How to Create a Booking Form in WordPress 📅

Creating a WordPress booking form on your site can save you a ton of time, and it’s a great way to make it easy for customers to schedule appointments or services.

Whether you operate a salon, consultancy firm, or rental service, a straightforward booking form guarantees that everything stays organized without the back-and-forth annoyance of emails.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to set up a booking form using WPForms, a beginner-friendly plugin that makes the whole process really simple.

Make Your Appointment Booking Form Now 📅

How to Create a Booking Form in WordPress

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 the steps below to create a booking form using WPForms!

1. Install and Activate the WPForms Plugin

As the world’s best form builder, WPForms comes with many features and functionalities that can help you manage and organize your business online.

This includes the ability to create appointment booking forms, reservation forms, and even calculator forms to attract new leads.

So, 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.

Make Your Appointment Booking Form Now 📅

2. Create an Appointment Booking Form (With a Template)

Next, you’ll need to create a form inside your WordPress appointment plugin. To get started quickly,  you can use one of our 2,000+ form templates.

There are multiple appointment booking and reservation form templates to choose from, even veterinarian patient intake forms. You can also book virtual appointments with WPForms. For example, PushEngage uses WPForms to enable customers to schedule a software demo. 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
• Email
• 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.

Let’s check the Date/Time field labeled “Preferred appointment date and time” in this template. Click on it to open the Field Options on the left-hand pane.

After that, go to the Advanced tab. Here, you can select the days of the week when you’re open for new appointments.

Plus, the Disable Past Dates toggle is already clicked, which is convenient because clients should only be able to select future dates for appointments.

You can also limit hours to ensure people only book appointments at times that match your availability.

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.

Make Your Appointment Booking Form Now 📅

3. 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.

4. Customize the Notifications & Confirmations Settings

All WPForms templates are configured to send form notifications to the admin by default.

Notifications are really handy to have in a booking form because you’ll know about new appointments as soon as a client completes a booking.

If you want to change anything about these notifications, you can simply go to Settings » Notifications inside the form builder.

And while you’re at it, how about setting up a second notification for your clients to let them know their appointment is confirmed?

With WPForms, it’s easy to create multiple notifications for site admins, different members of your team, and customers.

Next, 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.

You can choose different confirmation types. In the example above, I’ve used Message type. Once selected, simply 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.

Also Read: Appointment Reminder Templates for Email and SMS

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.

After that select the Create New Page button to create a new form page.

At this point, you’ll need to give a name for the page where you want to embed your booking form. Once you’ve entered a name, click on Let’s Go.

As you click, the WordPress block editor will open where you’ll find your form ready for publication.

Before you go ahead and publish, feel free to try out a theme for this form or add any custom styling as you see fit.

You can access form themes and extra styling options by clicking on the area around the embedded form. Then, scroll down to the Themes section on the right-hand pane and select one of the many unique WPForms themes available.

When you’re done making changes, go ahead and press the Publish button at the top.

And there you have it! You now know how to accept appointments online and create an appointment booking form in WordPress.

This would be a good time to visit your form page and check it out.

Before you move on, I want to share an extra tip that could make things appointment management much more convenient for you.

Bonus Tip: Send WPForms Entries to Google Calendar

To make managing your client appointments much easier, you may want to consider syncing your WordPress appointment plugin 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.

Make Your Appointment Booking Form Now 📅

FAQs about Creating a WordPress Booking Form

Looking for answers to your questions? Check out some of the most frequently asked questions we receive about WordPress booking forms:

How do I create a booking form in WordPress?

To make a booking form in WordPress, one easy way is by using the WPForms plugin. First, install WPForms and activate it.

Then, create a new form and select a booking form template or start from scratch. Add the fields you need, such as name, email, date, and time options.

Customize it to fit your needs, then save and embed the form on your desired page using a shortcode. And that’s all there’s to it!

Can you create a booking system with WordPress?

Yes, you can set up a complete booking system on your WordPress site. By utilizing plugins like WPForms, you can create detailed booking forms.

For a more comprehensive system, consider using additional plugins designed specifically for bookings and reservations.

These tools allow you to manage appointments, availability, and even payments directly within your WordPress site, making it versatile for various business needs.

Does WordPress have a booking plugin?

WordPress offers several booking plugins to simplify appointment and reservation management.

These plugins provide you with the tools to create booking forms, calendars, and scheduling systems directly on your website.

Users can select dates, times, and services, enhancing the overall user experience.

What is the best free booking plugin for WordPress?

Among the free options, WPForms Lite stands out as a highly versatile plugin, not only for creating simple contact forms but also for basic booking forms. Its drag-and-drop builder makes form creation accessible to all skill levels.

For businesses looking for more advanced booking features, it may be worthwhile to explore the premium version of WPForms which offers a wider range of functionalities specific to booking and appointment scheduling needs.

Next, Accept Payments When Clients Book Their Appointments Online

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.

Make Your Appointment Booking Form Now! 🙂

Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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