Applied for days” list and select the days when parameters of this season are active.
  4. If you want to repeat this season for the next year (not every year), select the ‘Annual’ button. Such repeats start on the season’s Start date and continue for one year from that date. If you want a shorter period, just pick an end date in the “Repeat until” calendar.
  5. Publish your changes.

All your seasons are displayed with the newest ones at the top by default. You can manually reverse the order and see the oldest seasons first by sorting them with the help of the ‘Start’ and ‘End’ dates.

Add Rates

  1. Go to Accommodation → Rates → Add New.
  2. Specify a rate title (e.g. Olympos 9, etc.).
  3. Choose an accommodation type from the drop-down menu.
  4. Click ‘Create Rate’.

Customize a rate

Before you can add rates, make sure you’ve added Seasons.

You can create multiple seasonal prices within a rate.

Add price variations for different seasons by clicking “Add New Season Price”.

When adding prices, choose a Season first to identify the timeframe when these prices are active.

Set per-night prices based on the number of nights booked.

Bookings

Add booking manually

  • navigate to Bookings → All Bookings
  • click ‘New Booking’ button at the top
  • select Check in/out dates, certain accommodation type if needed, and capacity and click ‘Search’ button
  • system will show available accommodations types and its accommodations Select needed accommodations and click Reserve button
  • After that fill the forms like on the front-end checkout page. So here you can select the amount of guests, add extras/services, guest name, apply coupon code (optional), fill required fields like name, email and phone number.
  • Fill all the information and click the Book Now button.

Modify existing bookings

You can edit booking information collected at checkout or added by your staff manually.

To edit a booking, go to Booking → select a booking and click “Edit”.

  • In the “Booking Information” section, you can edit check-in and check-out dates.
  • In the “Reserved accommodations” section, you can manage accommodations and other booking information, (all information you can see in this section is editable).

To edit arrival/departure dates, follow the next steps:

  1. Click “Edit Dates” and select new dates to check the availability of the already booked properties in this reservation. Pick dates and click “Check Availability”.
    It a property is available, you’ll see the “Available” status:

If not, it won’t let you proceed with an unavailable one.

Continue if a property is available. You’ll see the source and target accommodation. The source accommodation is used to transfer already available client data to a new updated booking. If you just change dates, most likely the source accommodation will be the same as the target one.

On the final step, you can compare the new booking details with those in the original booking.

If everything is correct click “Save”.

Direct bank transfer

The Direct bank transfer method is used when an instant online payment is not required.

Guests can later transfer money directly to any of your accounts outside of your website.

On the Direct bank transfer method, the default booking status is ‘Pending Payment’. The Payment status is ‘On Hold’ or ‘Pending’. If you set the payment status to ‘Completed’, the booking status changes to ‘Confirmed’.

The guests can apply the coupon on the checkout page when confirming and booking an accommodation. So, when the coupon is applied, the guests pay a discounted price.

As a website admin, you can also apply coupon codes when adding a booking manually from the plugin’s back-office.

General settings

Check the ‘Enable Direct Bank Transfer’ checkbox to output this method at checkout.

Provide a title, method description and further instructions for clients that will be visible at checkout.

In the dedicated ‘Instructions’ field, you can write payment instructions that will specify the payment process for guests. For example, “Transfer the payment to XXXX. Place your booking number in notes”

The Payment instructions email template

There is a dedicated Payment Instructions email template that you can automate to send clients instruction on how to pay, their booking info and more.

Feel free to add any automated tags in addition to how-to-pay instructions. Also note that the %payment_instructions% tag uses the information from the Instructions field in the Direct Bank Transfer settings.

Stripe

Stripe is one of the top chosen payment gateways to accept online payments globally: it’s so far available for businesses in 34 countries, which allows you to meet widely varying customer preferences.

The Stripe payment gateway is by default built into the MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin; you may optionally turn it on at checkout in case you opt to confirm bookings upon payment. Since guests will be able to stay on the same website page during checkout, the booking and payment process should be more convenient and quick for them.

