Packages in Amelia Booking plugin are made to give you the option to create package of multiple appointments from the same or different services and give discount to the total price to attract your customers more.

Please note: Packages feature is part of our Pro and Developer license and isn’t supported in Basic license.

Creating your first package

In order to create your first package you will need some to set up two things first:

• Create services that you will offer – packages are created from existing services, so you will not be able to create a package unless you’ve created at least one service.
• Create employee and connect it with the service – our plugin needs at least one service and one employee created and connected so it can work properly, and same goes for the packages as well.

Now when you’ve done with creating service and employee we can start with creating the package.

To access Packages page, open Services page, and you will see Packages tab. Click on it and your Packages page will be shown.

Click on the “+ Add Package” button and you will see new options for creating the package that will be separated in five tabs:

Package Details is the first tab that consists of the several options:

1. Picture – you can upload a picture that will be shown for your package on the front-end booking forms,
2. Color – here you can choose a color of your package that will differentiate this package from other ones on the front-end booking form as well as on the back-end Packages page.
3. Name – this is the only mandatory field on this tab because package cannot exist without a name. Give your package a name that will be shown during the booking but also later on the Customer’s front-end panel and on the admin’s back-end.
4. Duration – here you can choose whether your package will have unlimited or limited duration. You can choose to limit package duration for X number of days, weeks or months, and you can also set specific date as date of expiration.
5. Description – here you can set description for your package that will be shown during the booking to give more details to your customers.

Services tab is the place where you will set the most important things about your package. In the dropdown select service/s that you want to be a part of the package and new options for those services will appear:

1. Service picture, price and name will be shown like you’ve created them on the Services page and those cannot be changed here.
2. “Number of appointments” is the option that you can use to set the number of appointments that will be included in this package for that service. For example, if you have a Yoga class and you want to create a package of 12 yoga classes that will last 30 days, you will choose just one service in the dropdown and choose 12 in the “Number of Appointments” option. You can, of course choose multiple different services and set this number of appointments for each.
3. “Minimum bookings required” is the option where you set the required number of appointments for the chosen service that customer needs to book in order to be able book a package. You can set 0 if you don’t want to restrict customers and as a maximum number here you can set the number chosen in “Number of appointments” option.
4. “Maximum bookings required” is the option where you set the maximum number required for booking. It is added here to allow you to have one more option – to allow customers to purchase a package without any booking. This is possible if you set 0 as both, minimum and maximum required bookings, in that case after customer chooses a package our plugin will automatically redirect customer to the info and payment step, skipping the calendar.
5. “Employees” – this option is added here so you can choose which employees assigned to the service will provide service in this package. This gives you the flexibility because if you use both services and packages you don’t need to have all employees assigned to the service assigned in the package as well. If you don’t check any employee our plugin will connect package with all employees assigned to the service.
6. “Locations” – same as for the Employees option here you can choose locations that will be included in the package for a service. If you don’t check any location our plugin will connect package with all locations assigned to the service.

Please note: If you want to sell just package without any required booking in the Service tab for all selected services just set “Minimum booking required” and “Maximum booking required” to be both 0 and the customer will be able to purchase a package without choosing date or time slot.

Price tab is very simple and you can use it to set price for your package. You have two options here:

1. Custom price – if you select this option that means that you can set custom price that will be different from the total calculated price of all appointments (services) that you added in the package. In “Price” you can simply enter the price for your package and in the “Discount” you can also set discount that package will have if you want to show it as a deal on the front-end booking form. If you set discount, your customers will see this on the package in order to interest them to purchase package of services rather that the single service.
2. Calculated price – If you choose this option this will mean that price of the package will be calculated as a total price of all appointments and services added in the package.

Gallery tab is here so you can upload pictures for your package that will be shown if you use Catalog booking form. Click on the + and upload a picture, and you will see it right away. If you upload multiple pictures you can use burger icon and drag and drop pictures to reorder them – order that you set here will be used for order on the Catalog booking form.

