Setting up the Booknetic SaaS

Welcome! In this guide, we’ll walk you through the installation, configuration, and key features of the Booknetic SaaS version.

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Installation

Installing and setting up the Booknetic plugin is straightforward. Simply select the plugin file you need and upload it to your website. WordPress will handle the rest of the installation process automatically.

Once the plugin installation is complete, click the Activate button.

You will now see Booknetic in the menu. Click on it to access the activation page.

On this page, you’ll be prompted to enter your purchase code. Copy your purchase code/license key and paste it into the designated field.

Next, select how you heard about the plugin, enter your email address, and click the INSTALL button.

The system will take a few moments to load. Once the process is complete, the system will be fully operational.

You will be automatically redirected to the Super-Admin Panel of the SaaS version.

The Super-Admin Panel, like the Booknetic dashboard, is a dedicated interface that is separated from the WordPress menu. This ensures that other WordPress menus do not interfere with your ability to efficiently manage your business through the panel.

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Necessary Configurations

To get the plugin working properly, you need to create 4 essential WordPress pages that tenants will use to register and interact with your system:

1. Booking Page – This page serves as the central hub for all booking panels for your tenants. It cannot be accessed directly and is only accessible via the tenant’s booking panel.

2. Sign-in (Tenants) – This page provides access to the admin dashboard, bypassing the default WordPress login page.

3. Sign-up (Tenants) – Tenants will use this page to register on your platform.

4. Forgot Password (Tenants)– This page allows tenants to reset their passwords if they forget them.

Additionally, you should create the following pages for customers:

5. Customer Sign-in (Customers) – This page enables customers to log in and access their accounts without using the default WordPress login page.

6. Customer Sign-up (Customers) – Customers will register on your platform through this page.

7. Forgot Password (Customers) – Customers can use this page to reset their passwords if needed.

When creating each page, you can easily add and save the appropriate shortcodes using the pre-configured Booknetic blocks in your editor. Below are the shortcodes to be used for each page:

• Booking Page: [booknetic]
• Sign-in (Tenants): [booknetic-saas-signin]
• Sign-up (Tenants): [booknetic-saas-signup]
• Forgot Password (Tenants): [booknetic-saas-forgot-password]
• Sign-in (Customer): [booknetic-signin]
• Sign-up (Customer): [booknetic-signup]
• Forgot Password (Customer): [booknetic-forgot-password]

Simply insert the appropriate shortcode into each page, and the system will be set up and ready to use.

After creating the necessary pages, navigate to the Booknetic SaaS Panel > Settings. Go to White Label settings > Pages, select and save the Sign-in, Sign-up, Booking, and Forgot Password pages, respectively.

Once these settings are saved, the basic configuration is complete, and you can preview how the pages will appear on your site.

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Exploring the Booknetic SaaS Super-Admin Panel

Upon accessing the Super-Admin Panel, the first module you’ll see is the Dashboard. This module provides a quick overview of key system statistics, including:

• Total number of registered tenants
• Total number of booked appointments
• Monthly income
• Previous month’s income

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Tenants Module

The Tenants module allows you to view and manage all registered tenants. You can:

• Use advanced filters to search for specific tenants easily
• Edit tenant details
• Delete tenants
• Add new tenants

Adding a New Tenant is a simple process. Enter the basic information, select the plan to assign, and save the details.

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Payments Module

In the Payments module, you can monitor all payments made by tenants. Use advanced filters to find specific payments quickly and efficiently.

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Plans Module

The Plans module allows you to create and manage subscription plans for tenants with extensive configuration options.

1. Creating a Plan
   Click the Add Plan button to get started. The process consists of three stages:

   Stage 1: Plan Details

   • Set a name for the plan
   • Choose a color for identification
   • Define monthly and annual prices
   • Add discounts for the first month or first year
   • Hide the plan from tenants if needed

   

   Stage 2: Modules, Features, and Add-ons

   • Select which modules, features, and add-ons tenants can access with this plan.
   • All core Booknetic modules and features are available here for activation.

   

   Stage 3: Limits

   Define usage limits and counts per plan. Setting a value to -1 means unlimited.

