Looking for a WordPress appointment plugin so you can let your clients schedule appointments online with a booking form? In this day and age, online appointment booking is vital for your business.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to create a hassle-free appointment booking form in WordPress using a plugin.
In This Article
- Step 1: Create an Appointment Booking Form
- Step 2: Configure Your Appointment Booking Form’s Settings
- Step 3: Customize Your Appointment Booking Form’s Notifications
- Step 4: Configure Your Appointment Booking Form’s Confirmations
- Step 5: Add Your Appointment Booking Form to Your Website
- Step 6: Integrate WordPress Appointment Plugin with Google Calendar
Click Here to Make Your Appointment Booking Form Now
WordPress Booking Form Video Tutorial
Here’s a video that shows you the whole process of adding a booking form to WordPress using WPForms.
If you’d prefer to read the instructions, you can follow along below.
How to Use WPForms as a WordPress Booking Form
As the world’s best form builder, WPForms comes with many features and functionalities that can help you manage and organize your business online — including the ability to create appointment booking forms and reservation forms.
Want people to be able to log in to your site? Check out our guide on creating a WordPress user registration form template.
Here are step-by-step instructions to set up your appointment booking form with a template.
Step 1: Create an Appointment Booking Form
The first thing you’ll need to do to start taking booking requests online is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see this step-by-step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
Next, you’ll need to create a form inside your WordPress appointment plugin. To get started quickly, you can use one of our 500+ form templates.
There are multiple appointment booking and reservation form templates to choose from, even veterinarian patient intake forms. For this tutorial, we’ll use the Beauty Salon Booking Form template.
This template includes the following default form fields to gather personal details:
- Name
- Phone
- Address
- Date of Birth
- Checkboxes (Treatments you’d like to book)
- Date / Time
- Comment or Message
If you need more contact information or other personal information, you can add additional custom fields to your form by dragging them from the left-hand panel to the right-hand panel.
You can also remove any fields from the template that you don’t want by clicking the trash can icon. It’s completely customizable.
To customize an individual field, click on it in the preview and change the options in the panel on the left. Make sure to set up your Date / Time advanced field options to show when you have available appointments.
Read our full guide on how to make a WordPress form with a datepicker if you need more help.
You can also click on a form field and drag it to rearrange the order on your appointment booking form. When all your form fields are customized to your liking, click Save.
Step 2: Configure Your Appointment Booking Form’s Settings
There are several settings to configure when creating a client booking form in WordPress. We’ll start with the general settings first.
To start, go to Settings » General.
Here you can configure the following settings:
- 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 site’s forms.
- Submit Button Text — Customize the copy on the submit button.
- Submit Button Processing Text — Change the text that will be visible while your form is being submitted.
And you can also customize these advanced settings:
- Form CSS Classes — Add custom CSS to your form.
- Submit Button CSS Class — Add CSS to your submit button.
- Enable Prefill by URL — You can use this setting to auto-fill some fields in your form.
- 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 form.
Once you finish setting up all of these options, move down to the Spam Protection and Security settings.
Here you can:
- Enable anti-spam protection — Stop contact form spam with the WPForms anti-spam token. The anti-spam setting is automatically enabled on all new forms.
- Enable Akismet anti-spam protection — If you use the Akismet plugin, you can connect it to your form to block spam submissions.
- Enable country filter — Block submissions from specified countries.
- Enable keyword filter — Prevent entries containing certain words or phrases.
Click Save.
Step 3: Customize Your Appointment Booking Form’s Notifications
Notifications are a great way to send an email whenever a client books an appointment using your WordPress form. This makes the client booking experience easier since you can reach out right away.
In fact, unless you disable this feature, whenever someone goes through the booking process on your site, you’ll get a notification about it through your WordPress booking plugin.
If you use Smart Tags, you can also send a notification to your client when they book an appointment, letting them know you received their appointment request and will be in contact shortly. This assures site visitors their forms have gone through properly.
For help with this step, check out our documentation on how to set up form notifications in WordPress.
And, if you want to send more than one email, read this article on how to create multiple form notifications in WordPress.
Lastly, if you want to keep branding across your notification emails consistent, you can check out this guide on adding a custom header to your email template.
Step 4: Configure Your Appointment Booking Form’s Confirmations
Form confirmations are messages that display to site visitors once they submit an appointment booking form on your website. They let people know that their appointment request has been received and offer you the chance to let them know the next steps.
WPForms has 3 confirmation types to choose from:
- Message. This is the default confirmation type in WPForms. When a site visitor books an appointment, a simple message confirmation will appear letting them know it was received. Look here for some great success messages to help boost customer happiness.
- Show Page. This confirmation type will take site visitors to a specific web page on your site thanking them for booking an appointment. For help doing this, check out our tutorial on redirecting customers to a Thank You page. In addition, be sure to check out our article on creating effective Thank You pages for boosting customer loyalty.
