BookingFish Documentation

BookingFish is an online booking platform designed specifically for fishing guides and boat rental companies in Canada. The system allows your clients to book directly online, pay their deposit by credit card via Stripe, and you to manage all your reservations from a centralized dashboard.

User types

• Member / Vendor: Fishing guide or rental company. Full access to the dashboard, boat management, reservations, payments.
• Guide (limited access): Employee or guide who receives read-only access to the booking calendar on their mobile device via a secure token.
• Client: Person who makes an online reservation. No account required to book.

Quick start

The BookingFish Calendar WordPress plugin is free and open source (GPL v2). It allows you to display your booking calendar and gift certificates directly on your WordPress site.

Installation

The Boats Calendar module is the heart of the system. This is where you configure your boats, define your availability by month, and manage your time slots. Each boat has its own independent calendar.

Create a new boat

Calendar color code

• Green: Available date — visible to clients in the booking form
• Blue: Confirmed reservation
• Yellow: Reservation pending confirmation
• Orange: Cancelled or refunded reservation
• Gray: Unconfigured or deactivated date

The Booking Calendar module offers a monthly calendar view of all your reservations and availability. Useful for a quick overview of your activity.

Features

• Monthly view of all reservations per boat
• Filtering by boat from a dropdown menu
• Color code: blue (confirmed), yellow (pending), orange (cancelled)
• Navigation between months
• Display of client name and time on each reservation

The Booking Sync-Cell module lets you add your BookingFish calendar directly to your phone's calendar app (Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar). View your reservations in real time, even without an internet connection.

Add calendar to your phone

Share with your guides

You can generate access tokens for your guides and employees. They get read-only access to the calendar on their mobile device.

The Booking Formulaire is the page your clients see to make a reservation. You can fully customize it with your photos, prices and description.

Customizable elements

• Main form photo
• Name and description of your service
• Required deposit price at booking
• Available time slots (8h day, 4h morning, 4h evening)
• Maximum number of people per booking
• Custom confirmation message
• Dock/ramp numbers if applicable

Information collected at booking

• Client's full name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Number of people
• Desired date and time slot
• Notes or special requests
• Deposit payment by Stripe card

The Booking List is your reservation management center. You can view, edit, refund and export all your reservations.

Available filters

• By boat
• By status: confirmed, pending, cancelled
• By period (month, year)
• Search by client name or email

Available actions

• Edit reservation details (name, date, slot, notes)
• Change status (confirmed / pending / cancelled)
• Send confirmation email to client
• Refund the deposit via Stripe (automatic BF fee refund)
• Print reservation details
• Export all reservations in PDF format

The Add Booking module lets you manually add reservations directly to your calendar. The system automatically checks for conflicts to avoid double bookings.

Information to enter

• Relevant boat and date
• Time slot (8h day, 4h morning, 4h evening)
• Client name, email and phone
• Number of people
• Assigned guide name, phone and email
• Dock / boat launch ramp number
• Deposit amount (if paid in person)
• Reservation status and private notes

The Booking URL module provides all the links and embed codes to share your booking form with your clients.

Available links

• Direct link: Unique URL to your booking form. Share it on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, by email.
• WordPress shortcode: Code to paste in any WordPress page or post to embed the calendar.
• HTML iFrame: HTML code to embed on any website (not just WordPress).

The Booking Email module lets you customize all emails automatically sent to you and your clients during booking events.

Email types

• Client confirmation: Sent to the client as soon as their reservation is confirmed with all details.
• Guide notification: Sent to you (the guide) as soon as a new reservation comes in.
• Cancellation email: Sent upon cancellation of a reservation.
• Reminder email: Automatic reminder sent before the reservation date.

Available variables

In your email templates, you can use variables that will be automatically replaced:

• {client_name} — Client name
• {boat_name} — Boat name
• {date} — Reservation date
• {time_slot} — Time slot
• {deposit_amount} — Deposit amount
• {guide_name} — Guide name
• {infobooking} — Use {infobooking} to automatically insert the complete reservation details

The Booking MyWebSite module lets you create and manage a personal mini-website for your fishing guide business, hosted on BookingFish servers.

Website sections

• Home: Main page with catchy title, description and call to action.
• Booking form: Directly integrated into your site.
• Gift certificate: Gift certificate sales page.
• Pricing: Your prices and packages for your clients.
• Accommodation: Hotels and campgrounds to recommend to your clients.
• Fishing licenses: Information about required licenses.
• Regulations: Your rules and policies (cancellation, deposit, etc.).
• Services: Detailed description of your services.
• Contact: Your contact details to reach clients.

BookingFish uses the Stripe payment gateway so that your clients' payments are transferred directly to you. BookingFish has no access to your bank account — only Stripe handles the fund transfers. BookingFish never stores your card numbers or payment data.