How to enable Stripe

To start using Stripe for accepting online bookings, log into your WordPress dashboard → Accommodation → Settings → Payment gateways → Stripe tab. Before you set up Stripe, make sure that the booking confirmation mode is set to “Upon payment” (Accommodation → Settings → General).

You can use Stripe with either deposit or full payments (Accommodation → Settings → Payment Settings → General Settings).

Then go through the following configuration:

  1. Customize the title and description.
    Customize the title and description of the payment method at checkout to state any specific details.
  2. Set Stripe Secret and Public keys.
    Obtain your Stripe Secret and Public keys via your Stripe dashboard and insert them into the appropriate fields. Note: you need to paste test API keys from Stripe when Sandbox mode is enabled in plugin settings.
  3. Optionally configure Stripe Webhook settings.

    To set up webhooks, follow the provided “Setting up webhooks” tutorial.
    “Webhook Secret” – Find your webhook secret (Webhook ID) in the upper right corner of your endpoint page.

Add payment manually

If the guest has already paid the needed amount of money and should pay the rest after arrival to the hotel, you can add the payment manually to the appropriate booking.

To do this, simply go to a needed booking, scroll down to Additional info and click Add payment manually.

Payment Request

To automate scheduled balance payment emails, configure the following settings:

  • Tick “Enable automatic payment request emails” box for the system to send notifications automatically.
  • In the “Days Before Check-in” drop-down, select in how many days prior to arrival the payment reminders must be sent.
  • Select the “Payment Request Page”, which your guests will be redirected to to pay the balance.

Important: Automated payment request emails will be sent only in case the status of a booking is “Confirmed”.

Manual Payment Requests

Beyond automatic balance requests, you can send custom payment request links for any guest manually, anytime.

Find all types of requests you can set by navigating to All Bookings → Select a booking → Edit → Payment Request settings from the right.

It allows you to manually manage various booking requests.

Note: The ‘Balance due’ request is the only type available for both automatic and manual requests.

Request types:

  1. Balance Due: Allows you to manually ask the customer to pay the full remaining amount owed for their booking. Make sure to click “Disable automatic payment requests for this booking” If you’ve also set up auto-requests via the add-on settings.
  2. Deposit: Allows you to ask the customer to pay the partial cost of their booking based on your deposit settings (Accommodation → Settings → Payment Gateways → Deposit type and Deposit amount, ignoring the ‘User pays’ setting).
  3. Custom Request: Lets you manually create a payment request for a specific percentage or fixed amount of the total booking cost, and then send the customer a link to make the payment. Add new requests by clicking on the ‘New Request’ button. You can create and delete any number of requests of this type.

Action buttons:

  • Send: Automatically sends an email to the customer requesting payment.
  • Open: Displays a webpage on your site with booking details and checkout exactly as the customer would see it when accessing the payment request link.
  • Copy: Copies a direct payment request link for you to share with the customer through other communication channels.

You are free to send payment requests anytime, as many times as needed.

Email Templates

Accommodation → Settings → Extensions tab → Payment Request → email templates.

There are customer email templates for every type of payment request that use different focus tags for dynamically generating payment amounts:

  • Balance Due Request Email uses the %booking_balance_due% tag that generates the balance due amount.
  • Deposit Request Email uses the %booking_deposit_amount% tag that generates the deposit cost for the particular booking.
  • Payment Request Email uses the %booking_requested_amount% tag that generates the amount to be paid based on the custom settings for the chosen booking.

Using system macros, you can customize emails for your guests and optionally enable admin notification emails. Simply copy and paste the needed macros in the %check_in_date% format along with your custom email texts.

As for admin emails, find the “Recipients” field to add multiple staff email addresses (separate them by comma) that need to receive notifications.

OTAs sync for updated bookings

If you list your properties on external OTAs via iCal, the changes you make to bookings on the site will also be synchronized with those on OTAs.

