Bookvatio
Bookvatio is a modern booking plugin that handles two booking types under one roof:
[bookvatio]— appointment booking for nail studios, yoga, massage, wellness, beauty salons[bookvatio-rooms]— accommodation booking for guest houses, vacation rentals, small hotels
(The legacy [booknest] and [booknest-rooms] shortcodes are still registered as aliases so existing pages keep rendering after upgrade.)
No payment processing, no SMS — just clean, focused email-based bookings with a beautiful warm earthy design that you can fully customize from the admin.
Core Features
- Two separate shortcodes — appointments and rooms are independent
- Multi-step booking flows — 5-step guided experience for both types
- Services, staff, categories — full CRUD with photos and custom styling
- Rooms management — photo galleries, amenities, free-text room types
- Color-coded availability calendar — available, limited, full, closed states
- Working hours per day — weekly schedule with per-day open/close times
- Email notifications — client confirmation, owner notification, cancellation
- Google Calendar integration — one-way sync of bookings to each staff member’s Google Calendar (BYO credentials)
- Full translation support — every customer-facing label is editable
- Consent checkboxes — Privacy Policy + Terms & Conditions with configurable URLs
- Walk-in bookings — add bookings manually from the admin
Design
- Warm earthy color palette (fully customizable)
- Bundled DM Sans (body) + Fraunces (headings) — served locally, no external font requests
- Granular color controls for every UI element
- Border radius, font sizes, calendar state colors — all configurable
Pro version
Bookvatio Pro is a separately-sold commercial add-on that extends the free plugin with:
- Coupons / Discount codes — percentage or fixed-amount discounts, per-service targeting, usage limits, expiry dates, walk-in support
- Staff Vacation / Time off — block date ranges per staff member; the customer-facing calendar and slot picker automatically respect the blackouts
- Booking Rules — minimum advance notice (e.g. “must book at least 24h ahead”), maximum advance window (e.g. “no bookings further than 60 days out”), global blackout dates (holidays, closures)
Pro requires this free plugin to be installed and active. A product page with pricing and download will be announced once it goes live. In the meantime, if you’d like early access — pricing details, an invoice, and a download link — email contact@ignatovdesigns.com.
A note on internal naming
Internal class names (BookNest_*), database table names (wp_booknest_*), option keys (booknest_*), filter/action names, and the REST API namespace (booknest/v1) intentionally use the legacy booknest prefix. This preserves settings and bookings for users upgrading from earlier internal versions. The public plugin name, text domain, and primary shortcodes ([bookvatio] / [bookvatio-rooms]) use bookvatio. The old [booknest] shortcodes are registered as aliases so saved pages keep working.
Privacy
Bookvatio does not phone home, include analytics, or load external assets on the public site. All fonts (DM Sans and Fraunces) are bundled with the plugin and served from your own server. See the “External services” section below for the optional Google Calendar integration.
Trademarks
Google and Google Calendar are trademarks of Google LLC. This plugin is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google.
External services
This plugin connects to Google services only when a site administrator explicitly enables the optional Google Calendar integration and connects a Google account. With the integration disabled (the default), the plugin makes no external requests.
When enabled, the plugin connects to the following Google services:
Google OAuth — accounts.google.com, oauth2.googleapis.com
What it does: Authenticates a staff member’s Google account so the plugin can create calendar events on their behalf.
When data is sent: * During the one-time “Connect Google Calendar” setup, after the admin clicks the connect button. * When a stored access token expires (typically every ~60 minutes) and needs to be refreshed.
Data sent: The Google OAuth client ID and client secret the admin entered in BookNest settings (provided by the admin’s own Google Cloud project), an authorization code (initial connect) or a refresh token (subsequent refreshes), and the redirect URI back to this site.
Service provider: Google LLC * Terms of Service: https://developers.google.com/terms/ * Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
Google Calendar API — www.googleapis.com
What it does: Creates, updates, and deletes calendar events on the connected staff member’s Google Calendar. Also fetches the staff member’s email address once during connect (so the admin UI can label which Google account is connected).
When data is sent: * Once during the connect flow, to fetch the staff member’s email (userinfo endpoint). * Each time a booking is created in BookNest with a staff member who has Google Calendar connected (creates the event). * Each time a booking is updated or has its status changed to “cancelled” (updates or deletes the event).
Data sent: Booking details (service name, staff name, client name, client email, client phone, client notes, booking date and time) and the staff member’s OAuth access token in the Authorization header.
Service provider: Google LLC * Terms of Service: https://developers.google.com/terms/ * Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy