Product documentation / WordPress

CarRentory.Documentation.

Start with the complete Free setup, then use the separate customization and Pro sections only when you need them.

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Free 1.1.1 / Pro 1.0.4 English

Complete guide. 7 chapters.

In this guide / 01 of 07

Chapter 01 / 07

Installation & setup.

Start with the Free setup, supported environment, release notes and installation.

On this page

CarRentory Free Setup

Free

CarRentory Free is a complete standalone booking plugin. Follow the sections below in order to create your fleet, connect the required pages, accept offline bookings and test the customer journey.

You do not need WooCommerce or CarRentory Pro to accept and manage booking requests.

Explore the live CarRentory demo. The demo may include optional Pro features that are not part of the Free plugin.

Compatibility

Free and Pro versions in this guide

Free 1.1.1 / Pro 1.0.4

Requires WordPress

5.8 or later

Tested up to

7.1

Requires PHP

7.4 or later

What’s new in Free 1.1.1

Released on 25 October 2026. This maintenance update improves protection-plan price updates and selected-plan details. Exact driver details are still required to complete a booking.

Improved

Automatically open the selected protection plan’s details and keep its selection and keyboard focus consistent after price updates.

Fixed

Fixed protection-plan price updates before exact driver details are entered, using the selected search-age group for the provisional quote.
Keep exact driver details and all booking eligibility checks required when submitting the booking.

What’s new: Free 1.1.0 / Pro 1.0.4

CarRentory Free 1.1.0 and Pro 1.0.4 were released on 25 October 2026. Free and Pro use independent version numbers.

CarRentory Free 1.1.0

New

Added configurable driver age and license-experience requirements, itemized young-driver fees and protection plans, all disabled by default.
Added protection-plan management, vehicle assignments, informational pickup deposits and fleet readiness guidance.
Added managed fuel types while preserving existing vehicle fuel values.
Added a shared currency code, verified full-payment recording and capture/refund financial data for compatible add-ons.

Improved

Improved standard and compact search with accessible driver-age selection, required-field validation and clearer rental summaries.
Refined vehicle cards with aligned titles, consistent icons and clearer driver requirements and price breakdowns.
Reorganized payment-method settings and booking, vehicle and extra editors.
Redesigned the dashboard around today’s pickups, returns and recent bookings.
Improved customer and administrator booking emails and saved driver/protection summaries on booking confirmations.
Send online-payment completion emails after verified payment and booking updates, with duplicate suppression; compatible payment adapters are required.
Preserved notifications with older online-payment adapters and corrected inventory handling for separate payment-ledger connections.

Fixed

Fixed translated-field text preservation, mobile translation layouts and Swedish customer-email overflow; completed supported-language translations.

CarRentory Pro 1.0.4

New

Added administrator-only Stripe Diagnostics with optional bounded logging and a privacy-safe support report; no automatic payment changes.
Added early cache/referrer protection and canonical-origin validation for Stripe return URLs.

Improved

Integrated Stripe completion notifications with the shared post-payment email workflow in CarRentory Free 1.1.0.
Included saved driver/protection details in booking exports and compact printable bookings; full terms remain stored in the booking.
Simplified Payments and Outstanding Balance price breakdowns while preserving recorded financial amounts.
Replaced dashboard financial cards with links to the Payments and Outstanding Balance reports.
Completed supported-language translations for Diagnostics, reports and new booking information.
Updated the bundled Freemius SDK to 2.13.5 with licensing-interface security hardening and pricing-page fixes.

Changed

Payments and Outstanding Balance CSVs use 27 and 23 columns and omit the 30 Driver/protection suffix columns; review external imports that used those columns.
Requires CarRentory Free 1.0.2 or later; the new payment-email and Driver and protection features require Free 1.1.0 or later.

Previous releases remain below and in the dated release history. Download Free through the existing WordPress.org listing.

What’s new in 1.0.3

1.0.3

CarRentory Free and Pro 1.0.3 bring a clearer checkout and Booking Summary, steadier theme layouts, and improved Stripe setup and Checkout handoff. The handoff correction uses Free and Pro 1.0.3 together.

