Learn how to create flexible WordPress calendar appointment booking forms with Formidable Forms and Simply Schedule Appointments. Start accepting appointments quickly.
Formidable Forms has always let you include time and date picker fields in your forms. People could choose a date and time for their online booking, provide other information, and submit that form to you. Basic WordPress appointment booking forms are no problem.
But while that works for some use cases, there are two potential problems:
Double bookings and changing availability!
If you have a situation where there are a limited number of appointments for each time slot, you'd have no easy way to stop people from selecting times that were already booked. Similarly, if you're only available at some times (and those times can change), it's difficult to stop people from booking time slots when you're not available.
The new Formidable Forms integration with the Simply Schedule Appointments plugin solves those issues. Plus you can create a much more robust appointment booking system to go along with your forms.
And although we generally suggest WordPress users to avoid installing too many plugins, this one is so great that it deserves a spot. Your WordPress site will become a great place for customers to book appointments online too.
Simply Schedule Appointments is a WordPress schedule plugin for creating a booking calendar. Appointment types and time slots can be selected and then included directly in your form. Now people can choose a time from the calendar when they submit a booking form.
Keep reading for more on how the integration works and a step-by-step guide on how to set it up. You'll need the Plus Plan in Simply Schedule Appointments to make this work (not the free version). Now, let's learn how to turn your WordPress website into an appointment collecting machine!
How the Formidable Forms/Simply Schedule Appointments integration works
As the name suggests, Simply Schedule Appointments is a WordPress appointment and booking plugin that aims to be a streamlined tool for appointment scheduling. In the developer's words, it offers "just the features you need without the clutter and confusion of features you don’t."
Simply Schedule Appointments helps business owners with:
- Unlimited appointment types, each with its own unique set of restrictions
- Advanced scheduling options
- Blackout dates
- Collect payments
- Email notifications
- ...plenty more
But in their mission to create a streamlined WordPress appointment booking tool without bloat, the Simply Schedule Appointments team felt like there was no reason to reinvent the wheel when it came to building appointment booking forms.
Thus, the integration with Formidable Forms. If you can use a simple drag and drop plugin like Formidable, Simply Schedule should be easy for you too.
Once you set up your appointment calendar with Simply Schedule Appointments, you can use Formidable Forms to create the front-end form that your visitors will use to book appointments.
You can use all the normal Formidable Forms fields and features to collect as much information as needed. Then, to add the appointment booking calendar into your forms, you can use the new Appointment form field that the integration offers.
You'll also enjoy two-way syncing:
- When you're viewing an entry in Formidable Forms, you'll see a link that will take you straight to the appointment information in Simply Schedule Appointments.
- When you're viewing an appointment in Simply Schedule Appointments, you'll see all the form data from Formidable Forms.
How to create WordPress appointment booking forms
Ready to build your first WordPress appointment booking form?
Here's how to set everything up…
1. Create a new appointment type in Simply Schedule Appointments
An appointment "type" is a specific kind of appointment you want people to be able to book via your form. For example:
- A 30-minute phone consultation
- A one-hour personal training session
To get started, go to Appointments → Appointment Types in your WordPress dashboard and click Create a New Appointment Type:
At the top, enter basic details like the name and duration:
Then, use the options below to set up more advanced details.
First, use the Availability section to control the times when you're available for this appointment each day.
People will be able to choose from these times when submitting a form with Formidable Forms.
Next, use the Scheduling Options section to control restrictions like how many of this appointment type can be booked per day, how much notice is required before an appointment, etc.
Formidable Forms will automatically apply these restrictions in your forms.
Check out any other settings that are relevant to your needs. Then, click the Save button to finish creating your appointment type.
2. Create your basic WordPress online booking form
Next, go to Formidable → Add New to create a new form for appointment booking.
To get started, create the basic fields for information that you want to collect from people who book appointments. For example:
- Name
- Phone number
- Etc.
You might also have more specific information that you need to collect. Feel free to take advantage of all of Formidable Forms' fields to collect as much information as needed. This gives you custom fields for easy appointment scheduling.
For example, you could even use a File Upload field to let people attach a file or Checkboxes or Radio Buttons to let them select their preferences:
3. Add and configure the Appointment form field
Next, add the new Appointment field to your form to let people choose a time slot. Assuming you have the premium version of Simply Schedule Appointments active, you'll find the Appointment field in the Advanced Fields section in Formidable Forms:
If you click on the Appointment field to edit its settings, you'll be able to choose exactly which appointment type people can book through this form. You can either include:
- All appointment types
- A specific appointment type, if you have multiple options
And that's it! You can add your form to any page on your site using Formidable Forms' shortcode or block. Then, visitors will be able to submit the form to book their appointments.
How to manage your booked appointments
To finish things out, let's take a quick look at how your appointment booking forms work on the frontend and backend.
