One of the main limitations of Simple Bike Rental Pro was managing quantities within bookings.
The plugin already supported availability and stock for each bike model. For example, you could correctly set a specific model to have 5, 10, or 20 units available, and the system could already handle the remaining availability.
There was another limitation: each reservation could only include one unit per model.
In practice, this meant that if a group wanted to rent three identical bikes, they often had to make multiple separate reservations. With version 2.0, this process changes completely.
Support for bicycle quantities is coming
Starting today, you can reserve multiple units of the same bike model in a single booking. For example, “Mountain Bike × 3”.
Availability is now calculated directly based on the quantity requested.
Example:
- Total availability: 5 bicycles
- Customer books: 3 bicycles
- Remaining availability: 2 bicycles
An important note: each reservation still handles only one bike model at a time. The difference is that the model is no longer limited to a quantity of 1. This new logic has been integrated throughout the plugin:
- frontend form
- availability checks
- administrator bookings
- price calculations
- payments
- notifications
- CSV exports
Accessories now also support quantities
Version 2.0 also introduces support for accessory quantities.
Previously, accessories were designed for reservations with just one bike, so they were handled as individual items. Now they work independently. For example, you can now do the following in a single booking:
- City bikes × 3
- Helmets × 3
- Child seat × 1
- Dog stroller × 1
Accessory availability is checked automatically, and quantities can be managed both from the frontend and the admin area.
Updating notification placeholders
With version 2.0, the internal handling of payment amounts has been revised to make the distinction between the total amount, amounts already collected, and the remaining balance clearer.
The placeholder {amount_paid} now represents the amount the customer has already paid.
In the past, {amount_paid} was sometimes also used to indicate the amount requested at checkout. With the new logic, these concepts have been separated to make the system more consistent and reliable.
The available payment placeholders are now:
{amount_total}– total amount of the booking{amount_due_now}– amount requested at checkout{amount_paid}– amount already paid{amount_due}– remaining balance
In most notifications sent after payment is completed, the most useful values will be {amount_total}, {amount_paid}, and {amount_due}. The {amount_due_now} placeholder was primarily introduced to make the internal payment logic more robust and consistent, and it represents the amount requested during the checkout process.
There’s also a new placeholder, {bike_quantity}, that lets you display the number of bicycles included in the booking.In your notification emails, you can now use, for example:
Bicycle: {bike_name} × {bike_quantity}
The quantities of accessories continue to be managed automatically via the placeholder {accessories}.
Overall, this improves consistency across Stripe checkout, webhooks, administration, email notifications, and exports. Partial payments are also clearer and more reliable.
Less noticeable but very important improvements
A significant portion of the work done in this release involves internal improvements that aren’t immediately visible, but which make the plugin much more robust and reliable for everyday use.
One of the most significant changes is a complete overhaul of the Stripe payment flow. We’ve introduced support for idempotency through Stripe Checkout session identifiers, a change that helps prevent duplicate processing and makes managing webhooks much more secure.
Several aspects of the plugin have also been improved: calendar data is updated immediately after payments, the booking confirmation flow is more reliable, CSV exports have been expanded with new, useful information, and the notification system is now more consistent.
The admin interface has also received several improvements to make managing quantities and bookings more intuitive.
Built based on real needs
Version 2.0 provides a much more solid foundation for future developments. Going forward, our focus will remain the same: to keep Simple Bike Rental Pro simple, reliable, and centered on the real needs of rental businesses.
One area we’ll be working on is introducing advanced pricing rules. This will give you more flexibility in managing discounts and rates based on rental duration, while still keeping the interface clear and easy to use.