Foxlendar guide

Overview

Foxlendar adds date-based bookings to Shopify. Guests pick dates on your product page and pay through normal Shopify Checkout. You manage everything from the app dashboard.

Prices and dates are locked server-side on a Shopify draft order. Guests cannot change them at checkout. Bookings stay in sync when an order is paid, cancelled or refunded.

Core concepts

Quick start

1. Install from the Shopify App Store.
2. Create an accommodation. Accommodations → Add. Set capacity, add at least one unit.
3. Connect a Shopify product. In the accommodation editor, click Select product.
4. Set a price. Rates → create a rate plan, add a base nightly rate. No rate? The product price is used as a fallback.
5. Add storefront blocks. Theme editor → Add block → Reservation form and Accommodation details.
6. Test. Book a stay end to end. The paid order appears as a confirmed booking.

Plans & limits

Hitting a limit is explained inline and points you to upgrade. Going over your monthly booking allowance does not block checkout. Moving to a smaller plan holds back extra accommodations (nothing is deleted); upgrading restores them at once.

Accommodations & units

Create an accommodation

1. Accommodations → Add accommodation.
2. Connect a Shopify product (see next section).
3. Set capacity: max adults, children, and (if enabled) babies.
4. Add at least one Active unit.
5. Save.

Connecting Shopify products

1. In the accommodation editor, under Product mapping, click Select product.
2. Pick the product (its first variant is used).
3. Save.

Name, description and images come from the product. Foxlendar never copies them, so nothing goes out of sync. Use Edit in Shopify on the mapping card to change them at the source.

Checkout thumbnail

Flip this from the accommodation editor. Foxlendar turns it off automatically the first time you connect a product.

Locations

A saved address you create once and reuse across accommodations. Powers the map block and the storefront location filter.

1. Locations → Add location. Fill in city (required), address, country, and optionally latitude/longitude for the map pin.
2. Open an accommodation → Location section → pick the location.

The location filter appears once you have two or more accommodations with different locations. Skip this entirely if you don't need a map or location search.

Amenities & attributes

Both render through the Accommodation details block.

Letting guests filter by an attribute

Guests can narrow the search results by your own details — view, bed type, size, amenities. Two steps, in this order:

1. Fill the detail in on your accommodations. Accommodations → open one → set the value. Reuse the same wording across rooms: the filter is built from the values actually in use, so "Garden" on four rooms is one choice, while four different spellings are four.
2. Settings → Search filters. Tick what guests may filter by, then Save. Everything filterable is in that one list, including Amenities. Nothing is on until you tick it.

Done when: the row reads Ready in that list. The filter then appears above the search results, after a guest searches.

What each detail becomes

You do not choose the control. It follows from the detail, so a guest is never offered a combination no room can satisfy.

For an amount, write the unit the same way on every accommodation ("1,200 sq ft", "120 m²"). Foxlendar reads the number, keeps your wording for the label, and understands both metric and imperial units.

If a row will not switch on

A greyed-out row says why. There are two reasons:

• Fewer than two different values — every room matches already, so the filter would narrow nothing. Fill the detail in on more accommodations.
• More than 12 different values — too many buttons to be a filter. Reuse wording where you can, or use numbers for anything measured.

Rate plans

A rate plan is a pricing package. Most properties have one or two (e.g. "Flexible" and "Saver").

1. Rates → Rate plans → New rate plan.
2. Name it. Toggle Refundable if applicable.
3. Add rates inside the plan (covered next).

A plan holds what a price means — refundable or not, stay-length limits, extra-guest charges. The nightly amounts live on the price calendar.

If a room has rates under more than one active plan, the storefront shows a plan selector. One plan means no selector.

Price calendar

Rates opens on the price calendar: what each accommodation costs per night, and where that price came from. Every figure is produced by the same engine that quotes a guest, so what you see here is what checkout charges.

Each cell names where its price came from — Season, Holiday, Weekend, or Set for this date. Use the month dropdown to jump up to a year ahead.

Changing prices

• One night — click the cell, type a price, Save. Click it again to remove that price and fall back to the season or base rate.
• Many nights — Change prices. Set a price, or raise/lower by an amount or a percent, over a date range. Tick weekdays to hit only Fridays and Saturdays, for example.