Your visitors will use the form to enter basic details and choose their appointment time slot:
Once they choose a time slot, they'll see a confirmation of their time. Then, they can click Submit to submit the form data and book their appointment:
If you'd like, you can use Formidable Forms for notifications and reminders. You can send SMS text message confirmations or email autoresponders to create appointment reminder emails.
Now, we're switching over to the backend.
If you view that entry in Formidable Forms, you'll see a summary of the details, along with a link to manage the appointment in Simply Schedule Appointments:
And then if you go to Simply Schedule Appointments, you'll still see all the details from your other Formidable Forms fields, along with a link to view the entry in Formidable Forms:
You'll also see this information if you expand an appointment in the main Simply Schedule Appointments list:
And there you have it - an easy, but flexible, way to create WordPress appointment booking forms.
Get started with WordPress booking forms
With the Formidable Forms and Simply Schedule Appointments integration, you can create flexible WordPress appointment booking forms with smart functionality to avoid double bookings, blackout certain times and dates, and generally manage all of your appointment booking efforts. If you don't need Formidable integration, you can also check out Amelia for booking.
To set up appointment booking forms, you can use the premium version of Simply Schedule Appointments and either our free WordPress form plugin or premium version.
Read more posts about WordPress booking forms
And to learn more about all of the other ways that Formidable Forms can help you work with WordPress forms, check out the great features that make Formidable Forms the best form plugin for WordPress.
Sounds very promising, will be trying out.
Perhaps you could add which version of Formidable Forms Pro includes this field onwards just as a reference 🙂
Hi there,
This integration should work with all premium versions of Formidable Forms (Basic-Elite)
Looks great, but their licences seems bit costly.. single site for one year $99.... Why cannot you build some add-on that can check fix slot booking which you already have with data and time fields .. now it is just a matter of checking on different days of the week..it is all again not going to reinventing a wheel but would be a definitely great saving for customers in both money and efforts in developing the application and would make formidable best choice for more customers even for booking purpose which itself has got lot of market..
Hi Siva,
You make a great point. This integration allowed us to provide the functionality to users with minimal development time on our end. We would eventually like to build this functionality into the plugin, but it isn't at the top of our priority list, so until we build it, this will work for those needing booking forms.
This is what I've been thinking as well. For the meantime, this will work great and it's an awesome plugin with all the needed features for appointment booking.
Needs to integrate with Google calendar
It does, it has a 2 way sync
I can't get it to sync with Google Calendar if it is booked using a formidible form. It only syncs with my google calendar when I book using the short-code. Do you know if this can be fixed?
Thanks!
Is it possible to integrate this into a userbase, lets say coaches who could take booking from multiple clients and set availability sessions
Without understanding your full use case, it is difficult to say for sure, but it sounds like this would work for coaches to take bookings from multiple clients with set availability sessions.
This seems very promising will definitely check this out
Excellent, Glad you like it.
Sembra ottimo. Lo scarico e lo proverò sul mio sito web. Vi terrò al corrente del funzionamento.
Grazie! Spero che funzioni bene per te.
Does this have support ford 3rd party integrations?
Yes, there is integration with some 3rd parties. It depends exactly on what you're looking for.
Can each user have their own scheduling (calendar, scheduling link, etc). I’m creating an app that could use that functionality
Hi Tony. This is a feature that the Simply Schedule Appointments team is working hard on. They were hoping to have it ready for Black Friday, but it looks like it's not quite ready.
Hello,
I tested many WordPress form builder plugins for the last one year including WPForms, Ninja Forms, and Formidable. So I can clearly say that Formidable is the best among them. It's hard to say what type of form is not available on your template collection. More than 100 built-in templates is a huge deal for the customers.
Appreciate your product quality and support.
All the best,
Thanks so much for sharing! We always love to hear when customers appreciate our hard work. We are always adding to our template library, and soon there will be even more pre-built forms to save you time.
Sounds very promising, will be trying out.
Maybe you could add which version of Formidable Forms Pro includes this field onwards just as a reference
All premium versions should include this functionality.
I was recently introduced to Formidable Forms by a friend. Looks very promising. Wish I had encountered earlier. I am going to get the trial and see if it fits my needs. Many thanks.
Excellent. Thanks for checking it out. Hope it works well for you.
Hello. I have the need for booking 35 seats at a library. Time slots will be of 1 hour and the users need to be able to reserve up to 3 time slots. Once they made the reservations they can't make another one for that day. Field validation for this can be the user's email. Can this be done? I already have Formidable Pro. Cheers!
Hi Eduardo,
We try not to provide support in our Blog comments since most of the time we need a bit more information in order to help get you on the right track. Could you please reach out to our awesome support team here? https://formidableforms.com/new-topic/
The combination Formidable + Simply Schedule Appointments cost almost like a custom made booking solution.
Both apps are good, but the pricing is breaking every wallet.
Let's hope in a special offer for first adopters 😉