Patro Appointment Booking

Description

Take control of your appointment business with Patro Appointment Booking — a fast, modern WordPress booking plugin built around a beautiful Gutenberg block. Customers complete a clean, guided multi-step form to pick a service, choose a staff member, select a date and time, fill in their details, and confirm — all without ever leaving your site. You manage every booking from a dedicated, React-powered admin dashboard.

No coding required. No complex setup. Just drop the block onto any page and start taking bookings. 📅

Who is Patro Appointment Booking For?
Patro Appointment Booking is built for any individual or business that takes scheduled appointments and wants an elegant, hassle-free booking experience for their customers.

Salons & Beauty Studios
Give clients the freedom to book haircuts, treatments, and styling sessions around the clock. Block holidays, close weekdays, and let your calendar manage itself while you focus on the work.

Consultants & Coaches
Let prospects book discovery calls and sessions directly from your site. Assign bookings to specific team members, get instant email alerts, and never miss a new client inquiry.

Healthcare & Wellness Providers
Collect patient or client details at booking time, set a custom booking window, and manage appointment status — Pending, Approved, Canceled, Rejected, Completed — from one clear screen.

Fitness Trainers & Gyms
Set your available days and hours, block out personal-training sessions per staff member, and let members self-book 24/7 without picking up the phone.

Tutors & Educators
Create sessions as services, set their duration and price, and let students pick the slot that works for them. The form works equally well on desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Any Service-Based Business
If your business runs on scheduled appointments, Patro Appointment Booking gives you the tools to automate bookings, reduce no-shows through email confirmations, and grow without adding admin overhead.

A free booking system gives your business the freedom to grow 📈

No more missed bookings — automatic confirmation emails keep customers informed.
Your calendar, your rules — block dates, close weekdays, and set how far ahead clients can book.
Mobile-first — the booking form looks great and converts on every screen size.
Developer-friendly — REST API plus WordPress action and filter hooks for add-ons.

Patro Appointment Booking Free Features

Beautiful Multi-Step Booking Form

• React-powered booking flow: Services → Date & Time → Your Details → Review → Confirmation
• Step-by-step sidebar navigator with active-state indicators and icon-headed panels
• Collapsible sidebar for a distraction-free experience on smaller screens
• Radio-style service cards with duration pills for instant clarity
• Real-time calendar with blocked-date and closed-weekday enforcement
• Fully responsive — sidebar collapses to a top bar on mobile, single-column on small screens

Service List Block

• A second Gutenberg block that renders your services as a grid of cards, fetched live from the booking API
• Built-in detail view so visitors can read a full service description without leaving the page
• Configurable cards per row, number of services shown, and « Book now » button label from the block inspector

Services & Staff Management

• Create unlimited services with name, duration, and price
• Organise services into categories for easier browsing
• Add a staff member (one on the free plan), give them a profile photo, and assign them to one or more services
• Set each employee’s own work hours, days off, and special days on top of your business schedule
• Optional staff-selection step in the booking flow — let customers choose who they book with

Bookings Dashboard

• Central bookings screen with per-booking status management (Pending, Approved, Canceled, Rejected, Completed) plus search and date filtering
• Update any booking status in one click
• Full customer details stored per booking for easy reference
• Automatic confirmation email to the customer on every new booking
• Instant admin notification email so you never miss a reservation
• Export bookings to CSV, with a date-range filter

Calendar View

• See every booking on a real calendar in day, week, or month view
• A live current-time line on the day and week views so today is easy to read at a glance
• Click any booking to open its full details in a modal, without leaving the calendar

Customers

• A Customers screen listing everyone who has booked, built from your booking history
• Contact details, last booking date, and total booking count per customer
• Export your customer list to CSV

Finance

• A Transactions screen backed by a real, persisted payment record per booking, kept independent of the booking’s own status
• Each transaction shows its subtotal, discount, tax, and total in your configured currency
• Export transactions to CSV

Email Notifications

• A Notifications screen for editing the email sent on each event — appointment approved, pending, rejected, and cancelled, payment received, and follow-up
• Merge tags for appointment, customer, employee, service, company, and payment details
• Sensible templates seeded on activation, so email works before you customise anything

First-Run Setup Wizard

• A guided wizard after activation that walks you through your business details, working hours, first service, and first staff member

Flexible Settings

• A searchable settings sidebar grouped into Business, Payment, Date & Time, Manage schedule, Booking Rules, and Privacy & Data
• Set your business working hours and days off in one place
• Set your booking window — control how many days ahead customers can schedule
• Block individual dates using the built-in date picker
• Close recurring weekdays so your calendar reflects your real availability
• Choose your currency and how prices are displayed
• Customise the thank-you message displayed after a successful booking
• Configure admin notification email address and sender name
• Per-user column layout and rows-per-page preferences on every admin list screen

Developer Friendly

• REST API support
• WordPress hooks and filters
• Extensible architecture for custom integrations

Patro Appointment Booking Pro *(separate plugin)*

Unlock powerful premium features with the optional Pro add-on:

• Online Payments — accept card payments via Stripe or PayPal, with automatic refunds and downloadable invoices
• Coupons & Discounts — create percentage and fixed-amount coupon codes for promotions
• Tax — configure tax rates that apply automatically at checkout
• Service Extras — offer optional add-ons customers can attach to a booking
• Unlimited Employees & Scheduling Overrides — remove the free plan’s staff limit and set per-employee or per-service schedule exceptions
• Multiple Locations — run bookings across several business locations from one dashboard
• SMS & WhatsApp Notifications — send booking confirmations and reminders by text or WhatsApp, alongside email
• Google Calendar & Zoom Integration — two-way calendar sync and automatic video meeting links for appointments

5 Easy Steps to Get Started

1. Install and activate the plugin from Plugins → Add New in your WordPress admin. The setup wizard opens automatically so you can enter your business name, contact email, and currency.
2. Go to Patro Booking → Services and add at least one service (name, duration, price).
3. Go to Patro Booking → Employees and add at least one employee — set their work hours and assign your services to them. Every bookable time slot comes from an employee’s schedule, so a service with nobody assigned to it has no times to offer.
4. Open any page or post in the Gutenberg editor, search for Booking Form, and insert the block.
5. Publish the page — your customers can now book 24/7.

Optional: fine-tune your booking window, slot interval, buffers, days off, and notification emails under Patro Booking → Settings — every setting ships with a sensible default, so the form works before you touch any of them.

What Makes Patro Appointment Booking Stand Out

Gutenberg-native — no shortcodes, no iframes. The booking form is a first-class Gutenberg block that works seamlessly with the WordPress editor and any block-based theme.

React-powered, fast-loading — the multi-step form is built with React for smooth, animated step transitions and a snappy user experience with no full-page reloads.

Zero configuration clutter — every setting has a sensible default. You can have a working booking form live in under five minutes.

Extensible by design — REST API endpoints and WordPress action and filter hooks let third-party add-ons build cleanly on top of the free core without hacks.

Transparent booking flow — the collapsible sidebar shows customers exactly where they are in the process at all times, reducing drop-off and improving completion rates.

Development

The React admin app, the Gutenberg block, and the frontend booking form are
compiled from the human-readable source in the resources/ directory using
@wordpress/scripts. The compiled output ships in build/. Both the source and
the build manifest (package.json) are included in the plugin so the code can
be inspected and rebuilt.

To build from source:

1. npm install
2. npm run build

Source locations:

• resources/admin/ — React admin app (compiled to build/admin/)
• resources/blocks/booking-form/ — Gutenberg block (compiled to build/blocks/)
• resources/frontend/ — frontend booking form components