An increase is worked out once against the current price and saved as an ordinary price per night. Nothing compounds later, so a night's price is always the number on screen.

Rates & how price is calculated

Price precedence (per night)

1. Exact date rate → used as-is, no multiplier.
2. Season rate → higher-priority season wins if overlapping.
3. Base rate → the fallback when no date or season match.
4. Shopify product price → final fallback.

Season, base and fallback nights get the weekend or holiday multiplier. Per-guest extras are added on top.

Example

Base $200/night, 2 adults included, extra adult $30/night. Weekend 1.2×. 3 adults book Fri–Sun (2 nights):

Seasons

A named date range Standard you attach pricing to. Create under Seasons.

A repeating season can cross the new year — enter 21 December to 6 January and it covers December and January every year. It cannot be longer than a year; that is what the base rate is for. Existing seasons are not repeating until you tick the box, so nothing reprices on its own.

Weekend & holiday pricing

Under Settings → Pricing defaults. Apply to season, base and fallback nights. Never to an exact date rate.

Enter holiday dates as YYYY-MM-DD, one per line. Only one multiplier per night, in this order: major holiday > minor holiday > weekend.

Services (add-ons)

Optional extras Standard guests add while booking. Create under Services, then assign to accommodations.

Common fees

Mark a service as Required on an accommodation to charge it automatically on every booking. A service can optionally link to a Shopify product for a checkout thumbnail.

Where price and Required live

These are two different screens, and the split matters:

Required means “always charged”, not “free”. Ticking it on a paid service charges every booking for that room automatically, whether or not the guest selects it. It is how you collect a cleaning fee or city tax — not how you give something away.

Services at no charge

Set the price to 0. The storefront then shows a word instead of an amount, and which word depends on the Required tick on that accommodation — because the two mean different things to a guest.

Both appear in the guest’s price breakdown so they can see what their stay covers, even though neither adds to the total. This follows standard hotel wording: “breakfast included” means bundled into the rate, while “free Wi-Fi” means no charge at all.

Paid on most rooms, included on one

The common case: breakfast costs $15 in your standard rooms, but your VIP suite sells at a rate that already covers it. One service, two prices — set Price for this accommodation on the room that differs.

Blank means “use the service’s own price”, so rooms you never touch keep charging the normal amount. Enter 0 only where the rate already covers it.

Do not tick Required and leave the price blank expecting it to be free. That charges every booking for that room the full $15 automatically — the opposite of including it. Required controls whether it is charged; the price field controls how much.

Quantity limit

For Per guest and Per guest per night pricing, decide how many a guest may order.

Breakfast for two of your three guests is a normal request, so the limit only stops them going above the headcount. If a guest lowers the number of people after picking an add-on, the add-on comes down with it.

Different prices per guest type

Children at half price, infants free. Set it up once on the add-on and the guest still sees a single line, with the breakdown underneath:

Not charged and Not offered are not the same thing. Both cost nothing, but the first keeps the guest on your lists and the second removes them. An infant who eats breakfast free is still a place setting; a child who cannot enter the spa is not. If no guest type qualifies — a 16+ add-on on a booking with no adults — the add-on simply does not appear.

The guest types and their ages come from Guest types & capacity, so “who counts as a child” is defined once and used everywhere. The percentage is rounded per person, and the admin shows you the resulting amount as you type it — so you see what 50% of an odd price really is before a guest does.

On the invoice each charged type gets its own line (“Breakfast (Adults) ×6”, “Breakfast (Children) ×3”), which is also what gives your kitchen a cover count per type rather than one total.

Booking rules

Defaults for all rooms: Settings → Booking rules. Per-room or per-season overrides: Booking rules in the menu Standard.

The storefront date picker enforces these live. Disallowed dates are greyed out with a message.

Guest types & capacity

Settings → Guest policy is the one place you define who you sell to: the name of each guest type and the ages it covers. The age text guests read on the booking form (“3–17”, “18+”) is generated from those numbers, so your wording and your prices can never say different things.

Capacity is set per accommodation (max adults, children, babies). A guest count that exceeds it is rejected with a clear message.

Setting your own age ranges

The defaults follow the common convention that under 18 is a child. They are a starting point, not a reading of any label — check them against your own policy. If your adults start at 13, set the rows to 0–2, 3–12 and 13+, and every guest who reads the form sees “13+” beside Adults.