Each accommodation in a booking (in “Reserved accommodations” – there can be several ones in a booking) has its unique ID (UID) that is used in iCal calendars.

If you change booking dates for properties in a reservation, the calendar UID stays the same.

If you change accommodation or its type in a booking (add, remove or replace properties), its UID in a calendar is also changed.

The updated booking data should be synced with external calendars during the next scheduled automatic sync.

 

During the export, the UIDs of the events in calendars are compared, so if there is new information, it should be also automatically updated on the external platforms.

Note: you cannot edit the bookings imported from external sources/platforms. To modify bookings sourced from external platforms, you need to update the source booking (the listing on the OTA) and resync your calendars to export new data to the Hotel Booking plugin on your WordPress website.

Bookings Calendar

To preview all bookings in a user-friendly calendar view, go to Bookings → Calendar. Here you may find the bookings by an accommodation type, by period or status.

To view details of each booking from the bookings calendar, hover your mouse over the booking or simply click on the needed booking to see all details.

Synchronize your hotel website with OTAs via iCal

Configure synchronization

If you list your property on multiple online channels and also offer online website bookings via MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin, you can easily avoid overbooking by synchronizing all those channels with your site and with each other. To make this synchronization possible, the online channels you use should support iCalendar file format.

To configure synchronization of your bookings across all channels, go to your WordPress Dashboard → Bookings → Sync Calendars. You’ll see a list of all your real accommodations with their unique URLs (the link under Export).

In short, setting up synchronization is a 2-phase process: you’ll need to export a calendar URL to an external channel/channels (to notify them about the bookings made through your site) and import the link from them to your site (to notify your site about the bookings made through the channels). In this way, your availability across channels and a website will always be up to date.

During synchronization, the plugin will download the bookings from external booking platforms by the imported links. The external channels will download the bookings from our plugin by the exported links according to their internal schedules.

Export calendars

How to export your website calendars to online channels

Use Export Calendar link to export your calendars to any external online travel channel. So, just copy the URL and paste it into the appropriate field in the OTA backend.

Note: each accommodation comes with its unique calendar URL.

Import calendars

How to import calendars from external online channels to your website

Go to the external online channel, find the iCal file URL and copy it (each real accommodation should have its unique iCal URL). Then go to your WordPress dashboard → Bookings → Sync Calendars → choose a needed accommodation and click Edit → click Add New Calendar → paste the URL → Update. Here you may add as many URLs from different channels as needed:

Set Booking rules

Go to Bookings → Booking Rules menu to set your booking rules.

These rules allow you to set minimum and maximum check-in and check-out dates, minimum and maximum stay-in days for all or individual accommodations. Also, using this menu you’ll be able to block the booking option for chosen accommodations at specific periods of time.

Check-in rules

You may add as many rules as you want.

Select all available check-in days for chosen accommodation types and seasons.

For example, if guests can check in at any day and to any accommodation, just select All.

If you want to add a custom booking rule for any accommodation type, just add a new rule. For example, check-in is not available on Monday to Friday on a particular accommodation..

On the frontend, if a guest wants to check in on Monday – Friday there won’t be that particular accommodation in the search results list, because we made check-in on Mondays-Fridays unavailable for this accommodation type.

 

Check-out rules

You can do the same for the check-out days. Just set when guests can check out (can be applied to all accommodation types or to any individually). Make sure that rules don’t conflict with each other.

Minimum stay rules

You may set a minimum stay-in period for all accommodations or each one individually.

For example, if you want to set 7 days as a minim stay-in period for all accommodations, this will be shown in the search availability calendar as well (guest will be able to choose a check-out date only in 7 days after the check-in date).

Maximum stay rules

Set the maximum stay-in period for all accommodations or each one individually. For example, you may set maximum 21 days for all rooms, a guest won’t be able to choose more than 15 days for stay-in (and unavailable days will be crossed out in the search availability calendar).

Block accommodation rules

If you need to make all accommodations or any specific accommodation unavailable during a specific period of time, use “Block accommodation rules”.

