Product Rental Request -> Approval -> check Out

[SteffenYacht]

Dear Shopify Community, we plan to offer boat rental through Shopify. However there is a problem. We always have to check the availability of a boat at a certain time with the owner. We are looking for a solution where we have a reservation request for the product for a certain period on the product details page. the customer puts them in his "temporary" shopping cart after approval by he can check out and pay the amount. Does anyone have any tips on which app to do this with? Cheers Steffen

[CST]

Hi @SteffenYacht 

Thanks for posting your question.  Chris here from BookThatApp.

There is no temporary cart option available within the Shopify platform, but there are a couple of options you could use instead:

1) Add a static request for quote form to your website where customers would submit their request.  You could then confirm with the owner, and create a manual booking/draft order in Shopify and send the invoice to the customer for online payment.

2) Capture the booking live on your website, but set your Shopify payment settings to "Authorize" only and this would put a temporary hold on the credit card.  You could then confirm with the owner and if confirmed, capture the funds and confirm the booking.   

The advantage of the second solution is that it reserves the boat that the customer selected so that no other customer would be able to request it on those dates while you're pending confirmation from the owner. 

Feel free to ping me if you have further questions.  We have a fair bit of experience with boat rentals, so happy to help if I can!

Cheers,

Chris

[SteffenYacht]

Hey Chris, THX for the quick reply. We looked at your bookthatapp --- nice one. We installed it and will start playing around. I keep you in the loop. Best Steffen 

[CST]

@SteffenYacht - My pleasure.  Feel free to reach out if you need any help getting started!

[Elias]

Hey, @SteffenYacht.

Thank you for reaching out and posting this question!

I'm delighted to see that you've received some great suggestions from the Shopify Community!

Since the availability of the boat rental is dependent on the owner, then replacing the add-to-cart button with a contact link and creating draft orders as suggested by @CST would the best option to  for you to process orders based on the boat owner's availability. However, if the boat owner(s) can provide their schedules in advance, then you can consider using a third-party booking app. Using a third-party app allows you to open schedules based on the availability provided by the owners and you wouldn't need to create something as complicated as a temporary cart. This also prevents you from having to create draft orders for every order and you can simply let the checkout handle all of the order processing. 

Both, Easy Appointment Booking and BookThatApp, are both great options for you to set up bookings based on the availability and prevent double bookings. If you need any help with a third-party app, the app developer is always available to assist you - you can reach out to them directly through the contact information found in the Support section of their app's page. 

I'd love to hear more about your rental business! Are you working with a single owner or multiple owners? Can the owner(s)s provide their availability in advance as this could be more efficient way of managing bookings?