Setup Services

WP BASE is basically about booking and selling services. Therefore having at least a service is required for WP BASE to function correctly. During installation a sample service will already be installed. You can edit that service or add new services. To setup services proceed as follows:

• As you click “Add New Service” button a new empty row will be inserted.
• You can add several services at once, but new inserted record(s) will not be saved unless you fill in the name field and click Save Services button (Save button is only visible if there is at least one record added).
• ID field: is automatically given by the system and it is unique. You can use this ID in shortcodes or in some addon (for example Advanced Pricing) settings.
• Int (Internal) field: Requires Extended Service Features Addon. Services marked as internal are not displayed in services pulldown menu. You can use it for services which you assign providers only internally, e.g. for appointments made by phone. Note: While client can not select an internal service, they can book an internal service, provided that it is preselected by admin using “service” attribute in booking shortcodes. This means, admin can practically override internal feature of such a service for desired shortcodes, and thus for desired pages.
• Name field: You can use anything as the service name here. This will be displayed to the client on the front end in Services pulldown menu, in list of bookings, in emails, etc.
• Locations field: Requires Locations Addon. Setting this field is optional and it is used to assign your service to certain location(s). If none selected, service will be available for all locations.
• Categories field: Requires Extended Service Features Addon. It can be used to group your services for display convenience, e.g. on front end services drop down selection menu. To assign a service to one or more categories, first you need to define the categories on “Categories” tab. After you save the categories, you can select them in this field. Contrary to locations, if you defined categories, every service must be assigned to at least one category. Otherwise it may not be possible to pick the unassigned service on the front end.
• Capacity field: is an optional field to change (increase or decrease) your available workforce of the service for all available time slots. If capacity is increased, the additional “virtual” workforce will use working hours of the service (WP BASE allows setting working hours of each service independently). If left empty or as zero, number in square brackets, which is the total number of service providers assigned to this service, will be applied. Notes:
  1. When there are no service providers defined, WP BASE assumes that business representative can serve all services and sets capacity as 1 for each service (You can still increase this value).
  2. This is the available capacity in general. Actual availability for each time slot depends on providers working at that particular slot and it will be automatically calculated by WP BASE. Tip: To turn off/close a service, set its capacity as negative, e.g. -1. To turn off ALL services, set Booking submission upper limit to a negative value instead.
  3. You can increase capacity field when there are no assigned providers (SPs) or when there are some SPs. For the latter case, WP BASE will always try to assign available SPs first. Also see Assignment Method of Service Provider setting.
  4. If capacity is increased and all possible SPs are busy but there is still available capacity, booking will be accepted and a provider will not be assigned. This is the normal, intended behavior.
  5. Example: Capacity is set to 3 and there are 2 SPs and 2 bookings at the time slot with case a) existing bookings are not assigned to anyone, case b) one booking is assigned to an SP, the other not assigned to anyone and case c) bookings are assigned to both SPs. A 3rd booking will be allowed and in case a) it will be assigned to the SP depending on Assignment Method of Service Provider, in case b) it will be assigned to the SP who is free and in case c) it will not be assigned to anyone (SP=0). A 4th booking will not be allowed, even when one SP seems to be free.
• Duration field: is the number of minutes that this service lasts. It can only be selected in increments of Time base.
• Padding before field: Requires Extended Service Features Addon. It is the period of the break in minutes that will be added before any appointment of this service that has been already made. For example, if your service lasts 45 minutes and you want to have 15 minutes preparing time before each booked appointment, set 15 here. It can only be selected in increments of Time Base.
• Padding after field: Requires Extended Service Features Addon. It is the period of the break in minutes that will be added after any appointment. Then next appointment can be made after duration+padding after time. For example, if your service lasts 60 minutes and you want to have 30 minutes rest after each appointment, set 30 here. It can only be selected in increments of Time Base.
  Notes about Padding settings:
  1. Paddings are applied to appointments already booked, not to potential appointments. Therefore if you do not have any bookings, you will not notice any change in time slots. If you want to add gaps even if there are no appointments, use working hours settings instead and “add breaks” as you wish (clearing a cell in working hours table means adding a break). If you add these gaps in service working hours, also set Always Check Available Times of Services as Yes.
  2. Sum of duration and paddings shall not exceed 24 hours. For this reason, paddings are not available for “all day” (24 hour) services.

• Price field: is the price of the service. You can leave empty for free services. Note: A service having a price does not necessarily mean it requires advance payment, e.g. if you will collect the payment at your business location. You can set this requirement by Payment required at booking instant setting.
• Security Deposit field: Requires Extended Service Features Addon. It is the Refundable deposit for the service. This can be added to the payable amount using Add Security Deposit to Total Amount setting. This value is saved in the booking record to calculate balance and reset to zero in the record after appointment is completed. Therefore upon completion, not refunded deposit yields to a positive balance in favor of the client. You can refund the deposit using Manual Payments, making balance even.
• Description page: is an optional page describing the service. The content of this page will be read from the database and it will be displayed as a tooltip in services pulldown menu on the front end. Pages with status “publish” and “private” are displayed and selectable. Type of this page (page, post, custom post) can be selected from WP BASE → Business Settings → Services → Global Service Settings.
• Some service related addons add a More link just after ID. When you click that link, you can view and set additional settings required by these addons.
• To delete a record empty Name field and Save. Note: If you are a service provider, deletion of self created services may be restricted. If you see a warning message, contact to admin.
• Custom Sorting: In front end selection menus, items are displayed according to the order here, by default (Other display orders can be set in the related shortcode, e.g. sorting in alphabetical order – see order_by attribute of the shortcode). To make a custom sorting, select the row with your mouse and move it to the new position (drag and drop) and then click Save.
  • Sorting is done on current page only. If you have more than one page of items, increase Number of Business Records per Page setting to a value to cover all items, make sorting and then revert back to previous records per page value.
  • Categories are sortable too. If you are using categories, you may also want to sort them.
  • If you are not admin, but a service provider and sorting using your profile page, your own services can only be sorted among themselves. In addition to this, if admin has changed sorting of your services and placed them in higher priority than before, then you may not make new sorting at all. In such cases ask admin to sort your services for you.