Rbooking guide

Overview

Rbooking adds date-based bookings to Shopify without a separate cart, holds, or throwaway products. Guests choose dates and guests right on your product pages, and pay through native Shopify Checkout. You manage everything from the app dashboard: accommodations, pricing, rules and bookings.

Because checkout is native, the Shopify order is always the source of truth. Prices and dates are locked server-side, and bookings stay in sync automatically when an order is paid, cancelled or refunded.

Core concepts

A few terms appear throughout the app. Understanding them makes everything else click into place.

Quick start

Six steps from install to your first live booking.

1. Install from the App Store. One-click install via Shopify OAuth. No code or payment keys.
2. Create an accommodation. Go to Accommodations → Add accommodation. Set its name, capacity, and add at least one unit.
3. Connect a Shopify product. On the accommodation, use Select product to link the product guests will pay for.
4. Set a price. Create a rate plan under Rates and add a base nightly rate for the accommodation. If no rate is set, the Shopify product price is used as a fallback.
5. Add storefront blocks. In the theme editor, add the Reservation form and Accommodation details to the product page, and optionally an Availability search to your home page.
6. Make a test booking. Book a stay end to end. The paid order appears as a confirmed booking on your dashboard with a unit assigned.

Plans & limits

Rbooking is billed through Shopify. Each tier unlocks more capability. Features marked Standard, Premium or Business below are gated to those plans and up.

When you hit a plan limit (for example adding a second accommodation on Free), the app explains it inline and points you to upgrade. The monthly bookings allowance works differently: as you approach it your dashboard shows a reminder, and if you go over, your guests keep booking without interruption. Storefront checkout is never blocked. Existing data is never deleted by a plan change.

Accommodations & units

Open Accommodations to create the room types you sell. Each accommodation editor has these sections:

Status values

An accommodation can be Active (bookable), Inactive, Maintenance or Archived. Only Active accommodations appear on the storefront and accept bookings.

Units are what actually get booked

Think of the accommodation as the “type” and units as the real keys on the wall. “Serviced Apartment Suite” is one accommodation; “A1” and “A2” are two units. With two units, two separate guests can book the same dates.

Connecting Shopify products

Every bookable accommodation must be linked to a published Shopify product. The product is what the customer checks out and pays for; Rbooking handles availability, pricing and the booking record.

1. In the accommodation editor, under Shopify product mapping, click Select product.
2. Pick the product (its first variant is used). The accommodation name defaults to the product title if empty.
3. Save. The Accommodations list now shows the product handle instead of “Not connected”.

Locations

Each accommodation has its own location, set right inside the accommodation editor (no separate Locations page). The location powers the Location map block and the location filter in storefront search. It's available on every plan.

Open an accommodation and fill in the Location & map section. Everything here is optional. Leave it blank if you don't need a map or location search.

The storefront location filter only appears once you have two or more accommodations with a location set. With a single location, there's nothing to filter by, so it stays hidden.

Amenities & attributes

These two catalogs describe your accommodations on the storefront.

You fill in attribute values and tick amenities in each accommodation's Details and amenities section. They render through the Accommodation details and search blocks.

Rate plans

A rate plan is a pricing package. Most properties run one or two: a flexible refundable rate and a cheaper non-refundable one. Create plans under Rates.

Inside a plan you add the actual prices (the rates), covered next. When a room has rates under more than one active plan, the storefront shows a plan selector with each plan's total. With a single plan, guests never see a selector.

Rates & how price is calculated

A rate sets the nightly price for an accommodation under a plan. Each rate row has:

Per-night precedence

For every night of a stay, Rbooking picks the price in this order, highest priority first:

1. Exact date rate: a rate with a matching Date override. Used as-is, with no weekend/holiday multiplier.
2. Season rate: a rate whose season covers that night. If seasons overlap, the higher-priority season wins.
3. Base rate: the rate with no date and no season.
4. Shopify fallback: if none of the above exist, the mapped product's price is used (this is how the Free plan prices nights).

Season, base and fallback nights then receive the relevant weekend or holiday multiplier (see next section). Per-guest extras are added on top, and each night is rounded to your currency before being summed, so the displayed total always matches the amount charged.

Worked example

Base rate $200/night, includes 2 adults, extra adult $30/night. Weekend multiplier 1.2×. A guest books Friday → Sunday (2 nights) for 3 adults:

Seasons

A season Standard is a named date range you attach pricing and rules to, like “Summer peak”, “Holidays”, or “Low season”. Create them under Seasons.