Among the restriction rules are: not check-in, not check-out and not stay-in (when you want to totally block accommodations/a specific accommodation at a chosen period of time).

  • The Not check-in rule marks the date as unavailable for check-in.
  • The Not check-out rule marks the date as unavailable for check-out.
  • The Not stay-in rule displays the date as blocked. This date is unavailable for check-in and check-out on the next date.
  • The Not stay-in with Not check-out rules completely block the selected date, additionally displaying the previous date as unavailable for check-in.

If you set the blocking dates but forget to tick the needed restriction type, the ‘not stay-in’ restriction will apply automatically by default.

The rules in the list are sorted chronologically by their “From” date, ensuring the most recent rules appear at the top for easy reference.

You may add as many rules as you want for each accommodation separately.

For example, if you rent out 2 apartments and want to totally block all for 8 days, simply choose needed dates and ‘All’. Then, in the search availability form, all the blocked dates will be crossed out.

Please note, if there are too many different rules, the frontend search availability calendar won’t be able to show all of them instantly, but all the rules will work delivering results according to all your rules.

Also, booking rules will not appear on shared iCal calendars as they are not bookings.

Create discount coupons

If you want to provide guests with discount coupon codes, which they can apply on the checkout page, you should go to Bookings → Coupons → Add new

Conditions

In the Conditions section, select the accommodation types to which you want the discounts to apply. Any coupon types you create—whether for accommodation, services, or fees—will only work for the selected accommodation types. Select multiple items by holding Shift and clicking; to apply the created coupons to all accommodation types, simply don’t select any specific one.

Coupon types

You can create coupon codes separately for accommodations, services, and fees.

Accommodation discount

Note: all coupon codes are applied to the ‘Accommodation Subtotal’ value, meaning, only to the cost of the accommodation.

  • None – leave it so if you are creating other types of coupons in this menu.
  • Percentage discount on accommodation price. A designated percentage value applies to the accommodation cost of the chosen stay-in period.
  • Fixed discount on accommodation price. A designated amount applies in a monetary value per accommodation per stay.
  • Fixed discount on daily/nightly price. A designated amount applies in a monetary value per accommodation to every day of the stay-in period.

Fee discount

  • None – leave it so if you are creating other types of coupons in this menu.
  • Percentage. A designated percentage value applies to the fee cost of the chosen stay-in period.
  • Fixed. A designated amount applies in a monetary value of the the fee cost of the chosen stay-in period.

Create coupon

Navigate to Bookings → Coupons → Add new. All the settings of this menu will let you customize the coupon:

    • Create a coupon code name.
    • Add the coupon description.
    • In the Conditions section, choose accommodation types you want the discounts to be applied to. All the coupon types you create, whether it’s for an accommodation, service, or fee, will work only for selected accommodation types.
    • Select the type of coupon you are creating and set your preferences for the coupon value.
    • In the User Restrictions menu, optionally set further conditions: check-in and check-out dates “frame” when the discount coupon is valid, minimum and maximum days to stay required for the coupon to be valid, the number of times the coupon can be used, etc.
    • Min days before check-in: use this option to create early bird discounts. For example, set ’30’ if you want this coupon to work for bookings made not later than in 30 days before the check-in date.
    • Max days before check-in: use this option to create last minute discounts. For example, set ‘2’ if you want this coupon to work for bookings made not earlier than in 2 days before the check-in date.

Apply coupon

Note: guests must enter the coupon code at checkout, that is, coupons don’t apply automatically.

The guests can apply the coupon on the checkout page when confirming and booking an accommodation. So, when the coupon is applied, the guests pay a discounted price.

As a website admin, you can also apply coupon codes when adding a booking manually from the plugin’s back-office.

Notifier – Event-Driven Emails

Create a Notification

First, make up a name for your notification that describes a type of notification (e.g. Key pick-up instructions).

Automatic & manual notifications

You can create various notifications and send them automatically or manually. Even automatic ones can be re-send manually as well if required via the Bookings > Edit Booking menu.

