Managing equipment rentals through calls, emails, or spreadsheets often results in double bookings, missed returns, and lost revenue. As your rental business grows, this manual approach quickly becomes unmanageable. With WooCommerce and the right Bookings Plugin, you can automate the rental process and let customers book items like tools, gear, or party equipment directly from your website. In this article, we’ll explore how this solution works and how it can simplify WooCommerce equipment rentals, improve inventory control, and boost your booking revenue.
Table of Contents
- Power Your Rental Business with the WooCommerce Bookings plugin
- Offer Rentals on Your WooCommerce Store
- From Deposits to Deliveries: Level Up Your Rental Capabilities
- Real-World Use Case
- Conclusion
- FAQs
Power Your Rental Business with the WooCommerce Bookings plugin
WooCommerce is great for selling products, but it doesn’t support rentals out of the box. There’s no way to let customers choose dates, check availability, or prevent overlapping bookings. That’s why rental businesses need a dedicated booking solution built to handle time-based services and inventory.
The WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin is designed exactly for this. It integrates directly with your WooCommerce store and adds all the features you need to start renting equipment online:
- Rent items by the hour, day, or custom durations
- Apply seasonal or weekend pricing rules
- Track inventory using booking assets
- Add optional resources like installation experts or equipment operators
- Sync bookings with calendars and send automatic emails
It’s flexible enough to handle anything from tool rentals to camping gear or professional equipment, and it works inside your existing WooCommerce setup without needing a separate system.
Offer Rentals on Your WooCommerce Store
Before you begin, ensure the WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin is installed, activated, and the basic setup is complete. You can follow this setup guide for assistance.
Once that’s done, you’re ready to start renting out your products online. Here’s how you can streamline your rental flow using Plugin’s built-in features:
1. Set Rental Durations and Flexible Pricing
Every rental business runs on its schedule. With PluginHive Bookings plugin, you can define how long each product can be rented by the hour, day, week, or even custom time slots.
You can easily adjust pricing based on days or duration. Set a base cost (one-time fee) and a cost per block (hour, day, etc.), then create rules for weekends, holidays, or long bookings. For example, charge extra on Saturdays and Sundays, or offer weekly discounts to encourage longer rentals. This keeps your pricing flexible and aligned with demand.
Want to learn more? Check out how to set booking costs and how to offer discounts
2. Assign Booking Assets (Track Inventory)
Your rental items, whether cameras, tools, tents, or party furniture, are physical assets that need to be tracked. You can assign booking assets to each product to represent the actual number of items available.
(In this case of a camera rental, I have added different models like Canon EOS R5, Nikon D850, or Sony A7 III as booking assets. )
This keeps inventory updated in real-time, avoids double bookings, and saves time on manual coordination, especially helpful when you have multiple shoots lined up on the same weekend.
To know more, see how to set booking assets
3. Add Booking Resources
Many rentals involve more than just the item itself. This plugin lets you assign additional resources like accessory kits, add-on services, or optional upgrades.
(In case of camera rental, a customer can rent a camera and also choose a lighting kit or tripod. You can charge extra for these services, helping you increase the average order value.)
Learn how to configure booking resources
4. Accept Bookings and Manage Calendars
Once your rental products are live, customers can book them just like any other WooCommerce product. Here’s how the booking flow looks:
You can view and manage bookings via a visual calendar dashboard
Everything from customer interaction to backend logistics is handled inside WooCommerce, no spreadsheets or manual tracking needed.
From Deposits to Deliveries: Level Up Your Rental Capabilities
Once your rental store is up and running, a few extra tools can make your workflow smoother and the customer experience better. These options help you offer flexible payments, manage repeat bookings, and handle deliveries with ease.
1. Let Customers Pay Deposits
Rentals often involve high-value equipment, and customers may hesitate to pay the full amount upfront, especially for longer bookings. With WooCommerce Deposits by PluginHive, you can:
- Offer fixed or percentage-based deposits
- Automatically collect the remaining balance later
- Boost bookings for high-value rentals
Example: If a customer books a projector and lighting kit for a week-long event, you can ask for 30% upfront and the rest closer to the rental date.