- Go to URL (Redirect). This option is used when you want to send site visitors to a different website.
Let’s see how to set up a simple form confirmation in WPForms so you can customize the message site visitors will see when they book an appointment on your website.
To start, click on the Confirmations tab in the form editor 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 when you’re done.
For help with other confirmation types, see our documentation on setting up form confirmations.
Step 5: Add Your Appointment Booking Form to Your Website
After you’ve created your client booking form, you need to add it to your WordPress website.
WPForms allows you to add your forms to many locations on your website, including your blog posts, pages, and even sidebar widgets.
Let’s take a look at the most common page embed option.
To start, click on the Embed button at the top of the form builder.
Then you can select if you want to add your form to an existing page or create a new one. In the page editor, just click on Update or Publish to make your form live.
Step 6: Integrate WordPress Appointment Plugin with Google Calendar
To make managing your client appointments much easier, you may want to consider syncing your WPForms entries to Google Calendar.
That way, all booking info is automatically sent to your Google Calendar. It saves you the hassle of having to manually enter each client appointment booked through your website.
To do this, check out our tutorial on sending WPForms entries to Google Calendar.
Want to let users keep track of the appointment? Be sure to read about how to include an Add to Calendar option to your WordPress forms.
Click Here to Make Your Online Booking Form Now
Next, Accept Payments When Clients Book Their Appointments Online
And there you have it! You now know how to accept appointments online and create an appointment booking form in WordPress.
Want to accept payments from your clients at the same time they submit their booking request form? Check out our post on Stripe vs Paypal to decide which one will work best for you. We also integrate with Square and Authorize.Net.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today and add a booking form to your website with a WordPress appointment plugin.
And don’t forget, if you like this article, then please follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
I will like the user to be able to see a preview of the form submitted and print it. Also that the preview form should have a distinct form no
Hi Olawole,
Sure you can easily view and print entries. For full details, here’s out tutorial on printing entries.
I hope this helps! 🙂
Do you have a form that allows a customer to attach a photo to the form?
Hi Kelly,
We sure do! To do this, you’d just need to add a File Upload field to any form (this is possible with any of our paid licenses). For more details, here’s our tutorial on allowing users to submit images.
I hope this helps! If you have any additional questions, please get in touch and we’d be happy to help 🙂
Do you have the ability to hide certain days of the week or times? Example: business isn’t open on Saturday or Sunday. Could those days be hidden? If yes, how would I go about that? Same example for times as well. If they are only open until 6:00 pm, for example, how could I hide time slots after 6:00 pm?
Hi Brian,
We don’t have a built in way to do this, but it can be accomplished with some custom code (you can find details here for Date & Time picker).
If you have additional questions, please get in touch and we’d be happy to assist 🙂
Hi,
You reference these pages on your comment however both are invalid links. Can you update please?
[URL Removed]
Thanks, Simon
Hey Simon- Thanks for the heads up here! We have updated the valid links now 🙂
Have a good one 🙂
Hi SYED
WPForms gets a lot of positive reviews so I tried out the Lite version for evaluation. There’s hardly anything there and it’s basically a marketing tool to get you to upgrade to a paid version. My boss won’t pay for anything unless I’ve evaluated it, so I’ll have to go elswhere.
Hi Jeremy,
I’m sorry to hear you weren’t satisfied with the free version of WPForms. If you have any questions or concerns you’d like to address, please definitely let us know.
Thanks!
Hi,
first of all, want to thank you for the informative article about the product!
I need a form that witch after submitting makes the product inactive on the field “select”. Can we do that with your wpforms?
Thank you in advance,
Dimitrios
Hi Dimitrios,
We don’t have a way to do this right now, but I’ve made a note on our feature request list so we can keep it on our radar! Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
Hi there, is there any way to hide days that are already booked in the WP forms calendar?
thanks
Hi Marnix,
We don’t have a way to do this right now, but I’ve made a note on our feature request list so we can keep it on our radar! Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
I would also love this feature!
Hi Joy, I apologize we can’t provide what you are looking for at the moment.
However, I’ve noted your interest in this feature and added your email to our list to receive updates about this feature.
Thanks!
This is straightforward enough, but I don’t see a way to prevent something like double bookings since it just adds to the Google Cal but doesn’t block out dates/times based on availability. Is there a way to check the calendar to make sure no one has already scheduled that time slot?
Hi Andrew,
Unfortunately we don’t have a way to do this right now, but I’ve made a note on our feature request list so we can keep it on our radar! Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
I would love to see this feature as well!
I’d love to see this! Any update?
Hey Elizabeth- Currently, we do not have the inbuilt inventory/ slot management feature. We’ve added your vote to the feature request list.