   Tenant resource limits:

   • Number of Locations
   • Number of Staff
   • Number of Services
   • Number of Categories

   Monthly message limits (each is the cap for one calendar month):

   • Email
   • SMS via Twilio
   • WhatsApp via Twilio
   • Telegram
   • Mailchimp Transactional Email
   • AWS SNS SMS
   • Outbound Webhook calls

   Add-on limits appear in this list only if the corresponding add-on is installed. When a tenant hits a monthly limit, the relevant workflow driver stops sending and writes a row in Workflow Logs (if installed). Tenants do not get an in-product warning ahead of hitting the limit — design a tenant_notified workflow to alert tenants approaching their cap.

   

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Custom Forms

The Custom Forms module is a built-in feature of Booknetic SaaS that allows you to collect additional information from tenants during the registration process. Unlike the Custom Forms add-on, this functionality is a core feature of the SaaS version and does not require any additional purchase or activation.

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Workflow Module

The Workflow module allows you to automate processes, including sending notifications for various events.

Booknetic SaaS workflow events are separate from regular Booknetic appointment events. They fire on platform-level lifecycle moments — tenant lifecycle, tenant billing, and customer-account events. Booknetic SaaS currently registers 13 event types:

Tenant lifecycle:

1. New Tenant Signed Up — tenant has signed up; verification email about to send.
2. Tenant Sign-up Completed — tenant finished verification and completed domain/company details.
3. Tenant Forgot Password — tenant requested a password reset.
4. Tenant Password Reset — tenant completed a password reset.
5. Tenant Deleted — tenant deleted (fires before the cleanup cascade).
6. Tenant Notified — subscription-expiry / renewal-reminder cron fired for this tenant.

Tenant billing:

7. Tenant Subscribed to a Plan — tenant subscribed to a plan.
8. Tenant Unsubscribed from a Plan — tenant cancelled their subscription.
9. Tenant Payment Received — tenant payment received (any gateway).
10. Tenant Deposited — tenant added a WooCommerce balance deposit.

Customer accounts (end-customer of a tenant):

11. Customer Sign-up — end-customer signed up.
12. Customer Forgot Password — end-customer requested a password reset.
13. Customer Password Reset — end-customer completed a password reset.

Each event has its own shortcode catalogue. Tenant events expose {tenant_id}, {tenant_email}, {company_name}, {plan_name}, {subscription_expires_in}, {url_to_complete_signup}, {url_to_reset_password}, plus any tenant custom-field shortcodes you have configured. Customer events expose customer shortcodes. The Tenant Notified event is driven by Booknetic’s renewal-reminder cron — configure when this fires through your WP-Cron / system cron and the relevant Plan Settings.

You can fully customize notifications for these events using the available shortcodes to include dynamic details. Additionally, any unnecessary events can be disabled directly through the Workflow module, ensuring flexibility and control over your automation processes.

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Affiliate Program Module

The Affiliate Program Module allows tenants to earn commissions by referring new users to the SaaS platform.

• Affiliate Dashboard: Tenants can access their affiliate program details, including their unique referral links.
• Track Referrals: The system tracks all referred sign-ups and calculates commissions on the referred tenant’s subscription payment.
• Commission Structure: You, as the SaaS admin, define the commission percentage and a fixed registration reward.
• Payout Management: Tenants monitor earned commissions and payment history; you, as the admin, export Monthly Payouts as CSV and pay tenants off-platform through whichever method you use (bank transfer, PayPal, store credit, etc.).

Important — first-payment only. Commissions on monthly and annual plans are paid on the first subscription payment your referred tenant makes after signing up, not on every renewal. Set that expectation clearly before launching the affiliate add-on publicly. See Affiliate program module for the full commission model, settings reference, and platform-owner setup.

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Templates Module

The Templates Module simplifies workflows by allowing you to save and reuse frequently used configurations and settings.

• Purpose: You can create templates for services, staff members, locations, custom notifications, workflows, and other settings.
• Reusable: Once saved, these templates can be applied to the tenants by default or tenants can select among the multiple ready-made templates without the need to reconfigure each time.
• Efficiency: Helps tenants streamline their processes, saving time and ensuring consistency across their operations.