Two rules the form enforces, because prices depend on them:

You cannot rename a type out of existence while an add-on still prices it — if you switch the Babies row off and an add-on charges babies, the save is refused and the message names the add-on so you can clear it first.

How a guest's type is decided

By the counter the guest uses. Each guest type is one row on the booking form, with its age range printed beside the name, and the number the guest puts on that row is what gets priced.

The guest reads the range and picks their own row. Foxlendar does not ask each child’s age on top of that, and deliberately so: the same fact entered twice can disagree with itself, and a booking form that asks the same thing again is a form more people abandon.

If one children’s price is not enough

Split the bracket instead of asking for ages. A property that charges a 15-year-old more than a 5-year-old wants two types, not one type and a question:

Storefront blocks

Theme editor → Add block → pick a Foxlendar block. No code. Inherits your theme fonts and colors.

Block settings

Click a block in the theme editor to set what it shows. On the Reservation form that includes Show heading — untick it to drop the title above the form — plus the guest picker, check-in/check-out times, optional services and the price summary.

Appearance

Theme editor → App embeds (puzzle-piece icon) → enable Foxlendar appearance. Set accent color, button text color, corner radius and spacing for all Foxlendar blocks.

How a booking is created

1. Guest picks dates and services. Price updates live.
2. Foxlendar validates server-side: product is bookable, room is active, capacity fits, a unit is free, rules pass.
3. "Book now" creates a Shopify draft order with the exact price locked. Guest goes to Shopify Checkout.
4. Order paid → confirmed booking, unit assigned, services attached.
5. Order cancelled or refunded → booking cancelled, unit released.

Multi-room booking

Off by default. Turn it on in Settings → Multi-room booking. Once on, it works on every product that shows the booking form.

A guest can then put more than one room in a single order — several of the same room, or a mix of different ones — same dates, one checkout. The rooms are held together, so there's no second trip through checkout hoping the other room is still free. A couple can book a Deluxe for themselves and a Standard Double for the kids and pay once.

Room combinations in search

When a group is too big for any single room, the search results suggest a combination that fits instead of showing "no availability". Search for six and you might get a Family Cottage (sleeps 4) plus a Standard Double (sleeps 2); the guest books both in one go.

This only shows up when no single room fits, so it doesn't clutter ordinary searches. It needs multi-room booking switched on, since the guest has to be able to book the whole combination together.

Request to book

Turn on in Settings → Booking rules, or per accommodation under Booking mode. Available on all plans. Built for long stays, group bookings and student housing.

The flow

1. Guest submits. Same validation as instant booking. Email required.
2. Room is held. Real unit reserved, calendar shows amber, channel dates blocked.
3. You review under Requests: guest details, message, stay, total.
4. Approve: invoice emailed to the guest. Set a custom room price or change the discount first.
5. Guest pays → booking confirmed on the held unit.
6. Or decline: room released, any existing invoice deleted.

Per accommodation

Each accommodation can override the shop setting: Always request, Always instant, or Follow shop setting (default). Vet long stays and let day rooms sell themselves.

Hold window

Hold requests for sets how long before auto-decline. Default 48 hours. Set to 0 to hold indefinitely.

Staff notifications

Email your team when a request arrives, and again while an approved request is still unpaid. Under Requests, in the Staff notifications card.

Set it up

1. Switch the card On.
2. Send to — up to 10 addresses, separated by commas.
3. Send test to prove it arrives before you rely on it.
4. Remind unpaid after — the first reminder. Default 2 days.

What gets sent

One email per event, however many rooms or requests it covers: a six-room enquiry is one email, and three unpaid requests coming due together are one digest rather than three messages.

The reminder schedule

Your number sets the first reminder; the second and third follow at double and quadruple that. With the default 2 you get day 2, 4 and 8, counted from the day that request was approved — each request has its own schedule. After the third, Foxlendar stops.

Set it to 0 for no reminders. You still get the new-request email.

Replies

Mail comes from Foxlendar's own address, but the reply-to is the guest — so your team can answer them straight from the inbox without opening the app.

Request a Quote

You price a stay and send the guest a payment link Premium. Under Quotes.

1. New quote. Pick accommodation, dates, guests. Override the room total if needed.
2. Create quote. Draft order created. Invoice emailed if you added an email, otherwise copy the link.
3. Guest pays → booking created with a unit assigned.