Learn how to set up deposits with the PluginHive Bookings plugin.
2. Offer Recurring Rentals
Some rental businesses operate on repeat schedules – think training equipment, classroom rentals, or weekly tool subscriptions.WooCommerce Recurring Bookings & Appointments helps you :
- Set daily, weekly, or monthly recurrences
- Set custom recurring rules per product
- Save time with automated bookings
Example: If a customer rents a karaoke system every Friday night, this plugin will reserve it for them weekly without rebooking manually.
3. Support Non-Adjacent Dates
Not all bookings are continuous; some customers may need items on specific days scattered across a month. WooCommerce Multiple Non-Adjacent Bookings allows you to:
- Select multiple dates at once
- Skip the need for repeat checkouts
- Works with all your existing booking rules
Example: An event planner might rent chairs for 3 different dates in a month. Instead of making 3 separate bookings, they can select all the required days in one go.
4. Handle Deliveries with Shipping Plugins
If you deliver rented items, shipping plugins can automate logistics.PluginHive offers dedicated shipping plugins for major carriers like FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS, Canada Post, and more, allowing you to:
- Show real-time shipping rates
- Generate labels and add tracking info
- Manage returns and pickups
Example: If you ship party equipment like sound systems or marquee tents, customers can choose their delivery method, and you’ll get everything printed and ready from the WooCommerce dashboard.
Real-World Use Case: Renting Out Tools Online with WooCommerce
Let’s say you run a WooCommerce-based tool rental store. You rent out items like ladders, drills, cement mixers, and tile cutters to homeowners, contractors, and small businesses. But managing bookings manually is holding you back.
The Challenges You Will Face
- Popular items like drills and scaffolding get overbooked due to a lack of real-time tracking.
- Customers have to call to check availability, which is slow and inefficient.
- Late returns and unclear pickup/drop-off times lead to scheduling conflicts.
- You miss out on extra revenue because add-ons like safety kits aren’t offered upfront.
- Manually updating spreadsheets takes time and leads to errors.
How It Can Be Solved
With the PluginHive’s WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin, these issues can be solved quickly:
- Customers can book tools online 24/7 and see real-time availability.
- The plugin tracks inventory automatically, so each item can only be booked when it’s available.
- You can add buffer time before and after each rental for cleaning and prep.
- Add-on accessories like helmets, gloves, or extension cords can be offered during booking.
- A calendar view helps you manage rentals without spreadsheets.
Now the rental shop runs smoother, avoids double-bookings, and earns more from both bookings and add-ons, all inside WooCommerce.
Conclusion
Handling rentals manually can get messy as your business grows. Missed calls, double bookings, and tracking items by hand take up too much time.
With WooCommerce and the PluginHive’s Bookings and Appointments plugin, you can let customers book rentals online, choose dates, and check availability – all in one place. It makes running your rental store easier, faster, and more reliably.
Need help setting it up? Contact PluginHive Support to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Can I manually create a booking when customers call or email?
Yes. You can add bookings manually by going to Bookings → Add New in your WooCommerce dashboard. This ensures phone or email requests are recorded in the system - Can I sync bookings with Google Calendar?
Absolutely. PluginHive supports two-way Google Calendar sync, keeping your online calendar and dashboard bookings aligned - Is it possible to use different rental durations, like hours and days, in one store?
Yes. You can set booking units in minutes, hours, days, or months, depending on the product. For example, carpet cleaners rented by the hour and tents rented by the day can coexist. - Can customers book multiple, separate dates in one order?
Yes, with the Multiple Non-Adjacent Bookings add‑on. It allows selecting several non-sequential days in a single purchase - How do I add buffer time between rentals?
You can set buffer intervals to allow preparation time between bookings (e.g., for cleaning or inspection). This configuration is available in the bookings settings under buffer time