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Settings Module

The Settings module contains various menus for configuring the system. These include:

• General Settings
• White Label Settings
• Customer Panel
• Payment Settings
• Integrations Settings
• Email Settings
• Mailchimp Settings
• WooCommerce Settings

General Settings

In the General Settings, you can fine-tune your platform’s configurations, including:

• Page Selection: Set the Sign-in, Sign-up, Booking, and Forgot Password pages.
• Appointment Start Number: Adjust the starting number for appointment IDs.
• Google Maps API: Enable Google Maps integration for location-based services.
• Google ReCAPTCHA: Activate ReCAPTCHA on the booking page to prevent spam bookings.
• Trial Plan / Plan for Expired Tenants: Assign a default trial plan for new tenants (default trial period: 30 days). When a tenant fails to resubscribe, they are downgraded to the Plan for Expired Tenants you configure. Tenants do not lose their data, but capability gates immediately re-evaluate against the Expired Plan’s limits — tenants whose existing data exceeds the Expired Plan’s caps (e.g. number of Staff or Services) will see over-quota items hidden until they re-upgrade.
• Disallow tenants to enter WordPress dashboard: when ON, tenants who are logged in are redirected away from any WordPress admin URL that isn’t part of Booknetic. Two exceptions are always allowed: admin-ajax.php (so Booknetic AJAX continues to work) and async-upload.php (so file uploads continue to work). Use this when you don’t want tenants to see standard WP admin pages like Posts, Pages, or Plugins. Recommended ON for most SaaS deployments.
• Language Switcher: Enable the language switcher for tenant dashboards. You can define which languages are available, and tenants can edit language files using the Visual Translator module. Toggling this OFF clears your active-language selections.

Additionally, activating the “Create a new WordPress user on new booking” option will automatically create a user account for customers when appointments are booked.

White Label settings

The White Label feature allows you to fully rebrand the plugin and maximize SaaS opportunities. This feature is exclusive to the Booknetic SaaS version.

With White Label settings, you can:

• Replace the plugin name and logo in the admin panel with your own branding.
• Change the default URL ?page=booknetic to ?page=yourbrandname.
• Update the documentation link in tenant dashboards to point to your custom link.
• Add a “Powered by [Your Brand]” badge to tenant booking panels. This badge visibility can depend on the tenant’s plan permissions.

Customer Panel

A fully responsive Front-end Customer Panel is available for the SaaS version for end customers to manage their appointments seamlessly.

Key highlights:

• The panel belongs to the entire SaaS platform. A single customer can manage appointments made with multiple tenants.
• Customers can book package appointments here.
• Customers can make change to their customer profile.
• In line with GDPR requirements, you can allow customers to delete their profiles.

Payment settings

The Payment Settings menu consists of two sections:

1. General Payment Settings

   • Configure the default currency and pricing format for tenants. Tenants can later customize these settings in their own panels.

1. Payment Methods

   • Set up the available payment methods for tenants to subscribe to plans.
   • Supported Payment Methods:
     • Stripe
     • PayPal
     • WooCommerce

Stripe and PayPal: subscription gateways. Payments are stored as card-on-file and automatically processed monthly or annually at renewal.
WooCommerce: a balance / deposit top-up rail, not a subscription gateway. Tenants top up their Booknetic balance through whichever WooCommerce payment gateway you have enabled (Stripe-for-WC, PayPal-for-WC, bank transfer, COD, regional gateways). Plan fees are deducted from balance at renewal; if balance is insufficient the tenant is downgraded to the “Plan for Expired Tenants” until they top up again. See WooCommerce for Subscription payments for setup and refund behavior.

Integration settings

In this section, you configure platform-wide integrations for all tenants. These integrations are applied globally, and tenants can use them based on their plan permissions.

Zoom Integration has two supported configuration methods on Booknetic SaaS:

• OAuth method — the platform owner registers one Zoom OAuth App in the Zoom Marketplace, and tenants sign in to their own Zoom account through that shared App from inside their tenant panel. Best when you want a single branded Zoom integration for all tenants. Requires going through Zoom’s App review.
• Server-to-Server method — each tenant registers their own Zoom Server-to-Server OAuth App and pastes Account ID + Client ID + Client Secret into their own tenant panel. Best when you want to bypass Zoom’s App review and let each tenant bring their own credentials.

Booknetic no longer supports Zoom JWT Apps. Zoom sunset JWT Apps on September 1, 2023. Any older Booknetic SaaS install configured for JWT must migrate to OAuth or Server-to-Server — see Integrating Zoom to Booknetic SaaS.

