DEBUT Bookings for Checkfront

Description

DEBUT Bookings puts your Checkfront inventory on your own pages instead of in an embedded widget. Visitors see a calendar of what’s on, pick a date, and choose a session, all in your site’s fonts, colours and layout. When they click Book now, they go straight to that item and date on your Checkfront booking page to pay, so your payments, deposits, emails and reports keep working exactly as they do now.

What it does

• A calendar of what’s on. One month at a time, with a dot on every date that has availability, beside the sessions for the selected date. It stops at the last month you’re taking bookings for.
• Activity pages too. The same calendar for a single item, to put on each activity’s own page.
• Guided setup. Connect, choose categories, pick a look and create your bookings page in a few minutes.
• Live availability and prices from your Checkfront account, with spaces left on every session (“2 spaces left” when it’s nearly full).
• Cards or list. Cards show one card per activity with its times inside; list shows a timetable, one row per session.
• Morning, afternoon and evening filter on busy days.
• Category filter across the top, using your Checkfront categories. Hide the ones you don’t want shown anywhere (add-ons, gift vouchers) on the Categories screen.
• Items bookable on request (no fixed sessions) shown separately for the date.
• Book now goes straight to the item and date on your Checkfront booking page.
• Looks like your site. Fonts and text colours come from your theme. Pick an accent colour, corner style and card style, or go further with CSS custom properties.
• Fast. Responses are cached, the next few dates are loaded in the background, and pages work without JavaScript.
• Blocks and shortcodes for the block editor, classic editor and page builders.

Built for developers

Every template can be overridden from your theme, and everything the plugin shows is available in PHP:

$item = debut_bookings_get_item( 435 );
echo $item->name;              // White Water Tubing
echo $item->formatted_price(); // £64.99

foreach ( $item->sessions( '2026-11-14' ) as $session ) {
    echo $session->time();     // 09:30 – 12:00
    echo $session->spaces;     // 10
}

Also: debut_bookings_get_items(), debut_bookings_get_sessions(), debut_bookings_next_available(), debut_bookings_get_categories(), template hooks around every card, row and time slot, and filters on the data. See the FAQ.

DEBUT Bookings is an independent plugin by DEBUT Studio. It is not made, endorsed or supported by Checkfront.

Need more?

DEBUT Studio builds custom Checkfront booking journeys on WordPress, and can set the plugin up and style it for you. debut.studio

External services

This plugin uses Checkfront, the booking system you connect it to. It only works with a Checkfront account, and only connects to the account you enter in the settings.

From your website’s server to the Checkfront API

• What is sent: your Checkfront API key and secret (to authenticate), and the item IDs, category IDs and dates being looked up. The list of categories and items customers can book online is fetched without your key, as a customer would see it. Nothing about your site’s visitors is sent this way.
• When: when a page showing plugin content is viewed or a visitor picks a date or category, and the answer isn’t already cached; and when you connect, test the connection or open the Categories screen in the settings.
• Where: https://{your-account}.checkfront.com/api/3.0/ (or .checkfront.co.uk).

From your visitors’ browsers to Checkfront

• Images: activity images are the ones you uploaded to Checkfront and load directly from Checkfront’s servers, so a visitor’s browser shares its IP address and browser details with Checkfront when it shows them. Turn images off with show_image="0" if you’d rather not.
• Book now: clicking Book now takes the visitor to your Checkfront booking page, where Checkfront’s own terms apply.

Checkfront is provided by Checkfront Bookings Inc.: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy.