Want to use an online equipment checkout form to keep track of your rentals?
It’s way easier to stay organized when renting out equipment if you track it on your website. In this tutorial, we’ll show you exactly how to create an equipment checkout form in WordPress.
Build Your Equipment Checkout Form Now
Why Create an Online Equipment Checkout Form?
Regardless of what kind of equipment you have to be checked out, using an equipment checkout form is a great idea.
It’s one of the best ways to make it easier for you to get more info from your users quicker. An online form lets you store the info in an organized database versus reading handwriting on a printed equipment sign-out sheet template or PDF.
A few other reasons to consider using an equipment checkout form in WordPress are to:
- Look for patterns in usage for added security
- Keep track of inventory better and prevent costly losses
- Collect user info and usage details into a database for reference
- Keep track of who is checking out what
- Protect other entries from being tampered with or altered like with physical sign-out sheets
And these forms aren’t just for the workplace. Some examples of common use cases for an online equipment checkout form include:
- Generic equipment checkout form
- Technology equipment checkout form
- Sports equipment checkout form
- Construction equipment checkout form
- Equipment sign-out sheet template
- Employee equipment checkout form
- And many more…
You can get set up in minutes with our equipment checkout form template. Then, you can customize it with a drag-and-drop visual builder to make the form exactly the way you want it.
Let’s take a look at how it’s done next.
How to Create an Equipment Checkout Form in WordPress
Follow these steps to set up your very own online equipment checkout form.
Step 1: Generate Your Equipment Checkout Form
First, install and activate the WPForms plugin.
WPForms will let you add a form anywhere on your site. For more details on how to install it, see this step-by-step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
From your WordPress dashboard, go to WPForms » Add New to create a new form and name it. Next, scroll down to the Select a Template section and search for “Equipment Checkout Form.” Then click on Use Template to open it in the form builder.
Here, you can add additional fields to your Equipment Checkout Form by dragging them from the left panel onto the form preview.
With the Equipment Checkout Form template, you’ll already have the following fields:
- Employee Name
- Employee ID
- Phone
- Equipment Checked Out
- Agreement
For our example, we’ll add 2 Date / Time fields so users can specify when they’re taking out the equipment and when they’ll bring it back.
Click on any of the fields in your form to change its settings. For example, we’ll make our Date / Time fields required and change the labels to “Checkout Time” and “Return Time.”
To rearrange your form’s fields, click on a form field and drag it up or down.
You can also make forms look great by following the steps in our post on how to create a multi-step form in WordPress. But for the sake of this tutorial, we’ll stick with a single page.
Step 2: Customize Your Form Settings
To start, go to Settings » General.
Here you can configure the following:
- Form Name — Change the name of your form here if you’d like.
- Form Description — Give your form a description.
- Tags — Add tags to organize your forms.
- Submit Button Text — Customize the copy on the submit button.
- Submit Button Processing Text — Change the text that shows while your form is submitting.
There are also some advanced settings at the bottom of the screen, including:
- Form CSS Class — Add custom CSS classes to your form.
- Submit Button CSS Class — Add custom CSS classes to your form’s submit button.
- Prefill by URL — Automatically fill in some fields based on a custom URL.
- Enable AJAX form submission — Enable AJAX settings with no page reload.
- Disable storing entry information in WordPress — You can disable the storing of entry information and user details, such as IP addresses and user agents, in an effort to comply with GDPR requirements. Check out our step-by-step instructions on how to add a GDPR agreement field to your simple contact form.
Next, move down to the Spam Protection and Security settings.
- Enable modern anti-spam protection — Stop contact form spam with the WPForms modern anti-spam protection. It’s automatically enabled by default on new forms, but you can choose whether you want to toggle it off on a form-by-form basis. This built-in spam protection runs seamlessly in the background to keep your forms safe. You can also pair it with another layer of security, such as a CAPTCHA.
- Enable Akismet anti-spam protection — Connect your form to the Akismet anti-spam plugin.
- Enable country filter — Block submissions from specified countries.
- Enable keyword filter — Prevent entries that include certain words or phrases.
And when you’re done, click Save.
Step 3: Configure Your Form’s Notifications
Notifications are an excellent way to know when someone submits one of your forms.
And, unless you disable the notification feature, you’ll get an email notification whenever someone submits a form on your site.
To get an email message when someone completes your form, you’ll need to set up form notifications in WordPress and provide your email address.
Also, if you use Smart Tags, you can send a personalized notification to your site visitors once they finish your form to let them know you received it. This assures users their form has gone through properly.
For more on this, check out our tutorial on how to send multiple form notifications in WordPress.
Also, you have the option to easily brand your notification emails by adding your logo (or any image you choose) in the custom header image area. The logo or image you choose will show up at the top of email notifications like the WPForms logo below.
Step 4: Configure Your Form’s Confirmations
Form confirmations are ways to take action immediately (and automatically) after your user has submitted information to your form. For extra help with this step, check out our tutorial on how to set up form confirmations.
There are 3 different kinds of confirmations in WPForms:
- Message — This is the default confirmation type that appears after someone hits submit on your form, and it’s customizable. Check out our tips on ways to customize your confirmation message to boost your site visitors’ happiness.
- Display Page — Automatically send users to any page on your site (like a thank you page)
- Redirect — Useful if you want to take the user to a different website or specialized URL for more complex development.
So let’s see how to set up a simple form confirmation in WPForms. That way, you can customize the success message site visitors will see when they hit submit on your equipment checkout form.
To start, click on the Confirmations tab in the form builder under Settings.
Next, select the type of confirmation type you’d like to create. For this example, we’ll select Message.
Then, customize the confirmation message to your liking and click Save in the top right corner of the form builder when you’re done.
Now you’re ready to add your form to your website.
Step 5: Add Your Equipment Checkout Form to Your Website
After you’ve created your form, you need to add it to your WordPress website.
And WPForms lets you add your forms to multiple places on your website including your pages, blog posts, and sidebar widgets.
So let’s take a look at the most common placement option: page or post embedding.
To begin, create a new page or post in WordPress, or update an existing one. After that, add a new block to your page and select WPForms. If you don’t see it right away, you can search for it.
Now, the WPForms widget will appear inside of your block.
Click on the WPForms dropdown and pick the form you’ve already created that you want to insert into your page. Select your Equipment Checkout Form.
Next, click on the blue button in the top right that says either Publish or Update, so your form will appear on your website.
That’s it! Your equipment checkout form is now on your website and ready to use.
Build Your Equipment Checkout Form Now
Next, Create a User Registration Form
So there it is! You now know how to create an equipment checkout form in WordPress.
Since you’re so great at building forms now, you may want to check out our tutorial with steps to create a user registration form in WordPress.
Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
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