Set up and manage appointment services in Drecha Events Free

What this guide covers

Drecha Events & Bookings Free includes appointment services, public time-slot booking, manual appointments, confirmation email, and secure cancellation. You do not need Events Pro for this basic appointment workflow.

This guide assumes the Free plugin is active and its database setup completed. Check the WordPress timezone under Settings > General before adding hours because availability is entered in that timezone and saved appointments are converted safely for storage.

Create a bookable service

1. In WordPress, open Events > Services.
2. Select Add bookable service.
3. Enter a clear title and an optional description.
4. In Appointment settings, enter a duration from 5 to 1,440 minutes. The value uses five-minute steps.
5. Select Accept appointment bookings.
6. Publish the service.

Only published, active services appear on the customer booking form. If a service is missing, confirm both its publication state and the booking checkbox.

Set weekly hours and unavailable periods

1. Open Events > Availability.
2. Under Weekly opening hours, enable each working day and enter its start and end time.
3. Save the opening hours.
4. Under Unavailable dates, choose a full date or a local start and end time, add an optional reason, and save it.

A blocked period removes matching future slots but never deletes an existing appointment. A slot must fit completely inside the opening window. Free uses a 15-minute slot interval and the service duration to calculate the end time.

Test the customer booking flow

Activation creates or reuses a published page named Book an appointment at the book-appointment slug. It contains the Drecha appointments shortcode.

1. Open that page while signed out or in a private browser window.
2. Choose the service and a date.
3. Select one of the returned times.
4. Enter a name and valid email address, then submit.
5. Confirm that the success state appears and the appointment is listed under Events > Appointments.

Public appointments are confirmed immediately. The confirmation email contains a signed management link. The customer can use that link to cancel while the appointment is still pending or confirmed and any configured cancellation deadline permits it.

Add or cancel an appointment as a manager

Open Events > Appointments to review service, customer, local time, and status. Use the create view to add an appointment manually with a service, local date and time, customer name, email, and optional internal note. The requested time must still be available; concurrent requests cannot reserve the same allocation.

Cancel from the list when needed. Drecha releases the time and attempts to send the customer a cancellation email. Email acceptance by WordPress is not proof of delivery, so use the mail troubleshooting guide if messages do not arrive.

Free and Pro differences

Free provides site-wide weekly hours, site-wide unavailable periods, one active service allocation per appointment, secure cancellation, and manager-created appointments. Events Pro adds staff and resources, individual calendars, buffers, minimum notice, maximum booking horizon, advanced exceptions, customer rescheduling, and waitlists. Free appointment data remains intact if Pro is inactive.

Troubleshooting

• No service appears: publish it and enable Accept appointment bookings.
• No times appear: verify the WordPress timezone, enabled weekday, opening window, unavailable periods, and existing appointments.
• A time disappears during booking: another request reserved it first; choose another available time.
• The booking page is missing: create a WordPress page containing the Drecha appointments shortcode, or restore the original book-appointment page.

Continue with Fix missing events, full bookings, and unavailable appointment times and Troubleshoot missing Drecha emails and delayed notifications for focused recovery steps.