Changing stay dates

Plans change after a booking is made. Two questions decide what you can do: has anyone checked the guest in, and has the money been collected.

Only the buttons that apply are shown, and each one leads to a screen that will accept what it offers.

Checking a guest in

The Arrival card on the booking records when the guest actually turned up. Pick the date and time, then Check in. Today, the time defaults to now. For an earlier day it defaults to your check-in time, since you will rarely know the exact minute.

• Once a guest is checked in, the arrival date is locked. Moving it would re-price nights already slept. Only the check-out can still change.
• A guest let in early can be checked in before the booked date. A departure can then be recorded from that day.
• An arrival cannot be in the future, after the booked check-out, or after a recorded departure.
• Checked in the wrong booking? Clear check-in unlocks the arrival date again.

Checking in never changes availability or money. A guest who arrives two days late does not give back the first two nights: the room was held for them, so those nights could not have been sold.

Guest leaves early

Use Record departure and pick the day they actually left. The unused nights go straight back on sale, on the calendar and on your connected channels. The booked dates are never rewritten. They stay as the record of what was agreed, and the departure sits beside them, which is what lets you undo it.

What happens to the money depends on whether it has been collected:

For an unpaid stay, the screen shows the current total beside the new one before you save. It also flags when a shorter stay falls into a different rate plan band. Leave after 28 nights of a 35-night booking on a “31+ nights” rate, and the stay is priced on your 1–30 night rate. That can cost more than the original booking.

Wrong guest or wrong day? Open Manage early departure and clear it. For an unpaid stay, the total returns to the full booked stay. Clearing asks for the nights back, so it is refused if somebody has booked them in the meantime. The screen says so rather than double-booking the room.

Moving the dates

Use Reschedule stay to move both dates, or Change check-out for a checked-in guest who is not paid yet. This creates a new agreement, longer or shorter. Use it when the plan changes. When the guest has simply left, use Record departure instead. The screen shows, before you save:

• Nights before and after, and the current total beside the new one.
• The price per night and where each came from: your base rate, a season, a weekend rule.
• Any discount the guest holds, re-applied to the new nights. A fellowship or member rate is kept, not quietly dropped.
• A warning when the new length crosses a rate plan band.
• Any booking rule the new dates break, such as a minimum stay or the gap you keep between stays.
• Nights in the new range that another booking already holds, listed by date.

A broken booking rule can be overridden: tick Book these dates anyway and save. The override is recorded in the booking's history. A night that another booking already holds cannot be overridden, because that would sell the room twice.

Not paid yet: the price follows the dates. For an approved request the old invoice is deleted and a new one is emailed, so the guest cannot pay the old figure for the new stay. Paid: the amount collected does not move. If the new dates are worth less and your rate plan is non-refundable, nothing is owed. Any other difference has to be written off explicitly before the change saves, and who did it is recorded.

Guest wants to stay longer

If the guest is not paid yet, or has not been checked in, move the check-out with the button on the booking. The gap you keep between stays is checked against the next booking, not against the guest's own nights. A guest who has paid and is checked in gets a new booking for the extra nights, in the same room if it is free.

When a change is refused

• The stay has ended. Those dates are history now. Create a new booking.
• The guest is checked in. The arrival date is locked. Clear the check-in if it was recorded by mistake.
• An early departure is recorded. Clear it first, then move the dates.
• Cancelled, declined or refunded. There is no stay left to change.
• No price for those dates. Add a nightly rate for that length, or enter a room total when recording a departure. Saving with no price would set the total to zero.

Every change is written to the booking's history: check-ins, departures, old and new dates, the amounts before and after, any rule overridden or difference waived, and whether the invoice was reissued.

Managing bookings

Dashboard

Tabs: All, Confirmed, Cancelled. Search by guest name, email, phone or order number. A Needs unit badge flags oversold bookings.

Calendar

Month / Week / Day view, grouped by accommodation or by unit. Color-coded bars. Click for guest details, total, and links to the booking and Shopify order.

Closing dates

You never need a reservation to block a date. Drag across the days on an accommodation's row, or use Close dates for any range — including one that runs past the month on screen. Add a reason, and a note only you see.