Email settings

In the Email Settings, you configure the email gateway for sending notifications. Booknetic SaaS supports three mail gateways:

• SMTP — configure SMTP host, port, encryption, and credentials. Recommended for most deployments.
• WordPress Mail — uses the server’s mail service. Convenient, but can cause deliverability issues on shared hosting.
• Gmail SMTP — uses Google OAuth (different from SMTP-with-Gmail-app-password). Create an OAuth Client ID in Google Cloud Console (APIs & Services → Credentials → OAuth client ID → Web application), paste the Redirect URI shown in Booknetic into Google’s OAuth client, then paste Client ID + Client Secret back into Booknetic and click Authorize.

For most platforms we recommend SMTP with a transactional-email provider (SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, Amazon SES) for the best deliverability.

Mailchimp settings

Booknetic SaaS integrates with Mailchimp, a leading marketing platform. Instead of relying on traditional email methods, you can send transactional email notifications to both tenants and their end customers through Mailchimp.

WooCommerce settings

With WooCommerce Integration, tenants can use WooCommerce as their payment gateway for customer bookings.

• As the SaaS admin, you configure WooCommerce payment gateways globally.
• Tenants can navigate to Payment Methods in their admin panel and see the "Others" option, which represents WooCommerce.
• Tenants can individually configure their account details for each WooCommerce gateway.

This allows every tenant to use WooCommerce payment methods independently, ensuring flexibility and control.

Affiliate Settings

The Affiliate Settings section allows you to configure the affiliate program parameters for your tenants. Here are the available options:

• Commission Fee (%) for Monthly Subscriptions: Set the percentage of commission earned for monthly subscription referrals

• Commission Fee (%) for Annual Subscriptions: Set the percentage of commission earned for annual subscription referrals

• Referrer Earning Per New User Registration ($): Define a fixed reward for referring new user registrations

• Redirect URL: Set the URL to which users will be redirected after clicking a referral link

• Affiliate Terms & Conditions URL: Provide a link to your affiliate terms and conditions

• Confirmation Days for Referrer Earnings: Specify the number of days after which referral commissions will be confirmed

• Save Referral ID on Cookie (days): Define how long the referral ID will be stored in cookies for tracking purposes.

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Tenant Admin Panel

Tenants can easily manage their booking system through the Tenant Admin Panel. Here are some key features and options available to tenants:

1. Booking Panel Sharing
   Tenants can share their booking panel with customers in various ways:

   • By clicking the “Share your page” button.
   • Sending the booking panel URL via email.
   • Downloading the QR code for their booking panel.
   • Copying the provided HTML code to embed the booking panel directly onto their website.

   

2. Billing Page
   On the Billing page, tenants can:

   • Review their payment history.
   • Check current plan limits by clicking the “Current Plan” button.
   • Upgrade their subscription plans (monthly or annually).

   

3. Upgrading Plans

   • When tenants click the “Upgrade Plan” button, they will see the list of plans you’ve created.
   • After selecting a plan, tenants will be redirected to the payment page to choose one of the available payment methods (configured by you).
   • Upon successful payment, tenants are automatically redirected back to the Billing page, where they can:
     • View subscription details, including the next payment date.
     • Opt-out of automatic payments by clicking “Unsubscribe”.

     

4. WooCommerce Balance Deposits

   • Tenants can deposit funds into their balance using the WooCommerce payment method.
   • These funds can be used to purchase subscription plans.
   • To pay with the deposited balance, tenants simply click Upgrade, select Balance as the payment method, and the payment will be deducted from their available balance.

   

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Plan Permissions and Modules

Tenants will have access to the system’s features based on the modules and limits defined in their chosen plan. Key points include:

• Each tenant operates as an independent Booknetic Regular user within the SaaS system.

• Tenants get access to their own:

  • Booking Panel
  • Admin Panel
  • Staff
  • Services
  • Payment Methods
  • Settings

• All existing Booknetic modules are available and can be enabled or restricted based on the tenant's subscription plan.

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Unlimited Tenants

You can onboard an unlimited number of tenants, and each tenant will be able to individually utilize the full range of Booknetic features according to their plan permissions.