Bookings & Rentals

Overview

Bookings & Rentals adds a bookable product type: something sold as a slot in time rather than as a unit of stock. An appointment, a table, a room, a piece of equipment for a weekend.

Availability is computed rather than stored as a list. Rules define when a product can be booked — globally, per product, or per resource — and a slot generator turns those rules into the slots a customer actually sees, minus what is already taken. A conflict detector then re-checks at the moment of booking, so two customers racing for the last slot do not both get it.

Resources are the things a booking consumes: staff, rooms, equipment, vehicles. A resource has a capacity and can modify the price, so booking the senior stylist or the large room costs more.

Bookings carry a timezone and store prices broken into base, resource and per-person components, so what was charged remains explicable later.

It is for appointments, reservations and hire.

Availability

Item	Value
Module key	bookings
Tier	Premium
Entitlement key	bookings
Admin tab	bookings
Enabled option	aiowc_module_enabled_bookings (off until turned on)
REST namespace	aiowc/v1
Product type	Bookable

Enabling the module creates the tables below and schedules four jobs.

registerHooks() performs no licence check of its own; the module registry applies the entitlement gate centrally. It registers the product type, the frontend, the jobs, the WooCommerce email classes, the calendar provider and the email-automation triggers.

Settings

This module declares no DEFAULTS constant. Its configuration is per product, per resource and per availability rule rather than a set of module-wide switches.

The booking

Field	Meaning
start_datetime, end_datetime, all_day	When the booking is.
timezone	The zone it was made in — stored per booking, not assumed.
duration_value, duration_unit	Its length, in minutes, hours, days or weeks.
persons	How many people it is for.
status	pending, confirmed, complete, cancelled, expired or no_show.
payment_status	unpaid, paid, refunded or partial.
base_price, resource_price, person_price, total_price	The price broken into its parts.
customer_*	Email, name and phone — captured even for a guest booking.
notes, internal_notes	What the customer said, and what staff recorded. Kept separate.
custom_fields	Anything else the store collects, as JSON.
external_calendar_id, external_event_id, calendar_synced_at	The linked calendar event.
confirmed_at, cancelled_at, cancelled_by, cancellation_reason	The audit of what happened and who did it.

Storing a timezone per booking, rather than converting to one store zone, is what makes a booking survive a daylight-saving change with its meaning intact.

Resources

Field	Meaning
type	staff, room, equipment, vehicle or custom.
capacity	How many bookings it serves at once.
price_modifier_type, price_modifier	none, fixed, percent or multiply, and the amount.
availability_override	Rules specific to this resource, as JSON.
display_order, is_active	How it is presented and whether it is offered.

A booking is linked to its resources through a join table, so one booking can consume more than one.

Availability rules

A rule has a scope — global, product or resource — so a store defines its general opening hours once and overrides them where a particular product or member of staff differs.

Status machine

Status changes go through a state machine rather than being set freely, and every transition is written to a log readable at /bookings/{id}/logs. Whether a customer may cancel is decided by the aiowc_booking_cancellation_allowed filter, so a store can express its own cancellation window.

Calendar sync

The module defines a calendar provider interface with two implementations: a Google Calendar provider and a null provider that does nothing.

🔴 The null provider is what runs unless Google Calendar is configured. That is a deliberate design — the module works without an external calendar, and the sync job simply has nothing to do. A booking's external_event_id stays empty and calendar_synced_at is never set.

Admin screen

The Bookings tab lists bookings and confirms, cancels, completes, reschedules or marks them no-show, individually or in bulk; manages resources and availability rules; shows statistics; exports bookings; and reads a booking's transition log. A diagnostics service backs a check of the module's own configuration.

REST API endpoints

All routes are on aiowc/v1 and answer with the { success, data, message } envelope.

Administrator routes — manage_woocommerce

Method	Path	Purpose
GET / POST	/bookings	List and create bookings.
GET / PATCH / DELETE	/bookings/{id}	Manage one booking.
POST	/bookings/{id}/confirm	Confirm it.
POST	/bookings/{id}/cancel	Cancel it.
POST	/bookings/{id}/complete	Mark it complete.
POST	/bookings/{id}/no-show	Mark the customer as not having arrived.
POST	/bookings/{id}/reschedule	Move it.
GET	/bookings/{id}/logs	Its transition history.
POST	/bookings/bulk/confirm / /bulk/cancel	Act on several at once.
GET	/bookings/export	Export bookings.
GET	/bookings/statistics	Counts and totals.
GET / POST	/bookings/resources	List and create resources.
GET / PATCH / DELETE	/bookings/resources/{id}	Manage one resource.
POST	/bookings/resources/reorder	Change their display order.
GET / POST	/bookings/rules	List and create availability rules.
GET / PATCH / DELETE	/bookings/rules/{id}	Manage one rule.