CarRentory Free 1.0.3

Improved the booking admin layout so long payment identifiers and Checkout URLs wrap without horizontal overflow.
Clarified the booking summary with grouped rental details, readable pricing and the final total at the end.
Stabilized booking and results typography so theme text sizes and weights do not distort plugin controls.
Extended consistent typography to booking confirmations and aligned vehicle image heights in results.
Display actionable settings validation messages on the CarRentory settings page.
Hide the optional Extras section when no extras are active and keep checkout section numbers consecutive.
Fixed the Stripe Checkout handoff so successful online-payment bookings redirect before theme output begins.
Prevented duplicate booking and payment-provider processing when reusing the prepared submission result.

CarRentory Pro 1.0.3

Show safe masked fingerprints of saved Stripe secrets and field-specific setup instructions.
Added a subtle mode-switch transition that respects reduced-motion preferences.
Improved Stripe configuration validation so Test and Live API keys must match the active mode and webhook signing secrets must use the expected credential type.
Show Test or Live API fields according to the selected Stripe mode without losing saved credentials.
Improved the booking admin display for long Stripe session IDs and Checkout URLs.
Reject malformed credential replacements during settings saves while retaining previously saved values.
Fixed the frontend handoff to Stripe Checkout together with CarRentory Free 1.0.3.

Review the official Free changelog on WordPress.org and the Free and Pro release history.

Installation

In WordPress Admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
Search for CarRentory.
Select CarRentory by 2o2code.
Click Install Now.
Click Activate.

Open the official CarRentory plugin page on WordPress.org.

Manual ZIP installation

Use this alternative method when you already have a trusted CarRentory ZIP package.

In WordPress Admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
Click Upload Plugin.
Select the CarRentory ZIP package without extracting it.
Click Install Now.
Click Activate Plugin.

Do not extract the ZIP before uploading it. WordPress.org may provide a versioned filename; the installed plugin folder is always carrentory.

After activation, you will see a new admin menu: CarRentory

Update Free and Pro together

Free and Pro have independent version numbers. The recommended pair for this guide is Free 1.1.1 and Pro 1.0.4. Pro’s minimum Free requirement remains 1.0.2; the complete new Stripe email and Driver & protection workflow needs Free 1.1.0 with Pro 1.0.4.

Keep an appropriate backup of your website.
Update CarRentory Free first.
Update the optional Pro add-on.
Review any custom theme templates and external CSV imports before relying on the new layout or export format.

Mixed older/newer package combinations retain legacy fallback behavior, not the complete new workflow. Existing approved download and Pro license destinations remain unchanged.

Custom theme overrides are not rewritten automatically. Existing combined overrides keep their compatibility layout. A developer adopting the new layout must reconcile booking/form.php, customer-details.php and rental-policy.php, keeping required controls and freshness fields, not just copying visual markup. Keep business logic in plugin hooks or services, not templates.

Complete official reference / Version 1.0.3

View the published source

What you see	What to check
Wrong key or object ID	Copy the complete API key into the matching field. Do not use a `pmc_` ID, a masked saved value or the webhook signing secret as an API key.
Wrong Test/Live mode	Match the mode with both API keys and the endpoint environment. The shared `whsec_` field must contain that endpoint’s signing secret.
Restricted key cannot start Checkout	Review the restricted key’s permissions for the required Checkout operations. A valid prefix or format does not grant API access.
Checkout does not open	Check that Free and Pro are active, Pro entitlement is available, Stripe is enabled, and the selected environment, API keys, currency and webhook signing secret are correct. Use Free 1.1.1 with Pro 1.0.4 for the complete new workflow. Diagnostics can help organize the observations; it does not automatically fix them.
Stripe says Paid, but CarRentory shows Pending or Unpaid	Check the correct endpoint and signing secret, delivery of `checkout.session.completed`, and its HTTP response. Compare payment state separately from booking status, then review Auto-confirm paid Stripe bookings. Pending alone does not establish a plugin bug or a customer mistake.

Page	What it shows	Export
Payments Report	Revenue, paid amount, balance due and booking totals grouped by payment status.	Filtered CSV from the page toolbar.
Outstanding Balance	Bookings with unpaid or partially paid balances, customer contact details and the amount still due.	Filtered CSV from the page toolbar.
Dashboard	Today’s pickups and returns, recent bookings and links to the Pro financial reports.	No dashboard export; use the reports for detailed CSV data.

The people behind the code

Need help with setup?

Send a support request with your website URL, plugin version, WordPress version and a short description of the issue.

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