• Closed ranges appear as striped bars. Click one to change its dates or note, or to reopen it.
• Dates booked on a connected channel appear too, in a different colour, and are read-only here — reopening one would put a sold night back on sale. Change those on the channel.
• The end date is a check-out date. To close only the night of the 15th, choose the 15th as the first night and the 15th as the last; the calendar shows you which day it reopens.
• Seasonal closure, lower down the page, closes every active accommodation for a range in one step.

Manual booking

Add booking for phone or walk-in. Creates a paid Shopify order (offline payment) and a confirmed booking.

Cancelling & refunds

• Cancelling releases the unit. Foxlendar never auto-refunds.
• Issue refunds from the Shopify order.
• Audit history records every change and who made it.

Channel sync (iCal)

Keep availability in sync with Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and others Premium. Under Channel sync.

1. Pick the accommodation or unit to sync.
2. Choose the channel and auto-sync interval (15 min to daily).
3. Import URL: paste the channel's iCal link to pull their bookings in as availability blocks.
4. Export URL: Foxlendar gives you a feed to paste into the other channel.

You can also block dates manually for maintenance or owner stays. Blocked dates are never bookable.

Discounts

Open Discounts in the menu. Each discount is one offer with its own rules.

Create a discount

1. Click New discount.
2. Pick the type: Percentage off, Fixed amount off, or Free nights (cheapest nights waived).
3. Choose who gets it:

4. Set conditions (all optional): stay length, offer/travel window, lead time, check-in day, which rooms and rate plans.
5. Set limits: total uses and uses per guest. Blank = unlimited.
6. Save.

Example

You run two eligibility-based discounts on stays of 1 to 30 nights: ASOR members get 10%, students get 15%. Create two discounts, set each to Membership audience, point each at its tier, and set max nights to 30. Done. No need to duplicate your standard rate plan.

Good to know

• A cancelled or declined booking always returns its use.
• A discount that has been used on bookings cannot be deleted. Deactivate it instead.
• Exclusive (default): when several qualify, the guest gets whichever saves the most.
• Combinable: stacks with other combinable discounts, each applied to what the last left.

Membership tiers

A tier defines a group of people and what rate they get. Discounts are attached to tiers, not to individual members.

Create a tier

1. Open Memberships → Tiers → New tier.
2. Name it (e.g. "Student", "ASOR member", "Corporate").
3. Set validity in months. Blank = never expires.
4. Save, then go to Discounts and create a discount with audience Membership pointed at this tier.

Verification

One tier can have multiple discounts with different conditions. For example: a 10% short-stay rate and a 15% long-stay rate, both under "ASOR member". The booking form only shows the tier when at least one of its discounts qualifies for the selected stay.

Membership inbox

Memberships in the menu is where you manage applications and active members.

Review an application

1. Guest applies from the storefront (or you add them with Add member).
2. Application shows as Awaiting review.
3. Click Approve: a code is issued, the member can start booking.
4. Or Reject: they can apply again later.

Membership statuses

Staff discount selector

When approving a booking request, you can verify, change or remove the guest's discount before the invoice goes out.

Step by step

1. Open a request and click Approve.
2. You see what discount the guest currently has. If they picked a membership rate from the form, a warning says it hasn't been verified.
3. Check Change the discount before invoicing.
4. Pick the correct discounts from the list (all your active discounts are shown, including staff-only ones).
5. The new total is calculated for you. Click Approve and send invoice.

What each choice does

Combination & settings

Two settings under Settings → Discounts. Both are off by default.

How the claim list works

1. Guest picks dates. Only tiers whose discount qualifies for that stay appear. A 31+ night tier is hidden on a 5-night stay.
2. Guest selects a tier (e.g. "Student — 15%"). This is a claim, not proof.
3. The request arrives with a warning: "Nothing has verified this."
4. You check the guest's eligibility and approve, swap, or remove the discount.

Instant-checkout rooms never show the list, regardless of this setting.

Editable message help text

You can customise the text below the guest message field on the booking form.

1. Open the Shopify theme editor.
2. Click the Accommodation page or Reservation form block.
3. Fill in Message field help text.

Leave it blank to keep the default. Example: "Please include your institutional affiliation, purpose of stay, and any discount eligibility."

Settings reference

Settings in the menu. Changes save from the bar at the top.

FAQ

Troubleshooting