Getting started
Create a resource
Catalog › Resources
Add what you actually offer for booking: a room, a bed, a guide, a piece of equipment, an activity… Choose its capacity mode when creating it.
- Individual: booked as a single whole block (a private cabin), never split between two customers. Set its "Maximum persons per booking", or leave it empty for no limit.
- Quantitative or shared: has a numeric capacity (6 beds in a dorm). Each unit can be booked separately and managed on its own — to take one broken bed out of service without closing the whole dorm.
Set its availability
Catalog › Availability
Create a recurring rule (for example "every Saturday at 2 pm"), then generate the matching slots: this is what makes the resource bookable. Seasons, defined once, can be picked here as opening periods. A resource booked by the night uses night rules (a check-in time, then the check-out time of the next morning). A generated slot can still be changed or closed afterwards without touching the rule.
Create an offer
Catalog › Offers
An offer is what the customer actually buys ("Night in a dorm", "Half-day climbing course"), never the resource itself. Link one or more resources to it, set its price and its optional extras in "Prices and options", then publish it. A warning under a published offer tells you what still prevents online booking (no resource linked, no price in effect, or no open slot with free places in the next 90 days).
Add the booking widget to your site
Your page builder
Add the "VEF Booking" block, module or widget to a page, with Gutenberg, Divi 5 or Elementor. It is the complete booking module: leave the offer empty and it presents all your published offers, the visitor ticks one, and the form adapts to it (a date and time, an arrival date and a number of nights, a stay, the number of persons or who is coming, the extras) up to the booking and the payment. The date is chosen in a small calendar field where only the days that can be booked are enabled — visitors can browse it month after month, up to the last day you have opened, with no other limit — then the time among the times of that day; the numbers of persons and nights have − and + buttons.
- VEF Availability: a calendar that shows visitors the days that can be booked; a free day opens the booking page on that day.
- VEF Offers: the list of your offers, each with a "Book" button.
- VEF Booking Summary: the confirmation to put on your thank-you page.
Configure payments
Settings › Settings
Choose the currency first (prices are never converted afterwards), then enter your Stripe and/or PayPal keys. Separate test keys let you try the whole booking flow without charging a real card. Visitors only see the payment methods whose keys are filled in; with none at all, bookings are recorded without online payment and you settle the payment with the customer yourself.
Customize the automatic emails (optional)
Settings › Emails
Adjust the wording of the emails sent to your customers and to you, using the tokens in curly braces to insert the real booking details automatically.
Adjust the look (optional)
Settings › Style
The widgets follow your theme's fonts and heading sizes by default. The Style tab lets you choose another font, other heading sizes, an accent color, the colors of the buttons, the corner roundness, the spacing, the style of the fields, the shadows, the layout of the offers and dates, where the descriptions of the offers and resources are shown, the prices shown on the offers, and a button shadow, for every VEFmultiBooking widget at once. In your page builder (Gutenberg, Divi 5, Elementor), each block offers the same settings for that block only, and you see the result at once; a block setting left on "Site default" follows the Style tab.
Go further
Nights, stays and minimums
Catalog › Resources
You do not choose how a resource is booked: it follows its availability. Time slots make an activity; nights make an accommodation, booked with an arrival date and a number of nights (set the minimum and maximum nights and the arrival weekdays on the resource). Tick "Package" for a stay made of the nights and activities of other resources. On each resource you can also set a minimum number of persons, allowed combinations of adults and children, a minimum notice, periods (seasons) and, for an activity, a minimum number of participants. When you enter a booking yourself, none of these rules holds you back.
Several resources in one offer
Catalog › Offers
Link several resources of the same kind to one offer — for example identical rooms sold by the night. Once the dates are chosen, the visitor sees those that are free, each with its name, its description (typed on the resource) and the maximum number of persons, and ticks one or more. "Assign automatically", with a counter, lets the plugin take the first free ones for the visitor. The price is the offer's, and the total adds up the lines. Each one becomes a line of the cart, and each line has its own number of persons and its own number of nights, within the limits of that product. The options below apply to each one. When you enter a booking yourself, you pick the resource or leave it on automatic.
Prices by season
Catalog › Offers
In "Prices and options", give a period (from, to) and save one price for each season: the price used is the one whose period contains the date, whatever the way the price is set (per person, table, categories…). Tick "Repeat every year" for a season that comes back every year: only the day and the month count, so one price covers it for all the coming years, even across the new year (1 December to 30 April). For a price per night, each night of a stay is priced by the period it falls in. The extras (options) have their own prices by period too.
Questions for the visitor
Catalog › Offers
In "Prices and options", an offer can ask the visitor a text, a number (a weight, a shoe size…) or a confirmation that must be ticked, once for the booking or for each person. For a minimum age, add a confirmation such as "I confirm that every participant is at least 16 years old": the visitor cannot book without ticking it. The answers are shown in the booking and can be put in the emails with {answers}.
Shared daily limits
Catalog › Offers
Catalog › Offers › Shared daily limits: several offers share a maximum per day, for example two sled activities that use the same team of dogs, with at most 2 departures a day in all. "Departures" counts the different time slots that have a booking on the day — a visitor can still join a departure that already exists, only a new one is refused once the maximum is reached; "Bookings" counts the bookings of the day. The limit holds for online bookings only: a booking you enter yourself is never refused.
Owner validation
Catalog › Offers
Tick "The owner validates each booking once it has been paid" in the offer (an accommodation, for example). The visitor pays online first (with Pro, a deposit chosen by you; otherwise the whole price). The booking then blocks its places and waits for you, and you and the visitor are emailed by themselves. In the booking you validate it (the visitor receives the confirmation) or decline it (the payment is refunded, the booking is cancelled and the visitor receives your reason). You can also write to the customer of any booking yourself, at any moment.
Nothing blocked without a payment
Settings › Settings
An online booking that is still unpaid after the delay set in Settings › Settings (30 minutes by default) is cancelled and its places are free again, without any email. A paid booking (a deposit included), a booking you entered by hand and an activity waiting for its minimum of participants are never touched. If a payment still arrives afterwards, the booking stays cancelled and you are emailed to refund it or to enter it again.
Editing, copying and going back
Everything you enter appears in a table where you can see its details and edit it. "Duplicate" starts from an existing resource, offer, option or rule: the copy is created inactive (or as a draft), so nothing is bookable until you have checked it. A resource is copied with its units and rules, never with its slots or bookings. Every form has a "Back to the list" button.
Several languages
The texts of the plugin
The buttons, labels, steps and messages that come with the plugin ("Choose a date", "Continue", the progress steps…) are translated by the language file of the plugin, whatever multilingual plugin you use. WordPress takes the file of the language of the page and downloads it by itself, with the updates, once the translation exists for the plugin on WordPress.org. If these texts stay in English, the language file of that language is missing or not up to date: look for translation updates in Dashboard › Updates. In your page builder, these texts are shown in the language of your own administration profile, not of the page.
The texts you type
The names and descriptions of your offers, the descriptions of your resources, the price categories, the extras, the questions, the closing message and the email texts are your own texts: no language file can translate them. With Polylang, translate them in Languages › Translations; with WPML, in WPML › String Translation (group "VEFmultiBooking"). A text appears there once it is saved here. Until you translate it, it stays as you typed it, in every language.
Your pages and menus
The pages, the menus and the titles around the booking block belong to WordPress and to your multilingual plugin: create one page for each language and put the booking block on each of them. The block follows the language of the page it is on, and each email is sent in the language the customer booked in.
The blocks
VEF Booking
The complete booking module: the visitor chooses an offer, a date, fills in the details and contact, then pays or confirms. It ends with a confirmation.
- Put it on one page of your site (your "Book" page) and link to that page from your menu. The other blocks send visitors to it.
- Leave the offer empty to present all your published offers: the visitor ticks one and the form adapts to it. With a single published offer there is nothing to choose, so the module goes straight to the dates.
- To dedicate a page to some of your offers only (one page per activity, say), pick those offers, or a category if you use categories, in the block settings.
- A visitor can add several offers to a cart and pay once, at the end of the same module.
- In the page editor you see the form with a sample; the real dates appear on the published page. Test the whole flow once with your test payment keys.
VEF Offers
A catalog of your published offers, each with its description, its price and a "Book" button.
- In the block settings, choose the page that holds the VEF Booking block: each "Book" button opens it with the offer already chosen. Without a page, the offers are shown without a button.
- The text shown is the name, the description and the price of the offer: write a short, attractive description in Catalog › Offers.
- Useful on a home page or a presentation page. If your site has only a few offers, the VEF Booking block alone already lets visitors choose.
- Show only some offers, or one category, if you use them; otherwise every published offer is listed.
VEF Availability
A month calendar that shows visitors which days can be booked and which are full. It is read only: a free day opens the booking page on that day.
- Most useful when the date matters: accommodation, or activities that do not run every day. If everything is bookable every day, you can skip it.
- Choose one offer, or leave it empty to show all the published offers with tabs.
- Set the booking page in the block, or let it use the page where visitors last booked. The days are not clickable until a booking page is known.
- Visitors can browse month after month, up to a year ahead.
VEF Booking Summary
The summary of one booking: number, offer, dates, persons, lines, total, amount paid and balance to pay.
- The booking module already shows a confirmation at the end of a booking. Add this block only if you want a page of your own for it: it shows the booking whose number is in the address of the page (?vefmb_booking=…).
- Without a booking number visitors see nothing; you, when logged in, see a short reminder. In the page editor an example is shown, to choose the colors, borders and fonts.