We’ve just released Simple Bike Rental 1.4.0, and this is one of the biggest updates.
This version introduces long-requested features like partial payments, minimum rental duration for hourly bookings, and several improvements to both the admin experience and customer communication.
Partial payments (percentage or fixed)
You can now allow customers to pay only a portion of the total amount when booking. From the admin settings, you can choose:
- a percentage-based deposit (e.g. 20%)
- or a fixed amount
This makes the plugin much more flexible for real-world rental scenarios.
Clear payment breakdown
The payment page now shows:
- Total rental amount
- Pay now
- Remaining balance
The same information is also included in email notifications sent to both the customer and the administrator.
Minimum rental time for hourly bookings
For hourly rentals, you can now set a minimum duration (e.g. 2, 4, or more hours).
This option is fully configurable from the admin settings and helps avoid very short bookings that don’t fit your business model.
Better booking management in admin
We’ve improved the reservations table to make it more usable and less cluttered.
A new “View” action button allows you to open a modal with all the booking details. This keeps the table clean while still giving you access to all the information. Start Date and End Date are now merged into a single Date column
Action buttons no longer wrap onto multiple lines
Improved email notifications
Email notifications are now more informative and aligned with real booking scenarios. They can include total amount, paid amount and remaining balance. This improves clarity for both the customer and the admin.
Final thoughts
With this update, Simple Bike Rental becomes even more suitable for real-world rental businesses. The combination of partial payments, flexible booking rules and improved admin tools makes it a solid and reliable solution for managing bike rentals directly in WordPress.
Try the online demo
Review the documentation