Services, Rentals, Add-ons, and Booking Flows
One of the recurring challenges I keep solving is how to model services, rentals, and add-ons in a way that feels natural for both customers and admins. It came up first with MidBlink Photography, where I needed simple session types, extra options like travel fees or edits, and a smooth booking experience. It surfaced again with Capital City Entertainment, where the offerings expanded into rentals and bundled experiences.
What I’ve settled on is treating Service, Rental, and Addon as first-class objects with the same DNA. They all share the basics—name, description, price, duration, and rules—but each carries its own flavor. Services are the main events (a photo shoot, a DJ set, a catering package). Rentals are physical or time-bound resources (lighting rigs, buses, cameras). Add-ons are the smaller upsells that make the booking complete (extra hours, premium edits, custom branding).
The booking flow ties these together. A customer chooses a service or rental as the anchor, then layers on addons to tailor it. The system calculates the total with taxes, travel rules, and deposits, then confirms availability against calendars. On the admin side, it all resolves into one pipeline—requests, payments, reminders, and delivery tasks—no matter if the original booking was a photo shoot, a party bus, or a set of speakers.
What’s interesting is how portable this pattern is. Photography and entertainment are very different markets, but the underlying structure is the same. Services and rentals define the experience; addons create margin and customization; booking flows stitch it together into something people can actually use. The repeatability of this design is what makes it powerful—I don’t have to reinvent booking logic every time.
By unifying the way I think about services, rentals, and addons, I’ve built platforms that stay flexible while still shipping fast. Customers get clarity. Admins get control. And the codebase stays consistent across use cases, which is the real win.