Contents
Plugixa Car Rental - User Documentation
Welcome to the official documentation for Plugixa Car Rental, a booking plugin for car and van rental businesses. You describe your fleet once, say where cars are picked up and returned and what they cost, and customers book online through a step-by-step form. You run the desk, from pickup to return, from a single admin screen in WordPress.
The plugin ships in two editions:
- Free - the fleet (categories, models and the cars behind them), pickup and return locations with opening hours, daily rates with cheaper days for longer rentals, live availability, the booking form, extras, coupons, your own checkout fields, the customer portal, payments at the desk and by bank transfer, refunds, numbered invoices, and confirmation and cancellation emails.
- Pro PRO - everything in Free, plus card payments through Stripe and payments through PayPal, paying part now and the rest at pickup, pricing rules with a calendar of daily prices, tax rates, young and senior driver surcharges, booking in several currencies, vehicle inspections with signed PDF rental agreements, PDF invoices, reports, calendar sync with other booking channels, text messages and Telegram alerts, delivery and collection at the customer’s address, and a Google map of your desks.
Nothing in the free edition is switched off or limited. See the complete Free vs Pro comparison.
What makes it different
A few decisions shape how the plugin behaves. They are worth knowing before you take your first booking.
| Decision | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| The price is worked out on your server | The price on the form and the price stored on the booking come from the same calculation, run on your server from your rates, fees and extras. Nothing the browser sends is ever used as a price. A coupon or an extra is priced again on the server too. |
| A car is never rented twice | Customers book a model; each booking is given one of the real cars behind it. The free cars are checked under a lock, so two customers cannot take the last car at the same moment. Bookings, unpaid holds and maintenance blocks all count. |
| Time between rentals is built in | Each booking keeps its car for a Turnaround time after the return, one hour by default, for cleaning and refuelling. |
| A chosen car is held, for a while | When a customer chooses a car it is held for them for 15 minutes by default while they enter their details. If they do not finish, the hold runs out and the car is free again. If they go back to choose another car, it is freed at once. |
| Rental days are counted like a rental desk | A day is 24 hours from the pickup time, with a Grace period of 59 minutes before a late return costs another day. Each location keeps its own timezone and opening hours. |
| Paid and owed come from a record | Every payment and refund is recorded against its booking. What is paid and what is still owed are worked out from that record, never typed in. |
| Invoices never change | An invoice is numbered without gaps when it is issued and is not changed afterwards. |
| Turn off what you do not use | The App Manager switches whole features, such as extras or coupons, off and on. A feature that is off disappears from the admin and the form. |
| Your data stays when you delete the plugin | Deleting the plugin removes its files only, unless you chose to erase its data first. |
| Privacy requests in WordPress’s own tools | A customer’s bookings appear in Tools -> Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data. Erasing anonymises finished bookings and keeps open or invoiced ones, saying why. |
| No outside service in the free edition | The free plugin loads nothing from a CDN or from Google Fonts, and sends no rental or customer data anywhere. In Pro, Google is contacted only by the features you set up with a Google key, such as the map. |
Key concepts
| Term | What it is |
|---|---|
| Location | A place where cars are picked up, returned, or both, with its opening hours, timezone and an optional after-hours fee. |
| Category | A group of models, such as Economy, SUV or Premium. |
| Model | What a customer books, such as “Toyota Corolla Hybrid”, with its seats, bags, gearbox, fuel and photo. |
| Vehicle | One physical car of a model, with its own licence plate. A booking is given a vehicle. |
| Rate | The daily price of a model for a range of rental lengths, at one location or all of them. |
| Extra | Something added to a rental, such as a child seat or full damage cover, priced per day or per rental. |
| Hold | The time a chosen car is kept for a customer who is still booking. |
| Booking status | Where a rental stands: Pending, Confirmed, Picked up, Returned, Completed, Cancelled, No-show or Expired. |
| Reference | The booking number given to the customer: a prefix, the year and a number, such as ADR-2026-0001. The prefix is a setting. |
Getting started
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Getting started | Install, set up a location, a car and its rate, and take a first test booking |
| Free vs Pro | What each edition contains |
The booking form on your site
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| The booking form | What the customer sees, step by step, from dates to confirmation |
| Shortcodes and blocks | Putting the form and the customer portal on a page |
| Customer portal | Where customers open their booking from their email, see what they owe and cancel it |
| Booking form style | Colours and look of the form |
| Map PRO | Your desks on a Google map, as a locator page and in the form’s first step |
Running the desk
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | Today’s pickups and returns, the fleet right now, and the app’s sidebar and search |
| Bookings | The list, bookings taken at the desk, statuses from pickup to return |
| Inspections PRO | Checking a car out and in, with a signed rental agreement |
| Reports PRO | Revenue, use of the fleet and more |
Fleet and locations
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Locations | Pickup and return points, opening hours and after-hours fees |
| Fleet | Categories, models and vehicles |
| Delivery PRO | Delivering and collecting cars at the customer’s address |
| Calendar sync PRO | Keeping cars free of bookings taken on other channels |
Pricing
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Rates | Daily prices per model, cheaper for longer rentals |
| Extras | Add-ons sold with a rental |
| Coupons | Discount codes and their limits |
| Pricing rules PRO | Raise or lower prices for weekends, seasons or early bookings |
| Pricing calendar PRO | The daily price of each model, day by day |
| Tax rates PRO | Taxes added to or included in prices |
| Driver age PRO | Young and senior driver surcharges |
| Currencies PRO | Letting customers book in another currency |
Payments and invoices
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Payments | Pay at pickup, bank transfer, desk payments and refunds |
| Invoices | Numbered invoices, and the PDF Pro adds |
| Stripe PRO | Card payments through Stripe Checkout |
| PayPal PRO | Payments through PayPal |
| Pay part now PRO | Part online, the rest at pickup |
Customers and messages
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Custom fields | Your own questions on the booking form |
| Emails | The confirmation and cancellation emails |
| SMS and Telegram PRO | Text messages to customers and alerts to your team |
Configuration
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Booking rules | Notice, horizon, hold time, turnaround, grace period and rental lengths |
| Settings | Currency, number and date formats, lists and uninstall |
| App Manager | Switching features off and on |
| Privacy and uninstall | What is stored, what is sent, and what uninstalling removes |
For developers
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Hooks reference | Actions and filters |
Support
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Troubleshooting | Common problems and their causes |
System requirements
- WordPress: 6.5 or higher
- PHP: 8.2 or higher
- Browsers: a current version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge. The admin screen, the booking form and the customer portal need JavaScript switched on.
- REST API: the booking form talks to your site through the WordPress REST API, so it must be reachable by visitors who are not signed in.
- WP-Cron: bookings whose hold ran out are marked Expired by an hourly scheduled job. The car is free again the moment the hold runs out, whether or not the job has run.
Bookings, the fleet, locations, rates and payments are stored in the plugin’s own database tables. They stay in place when the plugin is deactivated, and by default when it is deleted. See Privacy and uninstall.
Getting help
- Check Troubleshooting first.
- Read the page for the screen you are using.
- Contact support through your Plugixa account.
License
Plugixa Car Rental is licensed under the GPL v2 or later. Pro features are part of the Pro build of the plugin.