Customer routes

Method	Path	Purpose	Permission	Required args
GET	/public/bookings/slots	Available slots for a product over a date range.	Public, rate-limited	productId, startDate, endDate
GET	/public/bookings/resources	The resources a product offers.	Public, rate-limited	productId
POST	/public/bookings/price	Price a proposed booking.	Public, rate-limited	–
GET	/public/bookings/my-bookings	The caller's bookings.	Customer check	–
GET	/public/bookings/{id}	One of the caller's bookings.	Customer check	id
POST	/public/bookings/{id}/cancel	Cancel their own booking.	Customer check	id
POST	/public/bookings/{id}/reschedule	Move their own booking.	Customer check	id, startDatetime, endDatetime

The four customer routes that name a booking id run a customer permission check, so a customer cannot read or change a booking that is not theirs by guessing an id.

WooCommerce integration

Area	Hooks
Product type	product_type_selector, product_type_options, woocommerce_product_class, woocommerce_product_data_tabs / _panels, woocommerce_process_product_meta
Product page	woocommerce_before_add_to_cart_button, woocommerce_product_single_add_to_cart_text, woocommerce_quantity_input_args / _classes
Cart	woocommerce_add_to_cart_validation, _add_cart_item_data, _cart_id, _get_item_data, _before_calculate_totals, _check_cart_items
Checkout	woocommerce_checkout_process, woocommerce_checkout_create_order_line_item
Order status	woocommerce_order_status_processing, _completed, _cancelled, _failed, _refunded
Account	woocommerce_account_menu_items, woocommerce_account_bookings_endpoint
Emails	woocommerce_email_classes — the module ships confirmation, cancellation and reminder emails as real WooCommerce email classes, so they are editable in WooCommerce's own email settings
Order display	woocommerce_order_item_meta_end

Shortcodes [aiowc_booking_calendar], [aiowc_booking_search] and [aiowc_my_bookings].

woocommerce_cart_id is notable: it makes each booking a distinct cart line, so two different slots for the same product do not collapse into one line with quantity 2.

Database schema

Table	Holds
{prefix}aiowc_bookings	The bookings, as described above.
{prefix}aiowc_booking_resources	The resources: type, capacity, price modifier, availability override.
{prefix}aiowc_booking_resource_assignments	Which resources a booking consumes.
{prefix}aiowc_booking_availability_rules	When things may be booked, scoped globally, per product or per resource.
{prefix}aiowc_booking_logs	Every status transition, with who made it and why.
{prefix}aiowc_rental_inventory	Rental stock held by this module.
{prefix}aiowc_rental_reservations	Rental reservations held by this module.

The last two matter: this module contains its own rental implementation, separate from the standalone Product Rentals module. See the limits below.

Background jobs

Hook	Interval	Work
aiowc_booking_expiry	every 15 minutes	Expires pending bookings that were never paid for.
aiowc_booking_reminder	hourly	Sends reminders for upcoming bookings.
aiowc_booking_calendar_sync	hourly	Pushes bookings to the external calendar, where configured.
aiowc_booking_cleanup	daily	Prunes old log rows.

The 15-minute expiry job is what releases a slot held by an abandoned checkout, which is why it runs far more often than the others.

Action hooks for integrators

Lifecycle: aiowc_booking_created, _confirmed, _cancelled, _completed, _rescheduled, _no_show, _expired, _reminder_sent, aiowc_rental_checked_out.

Filters: aiowc_booking_cancellation_allowed, aiowc_booking_max_cart_age, aiowc_customer_booking_actions, and three for the reminder email's data, content and headers.

Also aiowc_booking_cleanup_complete, aiowc_booking_calendar_sync_complete, and aiowc_email_automation_trigger.

Entitlement limits

bookings is an on/off grant with no cap on bookings, resources or rules.

Health check

The module reports a warning when its tables are missing or WooCommerce is inactive, and otherwise reports that it is functioning normally. The diagnostics service gives more detail.

Known gaps

• Rentals are implemented twice. This module owns aiowc_rental_inventory and aiowc_rental_reservations, while the standalone Product Rentals module owns aiowc_rentals, aiowc_rental_periods and aiowc_rental_calendar. They are separate implementations with separate data and separate admin screens. A store should choose one.
• Calendar sync does nothing until Google Calendar is configured — the null provider is the default, and the sync job runs hourly regardless with nothing to do.
• The module has no settings row, so behaviour that a store might expect to configure once — a default cancellation window, a default reminder lead time — is expressed per rule, per product or through a filter instead.
• Bookings store a customer's name, email and phone directly on the booking row, including for guest bookings, which is customer personal data outside WooCommerce's own order tables and should be accounted for in a retention policy.