DayTidy 1.0.0 brings the public booking page, the schedule behind it, and the work after a reservation into one WordPress foundation. You can publish an event, appointment, class, or service; offer dates and booking options; check resource availability; and keep the resulting reservation together for customers and administrators.
The release uses two plugins. DayTidy Free supplies the booking essentials and remains active on every installation. DayTidy Pro extends that foundation with online payments, coupons, reminder operations, advanced reports, and frontend management. That distinction matters when you decide what to install: a customer portal, lifecycle email template, or administrator reschedule does not by itself require Pro.
Here is how the pieces fit together, what each plugin owns, and what to check before opening a booking flow to customers.
Build the offering before you build the booking flow
An offering is the thing a customer can reserve. For a workshop, that could mean one public page, a Saturday session, and a ticket with a place limit. For a consultation, it could mean an appointment offering, a service duration, and an eligible provider. These are examples of configurations you can create, rather than preset promises about every booking business.
Create an offering from DayTidy → Offerings → Add New Offering. Add its public details, choose the appropriate type, define sessions or recurrence, and add the ticket or service options people will select. Categories, locations, hosts, tags, labels, and agenda content help describe the offering when their modules are enabled. Configurable booking and participant fields let you collect the information the reservation needs; conditional fields can keep irrelevant questions out of the customer path.
Keep the schedule and the booking option separate in your planning. A recurring schedule defines when an offering runs. A ticket or service defines what the customer selects, its quantity or price, and how it uses those sessions. Publishing a recurring schedule should not be confused with promising that every customer automatically books an entire series.
Free includes the core offering and scheduling foundation. You can begin with a free reservation, then add offline collection or a Pro online payment workflow when appropriate. The first-booking setup guide walks through the relationship between offerings, schedules, options, and the final booking record.
Make availability reflect the people and resources behind a slot
A date on a calendar is only useful when the business can fulfill it. DayTidy Free includes global resources and availability rules for people, rooms, equipment, and other limited capacity. Working hours, exceptions, resource eligibility, capacity, and preparation or cleanup buffers help determine which times can be offered.
For example, a service may need an available provider for its full occupied period, including its buffers. Another offering may use a shared room with a limited number of places. The relevant rule depends on how you configure the service and resources; adding a resource alone does not make every associated session available.
Pro’s Resource Groups module adds offering-owned resources for branch, business, and manager workflows. Permitted users can manage them in the offering editor and the frontend dashboard. The resource dialogs validate required values and names, retain useful input after errors, and report save problems so the user can correct them. Resource batches are checked against the final names using the database’s comparison rules; differently accented spellings can therefore count as duplicates.
New resources still need the containing offering or resource form to be saved. Closing a dialog should not be mistaken for persisting the resource. After saving, check that the intended resource is active, eligible, and available for the service you plan to sell.
Give customers a clear page and administrators useful display choices
DayTidy Free can publish generated offering pages and reusable list, grid, and calendar views. Use a saved view when visitors need to browse several offerings; use a booking form shortcode when a particular page needs the reservation flow for one offering.
Generated pages have two built-in layouts. Style 1 arranges enabled offering elements vertically in their configured order. Style 2 uses a two-column layout with a booking sidebar. Open DayTidy → Settings → Offering Page to choose the default mode and style, review the elements, and configure an optional sticky booking sidebar. The sticky control is off by default, and an offering can override the global page settings.
Pro also adds optional presenters, sponsors, and fallback-image controls when the corresponding modules are enabled. Use these to enrich an offering with the people and organizations behind it, or provide an image fallback when appropriate. Keep optional sections conditional on actual content rather than filling empty sections with invented details.
The generated offering page and a standalone embedded booking form are separate presentation paths. Do not choose a layout on the assumption that every embedded shortcode will reproduce the complete generated page.
The release also refreshes the booking, schedule-picker, portal, and administration interfaces. For frontend branding, open DayTidy → Settings → Customization → Primary Color. Choose a dark enough color to keep white button text readable, or use Default to restore the original green. This setting changes DayTidy’s frontend controls without recoloring WordPress administration pages.
Keep the booking and customer journey connected
Free booking records bring the offering, selected sessions, options, participants, submitted fields, payment state, and booking status together. Authorized administrators can create bookings manually and move an existing booking to another eligible time.
Booking status and payment status describe different things. A reservation can need an operational decision even when its payment is settled, while an offline payment still needs staff reconciliation. Rescheduling preserves the booking’s identity and payment context; it is not an automatic additional charge or refund for a price difference. Eligible states are Pending, Confirmed, and Expired by default. Moving an Expired booking successfully reactivates it as Confirmed and reserves the replacement capacity.
The Free customer portal gives authorized customers access to their reservations and supports cancellation when the configured policy permits it. Set the portal page and cancellation controls in the Booking settings. The page must contain [daytidy-customer-portal]; the portal is part of Booking rather than a separate module toggle.
Guest access and cancellation follow the appropriate ownership and verification checks. A booking link is not unrestricted permission to view every reservation sharing an email address. Customer self-rescheduling is not included in this portal: an authorized administrator handles a move through the reschedule workflow.
Pro adds the admin booking calendar and advanced operational tools. Its frontend dashboard is intended for trusted users managing offerings and resources, which is a different job from a customer checking or cancelling their own booking.
