How do I create an online booking store?
Short answerA booking store sells services the way a shop sells products: a priced item, a checkout and a record of what was bought. Add packages, gift certificates and deposits on top of the plain booking page. Keep complex or custom work as a request, since a fixed price does not fit it.
The explanation
Three items turn a booking page into a store. Packages sell several visits at once, such as five sessions, and the customer redeems them later. Gift certificates sell a credit to someone else. Deposits sell a small part of the service now to hold the date.
Each needs a rule for what happens later. A package needs an expiry and a record of visits used. A gift certificate needs a balance and a code. A deposit needs a statement of whether it is refundable and until when. Write these before you sell the first one, since changing terms later annoys buyers.
Do not force everything through checkout. Custom quotes, large jobs and anything needing a site visit are better as requests. Selling those at a fixed price invites losses on the jobs that turn out bigger than described.
Steps
- Choose which items to sell: single services, packages, gift certificates or deposits.
- Write the expiry, refund and redemption rules for each.
- Set the checkout to take payment through your processor.
- Keep custom or large jobs as requests, not store items.
What to watch for
- Packages without an expiry, which leave you owing visits indefinitely.
- Gift certificates with no balance tracking.
How Apex does it
In progress
Part of this is built. The rest is not. Status as of 2026-10-07; the badge shows the least-built feature involved.
Apex is designed to sell gift certificates and packages or bundles online and to take deposits at booking. All three pieces are in progress, so the badge on each shows how far along it is.
- BK31Gift certificates sold online(In progress)
- BK32Packages / bundles sold online(In progress)
- BK22Deposits / prepayment at booking(In progress)
Apex Flow Scheduler is in early access. See how we label status.
Where this question comes from: owners type it, or a close variant, into search boxes. It was returned by public search suggestions (Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo) when we collected them on 2026-10-06; the exact phrase seen was “how to create an online booking store?”. We do not have search volumes.