Appreciate your interest here! Thanks, and have a good one 🙂
Exactly what I am looking for, there are many advanced booking apps, but I just need a simple form with 4 appointments slots. Slot would disappear if a client books it. Let me know if you have any updates.
Hey John,
We currently do not have an inbuilt slot management feature available. I have added your vote to the feature request list for future enhancements.
Appreciate your interest here! Thanks, and have a good one 🙂
Hi there , thanks for the nice plugin.
We also need to block dates/times based on availability. We were able to achieve that with other plugin. but we wold love to have this in wpforms. Do you have any updates on this metter? or is in your roadmap ?
Thanks agains for the nice job
Hi Lucas!
Currently, we don’t have the time ocupation feature in WPForms. I do agree it would be super helpful, though. I’ve made a note of the feature request and we’ll keep it on our radar as we plan out our roadmap for the future.
Have a good one 🙂
This feature looks awesome, but I don’t want the submissions sent directly to my Google Calendar.
Is it possible to attach a link/button on the form submission that I can click to add it to Google calendar IF I approve the request from the customer?
Hi Jørn, thanks for your question!
You should be able to achieve this by adding a custom link to the Notification email sent to you under the form Notification settings.
The link should contain all the needed parameters to be able to generate a calendar event, such as:
text
dates
details
location
And you can take the values for those parameters from the form submission through the fields’ Smart tags.
In case it helps, we have a great tutorial on how to use Smart tags in the form notifications.
I hope this helps!
Have a good one 🙂
Please when a customer books with the form I created, where would I receive the email?? Is it on the WPForm in my WordPress or on my Google email . Thanks
Hi Lawrence!
Yes, you can absolutely set up automatic form notification emails, for both yourself and anyone else you like (including the person who filled out the form). We have a great tutorial on that here
The notification email will be sent to the email address chosen in the notification settings.
I hope this helps.
Have a good one 🙂
Hello, I am using you form for taking online order and it is working well.
I would like to add the option of selecting a collection day but want to allow a 24 hour gap to prepare orders before collection. Is there a way of block off the next day ? For example orders placed on Monday cannot be collected on Tuesday the user has to select from Wednesday onwards.
Many thanks in advance.
Hey Henry – I am afraid there is no built-in option like this but it should be doable with some custom code. I would suggest reaching out to our support team for this.
If you have a WPForms license, you have access to our email support, so please submit a support ticket.
Otherwise, we provide limited complimentary support in the WPForms Lite WordPress.org support forum.
Thanks 🙂
Are there any plans to add Zoom integration with the Appointment Booking Form? If so – would this be implemented with OAuth tokens or just API key? Thanks!
Hey Alexis – That sounds like an interesting integration to have! I do agree it would be super helpful, and we’ll keep it on our radar as we plan out our roadmap in the future.
I am afraid I can’t provide any ETA or details at the moment but I will make sure to suggest to the dev team for future consideration.
Have a good one 🙂
If you integrate with Google Calendar, do the available dates and times in the form date picker update to reflect when they are no longer available for booking or does this have to be done manually?
Hey Matt – I am afraid this feature is currently not available. I have gone ahead and added a feature request for you so that the dev team can consider this in future.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Is there a way to limit the # of people who could book per day?
Hi Tara! We don’t have a specific feature for limiting the # of people who can book per day, but there is a way you could achieve this with our current features.
That would be to basically to have a copy of your form per day, and each of those forms would have a limit on the number of entries it can receive set via our Forms Locker addon. This addon is available with our Pro level (or higher) license, and you can find more details about this specific feature here.
So essentially you would have a copy of your form for (in example) Sept 25th, then a new copy for Sept 26th, and so on. It would mean though you’d need to switch which form is being embedded on your booking page each day, but it would be an easy task to do, just by deleting the block and then embedding the next days copy of the form 🙂
I hope this helps to clarify 🙂 If you have any further questions about this, please contact us if you have an active subscription. If you do not, don’t hesitate to drop us some questions in our support forums.
Hello, We have WP Pro. I would like to know how can I have the option which shows all the calendar and shows date and time only available. Thanks
Hi Eric, I apologize currently we don’t have a native feature to achieve what you are looking for at the moment.
I’ve noted your interest in this feature and added your email to our list to receive updates about this feature.
Thanks and have a good one!
Hello,
The problem with your plugin is that appointment booking forms often require not only departure dates but also return dates too.
And if you insert two Date / Time fields in the form, then the return field allows you to select a date earlier than can be selected in the departure field.
So, the departure date can be selected March 2023 and the return date – January 2023, which is absurd. ‘Disable past dates’ option does not solve this issue in November 2022.
I didn’t find any hooks or snippets on your site to help solve this problem.
Am I wrong?
Hi David,
Did you try to enable the date range as shown in this dev doc using the custom code?
Hope this helps!