Use the right payment and refund workflow
DayTidy Free supports free bookings and offline collection paths such as on-site payment and wire transfer. Those offline methods record the booking workflow and instructions; they do not collect money automatically. Staff must reconcile what was actually paid.
Pro adds configured Stripe, PayPal Standard, and WooCommerce Cart workflows for online payments. WooCommerce is needed for the Cart approach, rather than being a general dependency for every DayTidy installation. Gateway credentials, enabled modules, currency, and the payable amount still determine which checkout path is available.
Pro coupons support percentage or fixed discounts with validity periods and usage limits. The built-in coupon scope is global, rather than targeted to a customer or offering. Use those controls to define a particular offer, rather than leaving a discount open-ended. The checkout should reflect the actual selected options, applicable discount, and payable total.
Refund recording and returning money are also separate actions. Free can record a manual refund. Pro’s Online Refunds module supports eligible Stripe and PayPal gateway refund operations. Check the original transaction, previous refunds, and remaining refundable amount before proceeding. Cancelling a booking does not automatically send a gateway refund. Selecting Partially Refunded without an amount changes the status without creating an amount-bearing refund record; reconcile any external partial return before relying on the remaining balance. The refund operations guide explains the distinction.
The payment configuration guide explains the available checkout paths and refund distinction. Use sandbox or test configuration when validating a gateway flow.
Communicate, subscribe, and review without confusing the scopes
Free’s Notifications module supplies lifecycle email templates, recipients, placeholders, attachments, iCal attachments, and test sends. Open DayTidy → Notifications → Templates to configure messages around the booking events your site uses. Mail delivery still depends on WordPress and the site’s configured transport.
Pro adds delivery logs, eligible retries, and scheduled reminders. Those operations help a team inspect send attempts and outstanding work; a message accepted by WordPress is not proof of final inbox placement. Reminder timing also depends on WordPress cron and the eligibility of the booking and template.
Calendar subscriptions are included in Free. Signed ICS feeds can expose all bookings, an offering’s bookings, or a resource’s bookings to a compatible client. Events use UTC times that the subscribing calendar displays in its own timezone. Feed URLs are secrets: anyone holding one can read the scheduling information in its scope until the URL is regenerated. The feeds omit customer email addresses, phone numbers, payment details, and arbitrary form fields, but still contain operational context such as booking references and offering titles.
These subscriptions do not provide Google or Outlook account connections, two-way synchronization, or external busy-time blocking. Calendar clients control how frequently subscriptions refresh.
For reporting, Free includes filtered booking CSV export with the required report-viewing and customer-management permissions. Pro’s Advanced Reports module adds operational summaries and customer exports. Installing Pro does not bypass capabilities or the need to enable the relevant module.
Authorize Pro through Webilia Connect or an independent code
Keep DayTidy Free active, install Pro when needed, and open DayTidy → Webilia Connect. The Connect tab manages the shared website connection; the Licenses tab accepts an independent manual code. You need both WordPress options-management and DayTidy settings-management permissions to manage the hub.
Connecting an eligible account can register Pro access and consume a license seat. A connection alone is not a Pro entitlement. Free’s Download DayTidy Pro link opens My Webilia; download the eligible ZIP and install and activate it through the WordPress Plugins screen. Free does not install Pro, and separately installed Pro handles its own updates. The hub reports plugin activation, Pro-use authorization, and update authorization separately.
Manual codes remain independent of the shared connection. Deactivating a code does not remove access separately granted by Connect. Disconnecting the shared website connection can affect other Webilia products using it, while independent codes remain saved.
During a temporary verification outage, only unexpired previously verified access is retained. Revoked or disconnected authorization needs the appropriate recovery rather than an assumption of indefinite cached access. The licensing guide covers these distinctions and recovery checks.
Prepare one complete booking flow before expanding
Start with one offering, a small set of sessions, and one booking option. Confirm its public page, available time, submitted fields, resulting record, and customer access. If you use Pro, add each required module deliberately and verify its prerequisites before relying on it.
DayTidy Free also provides Help & Support diagnostics for environment, migration, cron, notification, payment, and asset questions. Use that information to investigate a setup problem, and review diagnostic details before sharing them.
Business data is retained by default when DayTidy is uninstalled. Permanent cleanup requires explicitly enabling Delete data on uninstall under the data-retention settings. Keep that choice deliberate, with a backup before destructive cleanup.
For the complete version inventory, use the DayTidy changelog. For the next maintenance update, read about the booking and service-time fixes in DayTidy 1.0.1. For a new site, begin with installation and a test booking, then extend the workflow only where the operation needs it.
FAQ
Does DayTidy Pro replace DayTidy Free?
No. DayTidy Free is the required base plugin. Install Pro alongside it, authorize access through Webilia Connect or an independent license code, and enable the Pro modules you need.
Which customer actions are included in Free?
Free includes authorized customer portal access and policy-controlled cancellation. Administrators can reschedule bookings. Customer self-rescheduling is not included.
Does DayTidy 1.0.0 provide two-way calendar synchronization?
No. It provides signed ICS subscription feeds for bookings, offerings, and resources. Compatible calendar clients control refresh timing; these feeds do not block availability from external busy time.
Do booking email templates require Pro?
Lifecycle email templates, recipients, placeholders, attachments, and test sends are included in Free. Pro adds delivery logs, eligible retries, and scheduled reminder operations.
