Sell Service Products

Selling a consultation, a design job or a coaching session through WooCommerce is awkward. Ticking Virtual removes shipping, but after paying the customer gets a generic order confirmation and no idea how to book a time or send their brief, so you end up emailing every buyer by hand.

Service Products marks a product as a service. It needs no shipping, and once the order is paid the customer sees your instructions and an optional booking or intake link on the thank-you page, in their order emails and in My Account.

Mark a Product as a Service

1. Edit a simple or variable product.
2. Tick Service next to Virtual and Downloadable at the top of Product data.
3. Open the Service tab and fill in the fields below.
4. Update the product.

A service product never needs shipping, including its variations, so a cart with only services skips shipping at checkout.

Write the After-Payment Instructions

The Service tab has three fields:

• After-payment instructions: a small rich-text editor. Explain how the customer books, sends a brief or receives the service.
• Booking or intake link: optional. Must start with http:// or https://, or it isn’t saved and you see an error.
• Link button text: defaults to “Book your session”.

The link can carry order details so your booking or form tool can prefill them. The placeholders are {order_number}, {order_id}, {email}, {first_name}, {last_name}, {name} and {product}, and their values are URL-encoded. For example:

https://cal.com/you/session?email={email}

Configure the Display

Go to Stackless → Settings → Service Products:

• Heading: shown above the instructions. %s is replaced with the product name. Defaults to “%s: what happens next”.
• Emails: include instructions in the customer’s processing and completed order emails. On by default.
• Before payment: shown instead of the instructions while an order is unpaid, for example with bank transfer. Defaults to “Instructions for your service appear here as soon as your payment is confirmed.” Leave it empty to show nothing.

Where Customers See the Instructions

Once the order is paid, each service product in it gets its own block with the heading, the instructions and the link button:

• on the thank-you page
• in My Account, on the order’s details
• in the customer’s processing and completed order emails, plus the customer invoice and customer note emails, when Emails is on

Instructions never appear in emails sent to the store admin. Before payment, the thank-you page and order details show the Before payment note instead, and nothing shows for cancelled, failed or refunded orders.

Good to Know

• A service product with no instructions and no link shows nothing after payment.
• If an order has the same service product on several lines, its instructions show once.

For a step-by-step walkthrough, see How to Sell a Productized Service in WooCommerce.