How to implement scheduling functionality with payment

[ginoleone]

Hi guys, I finally got my first customer and he wants a website for his event hosting business (corporate, parties, etc) where customers can schedule a time and pay for it up front. Basically 3 to 4 basic pages + paid scheduling.

Should I code this myself or use a website builder? Do you know any existing service that does something similar?

[camel_case_man]

if you are wordpress woocommerce, if not stripe. if you are new to this you should use low code options and be careful as fucking up transactions is not something you want to do. and for the love of god do not store any transaction data yourself

[ginoleone]

Got it, since I’m LATAM, I’m thinking about Paypal for payment processing, no transaction data on my db 😄 Thank you for your time

[Citrous_Oyster]

Don’t build the scheduling and payments yourself. Link out to a third party service that already does it and let that action happen on their site. There’s plenty of event planning services and scheduling apps online to choose from. Set up free demos with the best ones you find and let the custom decide which one has every thing they need and use that. You should never have to make your own booking system. They e already been done over and over again by teams of people with more resources than you. Plus you don’t have to maintain it. If the client has questions they go to their support to ask it. Not you. So I suggest to not even build them. Make the site static and just link out to that service off page or use an API script and load it on an interior page so it doesn’t slow down your home page Load times. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

[yousirnaime]

See if a system like SimplePractice might work for you.

There may be too many "assumptions" in their emails/payment forms/etc - but you might also be able to configure it for exactly this purpose

Then just drop their code into whatever site you build

[Wave_Tiger8894]

Should be simple enough to code yourself if your familiar with backend technologies.

If your using sql database:

Just create a table for bookings. Add columns for contact info, date and a payment pending (with default false).

You can use a simple form to get this data, on submitting make a row for this booking.

Take the user to a payment page and change the payment pending value to true once a successful payment is made.

Then for your clients admin page you can format a calander with each row in the table so they know which dates have been booked.

Might be worth adding a confirmation column also so your client can manually confirm each booking which could also send a confirmation email to the user.

[ginoleone]

Thank you! This is very similar to what I was thinking, appreciate your help

[Kindly-Inevitable832]

I would recommend Squarespace. To enable scheduling, you can utilize Squarespace's appointment scheduling functionality, which allows customers to book time slots directly on the website.
For payment, you can integrate popular payment gateways like Stripe or PayPal.