Weekend & holiday pricing

Set under Settings → Pricing defaults, these multipliers bump the nightly price on certain dates. They apply to season, base and Shopify-fallback nights, never to an exact date rate, which is always charged as entered.

Enter holiday dates one per line in YYYY-MM-DD format. Only one multiplier ever applies to a night, in this order: major holiday, then minor holiday, then weekend.

Services (add-ons)

Services Standard are optional extras guests add while booking, like breakfast, cleaning, airport pickup or early check-in. Create them under Services, then assign them to accommodations.

Pricing types

For per-guest and per-night types you can set custom labels (e.g. “People”, “Days”) that guests see, plus a sort order, a Taxable flag, and Active state.

Booking rules

Rules Standard control when and how guests can book. Set defaults for all rooms under Settings → Booking rules, and create more specific rules under Booking rules (which can target one accommodation and/or one season).

The storefront date picker enforces these live: unavailable and disallowed dates are greyed out, and a clear message explains why a selection isn't allowed. The same engine drives the admin date picker so back-office bookings stay valid too.

Guest types & capacity

Under Settings → Guest policy you name your guest types and the ages they cover. These labels appear in the guest picker on the storefront.

When babies are enabled you also choose whether they:

• Count toward total capacity: whether a baby takes a “slot” against the room's capacity.
• Count toward child pricing: whether babies are treated as children for extra-guest pricing and per-guest services.

Capacity itself is set per accommodation (max adults, children, babies, and an optional overall total). It's checked separately from the price. A guest count that exceeds capacity is rejected with a clear message.

Storefront blocks

Add Rbooking to your storefront from the Shopify theme editor. No theme code. Open a page, click Add block (or Add section), and pick a Rbooking block. They inherit your theme's fonts and colors.

How a booking is created

Rbooking uses a draft-order checkout, with no cart holds or temporary products. Here is the full path:

1. Guest picks dates and services in the reservation form. The price updates live.
2. Rbooking validates and quotes server-side: product is bookable, room is active, capacity fits, a unit is free, and all booking rules pass.
3. On “Book now”, a Shopify draft order is created with the exact price locked as custom line items, and the guest is sent to native Shopify Checkout. They can't change the amount or dates.
4. When the order is paid, Rbooking creates a confirmed booking and automatically assigns a free unit. Add-on services are attached in the same step.
5. If the order is cancelled or refunded later, the booking is cancelled or marked refunded and the unit is released.

Managing bookings

The dashboard and calendar are where you run daily operations.

Bookings list

Tabs for All, Confirmed and Cancelled, with search by guest name, email, phone or order number. Each row shows status, dates, nights, guests, customer, total and the room. A Needs unit badge flags any confirmed booking without a unit assigned.

Calendar

An occupancy board by Month, Week or Day, grouped by accommodation type or by unit. Color-coded bars open a quick view with guest, dates, total and links to the booking and the Shopify order.

Add a booking manually

Add booking records a phone or walk-in reservation. It creates a paid Shopify order (offline payment) and a confirmed booking, recomputing the price and validating rules server-side. Shopify emails the guest a confirmation when you provide an email.

Editing, cancelling & refunds

• Order-backed bookings (from checkout) are managed on the Shopify order. In Rbooking you can re-assign or auto-assign the physical unit; price, dates and guest come from the order.
• Manual bookings are fully editable in Rbooking.
• Cancelling releases the unit. Rbooking never auto-refunds. Issue any refund from the Shopify order, where you control amount, restocking and customer notification.
• Audit history on each booking records every status change and edit, with who made it.

Resolving an oversold booking

If a paid booking has no unit, a warning banner appears and the booking shows a Needs unit badge. Open it and assign an available unit, or cancel and refund the order.

Channel sync (iCal)

Channel sync Premium keeps availability aligned with external calendars over iCal, so you don't get double-booked across Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and others. Manage it under Channel sync.

iCal connections

1. Choose the accommodation or a specific unit to sync.
2. Pick the channel (Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, TripAdvisor, HomeAway, or Generic iCal) and an auto-sync interval (15 min to daily).
3. Import URL: paste the channel's iCal link to pull their bookings in as availability blocks. Leave blank for export-only.
4. Export URL: Rbooking gives you a feed of your Shopify bookings to paste into the other channel.

Each connection shows its last sync time, status and recent logs, and you can press Sync now any time.

Manual blocks

Independently of channels, you can block dates for maintenance, an owner stay, or any reason, for an accommodation or a single unit. Blocked dates are never bookable from any channel.

Settings reference

Settings holds store-wide defaults. Changes save from the bar at the top of the page.

FAQ

Troubleshooting