Settings tab on the Packages is there so you can choose which payment method/s will be used for purchasing a package. You can choose one or multiple payment methods and if you want to use just WooCommerce checkout then first go to the Payments Settings on the Settings page and enable WooCommerce payment and you will see it here.

Once you finish with setting everything click “Save” to save your package and it will be shown on the packages page. On the packages page you will be able to see each package with basic details: package name, ID, number of services included and price. Beside this, you can drag and drop each package to set the order in which they will be shown on the booking forms or you can choose one of four options in “Sort Packages” option: Name Ascending, Name Descending, Price Ascending and Price Descending.

Working with Packages of Appointments

Once you’ve created packages you will be able to choose how you will show them to the customers. You can choose one of three existing booking forms, Step-by-Step Booking form, Catalog booking form and Search booking form.

In each of these three booking forms once you go to the page to add a shortcode you will see option to choose whether you will show packages and services together or only one of them.

Go to the Pages, click “Add New” to add a new page click on the Amelia icon to open a popup and you will see option “Show All”.

By default show “Show All” is chosen in this dropdown which means that your customers will see packages and services together on the booking form and will be able to choose whether they will book just service or a package with that service. If you don’t want this, just select “Packages” in this dropdown and on the booking form only packages will be shown.

Once you’ve done that don’t forget to publish a page with a booking form so your customers can see it.

If you want to use packages together with services you should know that they will be show differently on each booking form:

If you choose Search booking form your packages will be shown on the top of the Searched results.

If you choose Catalog as a booking form packages will be shown in each Category in which services that are part of that package belong.

If you choose Step-by-Step Booking form packages will be shown once customer chooses a service like a suggestion that package has that service in it.

Things that you can do with packages:

• You can create a package of one service with multiple appointments in it and give a discount for purchasing a bundle that will be visible to the customers.
• You can create a package of several different services to attract customers to purchase some other services together with the most purchased service.
• You can give customers the option to purchase only a package without booking any appointment during the first purchase. They can book all services later from their customer’s panel.

Packages on the Front-end Customers Panel

When you are creating packages for each service inside the package you will have option to set Minimum Bookings Required and Maximum Bookings Required that customer will need to book during the first booking process. If you set 0 for both options customer will be able to just purchase a package without any booking and in this case, as well as in each case when you set Minimum Bookings Required bellow the total number of added appointments in the package, customer will be able to finish the rest of the bookings on the front-end customers panel.

Once customer enters the front-end panel on the appointments page he will be able to see the purchased packages on the top and list of the booked appointments below. Each package will have info about expiration date and the number of appointments left for booking.

Click on the arrow on the right side of the package and more information about that specific package will show with option to book the rest of the appointments.

If your package consists of multiple different services, on this page each service will be separated in the new tab where you will be able to see the total number of appointments for this service in a package, the rest of the appointments that left to be booked and each time when customer books another appointment that appointment will be shown on the list bellow.

Please note: If you set time duration for a package, that time will calculate from the moment when package is purchased. Once the time expires the customer will not be able to book the rest of the appointments and package will be removed from the front-end customer panel.

Managing packages on the back-end pages

Packages are made from services and that means that all appointments scheduled from the package will be shown the same as original appointments on the appointments page. However, there are few new things here:

1. On the Appointments page the price for the appointment will not be shown since the customer paid the price for the whole package and that price cannot be divided to the appointments. That is why you will see the type of the payment together with a package icon.

The only exception when price will be shown is when there is a group appointment with customers that booked just one appointment and other customers that booked appointment from the package. In that case here will be shown type of payment, price for the single original appointment and package icon.

2. When you open Edit Appointment and then Payment tab you will also see the total package price. Also in the Payment details on the Finance page the calculation will be shown for the whole package.

3. On the Dashboard page appointments from the package will be counted regularly like original appointments for Approved Appointments and Percentage of Load but Revenue will count the total amount of purchased packages on the date when those packages are purchased. As for the tables bellow you will have totally new table for packages beside employees and services tabs.