You can test how the many online store features work from the customer's perspective, through a quick and easy test booking process.
You can follow the guide below to learn the best method of placing a test booking through your rental website with Booqable.
How it works
Before you start, you must first make sure you have three important steps completed in your Booqable account.
1. Create a rental website with Booqable, or integrate Booqable into an existing website. This is the first, most obvious step required before you place a test online booking with Booqable.
2. While the website does not need to be entirely complete; you can follow our guides to make sure that least the javascript/plugin is completed so the shopping cart appears, as well as the date picker, and at least one product is embedded.
3. Create at least one product, with at least one stock item. Learn how to add a product to your Booqable inventory so you can add this to your shopping cart when testing out the online booking process.
Once you have completed these steps, you can move ahead to the following tutorial.
1. Open your online store
If you have created a rental store with Booqable using the Rental Website Builder, go to the Online Store button from your Booqable main menu, and click View online store. Your online store should appear in a new tab on your browser window.
If you have created your own website with a provider such as Wordpress, Shopify, or Squarespace (to name a few examples) - you can open this up in another browser tab alongside your Booqable account.
💡Note: For test bookings, we assume that you and your team will not want to be charged for this order. If that is the case, turn off the online payment feature in Booqable.
1. Go to Settings > Online reservations > Checkout > Payments in Checkout.
2. Make sure the 'Refundable security deposit is due at checkout' button is turned OFF.
2. Choose your dates and times
On your online store, you can start the process of placing a test booking by selecting some rental periods for your order.
1. Open the date picker.
2. Enter in your dates and times, your rental durations, or your rental time-slots (depending on how you have set up your rental period settings).
3. If you have multiple locations set up, choose a location and hit Apply.
If you wish to change any of these settings after testing the date picker, you can go to your rental period settings.
3. Open a product
Next, you can test exactly how the customer will view and reserve your product on your online store.
💡Note: The below example is using a product page of the Booqable Rental Website Builder, but the same method will apply for products embedded on a website of your own.
1. Click into a product card, or page.
2. Depending on this product; test out the variation drop-down menu, and quantity selector.
3. Click the Check Availability button to bring up the availability calendar for this particular product. You can turn this on or off, or adjust the appearance of this feature, by going to your availability settings.
4. Add product to shopping cart
1. Now, you can click Add to cart, and the shopping cart should pop up on the page automatically. From here, you can adjust the rental periods and quantity.
2. You can click 'View Cart' to see this cart in an entire-page view, or click 'Checkout' to go directly to the online checkout.
💡Note: If you like to charge for deliveries or any other services, you can learn how to add a service item to make it appear for selection on the pop-up shopping cart.
5. Test the online checkout
Now you can proceed to the online checkout to complete your order, to reserve this product.
1. Start by entering in your details into the fields provided. If you want to add more fields for the customer to fill out for custom information, learn how to add custom fields to your online checkout.
2. Click Complete checkout to reserve this order. The below page should appear.
6. Open order in backend
Back in your Booqable account, you can begin to get familiar with how online bookings will appear for you and your team.
1. In your Booqable account, click Orders.
2. The order should appear in your order list with the tag 'Webshop', which should be visible on the right hand side of the order bar. You can also find this tag on the bottom left hand corner under Tags, for you to click on to only display webshop orders in this list.
3. Click into the order to bring up more detailed information about the payment and order, as well as the links for creating documents and sending emails for this order.
7. Enable payments in checkout
Once you have completed the above steps to make a test booking, make sure to go back into Settings > Online reservations > Checkout > Payments in Checkout and revert the settings back to enable payments in your online store again.
You're all set!
You have now successfully learnt how to place a test booking on your rental business through Booqable Rental Software.