Manual sending:

A notification won’t be sent automatically, you can send it manually at any moment. To send a manual-only notification to a client, you need to go to the All Bookings menu > choose a booking > edit it > go to the Send Notification menu > choose a notification > click Send Notification and it should be instantly sent to the client’s email address.

You can also use this menu to resend automatically triggered notifications.

Automatic sending:

If you select an ‘Automatic’ trigger, go to settings and configure the settings for it:

  • Choose a type of notification (as of version 1.0.0, there is only an email type).
  • Set a period – in how many days before or after check-in/check-out the notification must be automatically sent.
  • “Skip this notification for reservations made later than the set time frame” – Check this box if you want to disable this notification if the reservation is made later than set in the trigger timeframe.
  • Choose recipients. Feel free to choose from the list or input custom email addresses.

The same notification can be sent to all recipients at the same time. The “Customer” notifications will be tied to the email address associated with a booking and will depend on the accommodation type booked.

If you choose any other recipient except for the ‘Customer’, the selected recipients will receive this particular notification on each booking. For example, this allows you to create and send notifications to the housekeeper on each booking or notify the website administrator about fresh reservations.

Then, customize the email template using available email tags (code snippets that get automatically replaced with the guest’s info). You can find these tags in various type of admin and customer emails, including in the ‘Reserved Accommodation Details Template’, which is located in Accommodation > Settings > Email Settings tab.

In addition to the default list of macros, you can find two dedicated ones:

Accommodation Notice 1 – %accommodation_notice_1%

Accommodation Notice 2 – %accommodation_notice_2%

Add one or two macros into your email template if you need to include custom accommodation-type related information. You may opt out of custom Accommodation Notices if you need the same email to be sent unchanged to all bookings.

Please note: you can use the same macros for all other types of email templates available in the Hotel Booking plugin.

Use the right menu to test how notifications work. Click “Send email” and the notification will be sent to the email address of the website administrator. A test email will use details of a random booking (you should have confirmed bookings).

You may manually update the status of a notification.

Add Custom Notices to the Accommodation Types

This is helpful when you need to diversify notification’s content based on the accommodation type.

If you need Accommodation Notice 1 and Accommodation Notice 2 macros in your notifications to be replaced with custom property information (e.g. provide different key pick-up instructions for different properties), go to the needed Accommodation types and fill in the respective fields in the Notification Customizer section.

Please note: if you leave these fields yet use the macros in the email template, the guest will receive an email notification with empty strings.

To see a real-time report on how many automated emails/notifications were sent and the time the next emails are scheduled for, go to the Bookings → Notifications menu.

PDF Invoices

This addon allows you to automatically email invoices as PDFs to your guests upon booking submission.

A PDF invoice consists of two parts:

  • Automatically generated customer and booking details (different for each booking).
  • Your custom property/hotel information (fixed).

First, include all brand property information into your invoice via Accommodation → Settings → Extensions tab → Invoices. Here is what you can edit in the client invoice:

  • Add an Invoice title (e.g. Invoice).
  • Add a custom invoice number format, which can be a combination of text with selected tags. To choose tags you find suitable for generating an invoice number, click on ‘Available tags’> copy the needed ones and paste them to the Invoice Number Format field.

Current style:

If you want to display a link to an automatically generated invoice on your website right after a guest submits a booking, tick this option in the settings:

This allows guests to view and download PDF invoices on your website by following a link:

Include a PDF invoice tag into guest emails

To automatically send PDF invoices as email attachments, make sure to copy and paste this tag %pdf_invoice% into the Approved booking email template (via Accommodation → Settings → Customer Emails).

View invoices in the admin dashboard

As an administrator, you can view customer invoices:

  1. From the list of all bookings (hover the mouse over the needed booking)
  1. From any individual booking (open a booking)

Once any information in the booking changes, the invoice will be updated accordingly.

Full Amenities List...

Kitchen

Lounge

Outside

Pool

Entertainment / Media Room

Other