Stripe configuration

Fee structure

• BookingFish fees: $25 per confirmed reservation (refunded on cancellation). $0 with annual package.
• Stripe fees: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Applied by Stripe automatically.
• Minimum deposit: Configurable in settings (default: $100). The amount is set per boat in Booking Formulaire.

The Booking Forfaits module lets you switch from per-booking billing ($25/booking) to an annual package with unlimited bookings for a fixed price per boat.

Plan comparison

• Standard plan: $25 per booking. Ideal for less than 6 bookings/year. No commitment. Automatic refund on cancellation.
• Annual plan: Fixed price for 1 to 5 years per boat. Economical from 6 bookings/year. Unlimited bookings. Keep 100% of each deposit (Stripe fees only).

Calculation example

With 100 bookings per year:

• Standard plan: 100 × $25 = $2,500
• 1-year package: $149 — Savings: $2,351

Annual package details

• 1 year : 149$ / boat
• 2 years : 269$ / boat
• 3 years : 349$ / boat
• 4 years : 429$ / boat
• 5 years : 499$ / boat

What's included

• Economical from 6 bookings per year
• Keep 100% of every deposit received
• Unlimited bookings
• Stripe fees only (2.9% + $0.30)
• Flexible renewal
• Only $0.41/day for the 1-year package!

The Booking Certificat module lets you create gift certificates that your clients can purchase online to give a fishing trip as a gift.

How it works

Customization

• Custom message on the certificate
• Custom amounts with labels
• Configurable expiry date

Payment security

• All transactions are SSL/TLS encrypted
• BookingFish never stores card numbers
• PCI DSS compliant via Stripe
• Stripe webhooks for real-time payment events

BookingFish was designed from the ground up with security as the absolute priority. Every layer of the system — connection, storage, payment, access — is protected by strict technical measures.

End-to-end encryption (HTTPS/TLS)

• All pages and requests travel over HTTPS — no data is transmitted in plain text
• TLS 1.2 protocol minimum on all connections
• Automatic HTTP → HTTPS redirect on all URLs

Secured database

• Passwords stored as hashed values (bcrypt) — never in plain text
• Payment data never stored on BookingFish side — handled exclusively by Stripe
• Database access restricted by user role
• Each member is isolated — their data is inaccessible to other members

Authentication & sessions

• Session verification on every request to the dashboard
• Automatic expiration of inactive sessions
• Unique guide access tokens revocable at any time from Booking Sync-Cell
• Protection against brute force attacks (attempt limit)

Payments via Stripe Express

BookingFish uses only the Stripe payment gateway to transfer your clients' payments directly to you. BookingFish has no access to your bank account.

• Card numbers never transmitted or stored by BookingFish
• PCI DSS Level 1 compliance via Stripe
• Direct transfers to your bank account — BookingFish does not hold your funds

BookingFish integrates an SMTP-DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) system that digitally signs all emails sent to your clients. This guarantees that the email truly comes from bookingfish.ca and has not been altered in transit.

How does DKIM work?

What this means for you

• Booking confirmations arrive in the main inbox — not in spam
• Cancellation and reminder emails are always received by your clients
• Impossible to forge an email claiming to come from BookingFish
• Protection against phishing targeting your clients
• No configuration required on your side — the system is entirely managed by BookingFish

Unlike marketplace platforms (FishingBooker, Roverd, etc.) where clients browse multiple guides, BookingFish gives you a fully private booking space. Your link is yours, your clients are yours, your data stays yours.

Complete isolation per member

• Your booking URL leads exclusively to your calendar — no competitor is displayed
• Your client data (name, email, phone, bookings) is isolated from other members in the database
• No other member can see your reservations, your clients or your configuration
• BookingFish does not reuse your client data for other members or advertising purposes

What BookingFish does NOT do

• Does not sell, rent or share your data or your clients' data to third parties
• Does not display your competitors on your booking page
• Does not hold your clients' funds — payments go directly to your Stripe account
• Does not rank or rate members against each other
• Has no access to your bank account

BookingFish is developed and operated in Canada. All data is hosted on Canadian servers and the platform's practices comply with Canadian personal data protection laws.

LPRPDE / PIPEDA

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is the federal Canadian law governing the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. BookingFish fully complies with it.

• Minimum collection — only data necessary for the service is collected
• Explicit consent required for any data processing
• Right of access, correction and deletion guaranteed
• Limited retention: reservation data kept 7 years (Canadian tax obligations)

PCI DSS

All payments are processed by Stripe, PCI DSS Level 1 certified — the highest security standard in the payments industry. BookingFish never stores credit card data.

CASL / LCAP

In accordance with Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), BookingFish does not send any commercial email without explicit consent. The only automatic emails sent are directly related to your clients' reservations (confirmation, cancellation, reminder).

Canadian hosting

• Your data is hosted on servers located in Canada, under Canadian jurisdiction
• No transfer of personal data outside Canada, except for Stripe (payment processing, international standards)