Setup Rentals

⚠️ Wix Rentals has NO APIs of its own. It runs on the Wix Bookings APIs with rentals-specific field values, so a rental offering is a Bookings service and a reservation is a Bookings booking. There is no @wix/rentals package and no /rentals/ REST namespace — do not go looking for one, and do not report rentals as “not supported headlessly”.

The Wix Rentals doc set is four pages — this recipe is distilled from them, and they are where to go when a task falls outside the common path:

• About Wix Rentals (opens in a new tab) — the model, the app id, and the constraints
• Wix Rentals and the Bookings APIs (opens in a new tab) — each rentals concept mapped to its Bookings API
• About Wix Rentals Availability (opens in a new tab) — resource schedules, hourly vs daily, buffer time
• Wix Rentals: Sample Flows (opens in a new tab) — the call sequences, including Set up a rental service (opens in a new tab), which is this recipe end to end

The invariants (read these before anything else)

A service is a rental because of five field values, all set at create time in STEP 4:

1. appId = ff5d6eb1-65e4-4f9a-8b14-64d34c12cc2e — and it is IMMUTABLE after create. A service created without it is a plain Bookings service forever; no update converts it. This is the most expensive mistake in this recipe.
2. serviceResources: [{ "resourceType": { "id": "<resourceTypeId>" }, "resourceIds": { "values": ["<resourceId>", …] } }] — list the resource type and its concrete resource ids. Availability comes from the listed ids: identical services return 48 time-slots with them and 0 without. (Dropping serviceResources altogether returns MISSING_APPOINTMENT_RESOURCES — see STEP 4.)
3. primaryResourceType — the resource type GUID, which makes availability come from the rooms/vehicles instead of staff schedules. It must reference one of the types listed in serviceResources. Omitting it silently falls back to the staff resource type.
4. form.id = 3a2ea2ce-91f4-4617-ab24-629933c0c31a — the Rentals default booking form, provisioned at install and identical on every site. Omit it and you get the standard Bookings form instead.
5. durationRange — with a single unitType (HOUR or DAY) and its matching hourOptions/dayOptions. Mutually exclusive with sessionDurations.

And one ordering rule: resources must exist before the service (STEP 2 before STEP 4), or availability is permanently empty.

Rental services never use a category — omit the field. The bookings “a category or it’s invisible” rule is specific to Wix Bookings and does not apply to rentals. See STEP 3.

API surfaces: everything is on the public host https://www.wixapis.com/bookings/.... Services are Services V2 (…/bookings/v2/services) — the method page’s schema header shows an internal …/_api/bookings/v2/services form, do not use that. Resource types are …/bookings/v2/resources/resource-types, resources are …/bookings/v2/resources. The Wix Rentals app id is ff5d6eb1-65e4-4f9a-8b14-64d34c12cc2e (needed here on the service, and by the frontend for filtering + the cart).

Article: Steps for Setting Up Wix Rentals

YOU MUST complete the following steps in the given order (1-5) without skipping any and without requiring additional user input. STEP 5 (attributes) runs only when the request calls for filterable resource properties. The Attach images step runs only when imagery is on — skip it entirely otherwise.

⚠️ CRITICAL ORDER REQUIREMENT: resource type (STEP 1) → resources (STEP 2) → services (STEP 4). (STEP 3 is intentionally empty — rental services use no category.) A rental service declares its resource type in serviceResources and points at it via primaryResourceType, and its availability is derived from the resources in that type — so both must exist before the service. A service created against a resource type that holds no resources has permanently empty availability: it is created successfully, appears in the catalog, and can never be booked.

Check for pre-existing services first — same demo-data cleanup as bookings, same rules. List with POST https://www.wixapis.com/bookings/v2/services/query (body {"query": {"paging": {"limit": 100}}}), and DELETE https://www.wixapis.com/bookings/v2/services/<serviceId> the install’s own samples. Do not assume every existing service is a sample — if it isn’t obviously install demo data, ask the user first. Full rationale: setup-bookings.md § “Check for pre-existing services first”.

STEP 1: Create the resource type

A resource type is the category of thing being rented — “Meeting rooms”, “Vans”, “Cameras”. A service connects to exactly one resource type, and Wix derives that service’s availability from the resources inside it. Create one resource type per kind of thing the request rents.

The response is { "resourceType": { "id": "<resourceTypeId>", … } } — keep each id, STEP 2 and STEP 4 both need it. Full contract: https://dev.wix.com/docs/api-reference/business-solutions/bookings/resources/resource-types-v2/create-resource-type.md (opens in a new tab)

• name is required, max 40 characters, and must be unique per site. A duplicate returns 409 RESOURCE_TYPE_ALREADY_EXISTS_FOR_NAME — query or rename rather than retrying the same name.
• Sites have a cap on resource types (429 MAX_NUMBER_OF_RESOURCE_TYPES_REACHED). Create one per genuine category, not one per item.

STEP 2: Create the resources

A resource is an individual bookable thing — “Room A”, “Room B”, “Van 3”. Create one per rentable unit. Two resources of the same type mean two customers can rent in parallel.

Keep each resource’s returned id — it’s needed for attributes (STEP 5) and the handoff, not by the service.

A resource’s typeId binds it to its type; the service then binds to those resources by listing their ids. STEP 4’s serviceResources names the resource type and its resourceIds, which is where the service’s availability comes from. Add a resource later by updating the service’s resourceIds.

• ⚠️ Omit workingHoursSchedules — this is the deliberate seed default and it matters downstream. (Why, in detail (opens in a new tab).) A resource with no working-hours schedule is bookable 24/7. That keeps the seed to a single call per resource, and it makes a multi-day daily rental store as one booking rather than a linked group of per-day bookings. A resource with working hours splits every multi-day rental into one booking per working day, created through Create Multi Service Booking — a materially harder frontend flow (how-to-code-rentals.md § “Daily availability”). Seed 24/7 unless the request explicitly needs opening hours; the merchant can add hours from the dashboard later.
• Working hours, when the request genuinely needs them, are a Schedules V3 schedule referenced by workingHoursSchedules.scheduleId — created separately, then attached. It is out of scope for a seed; note it in the handoff instead. Reference: https://dev.wix.com/docs/api-reference/business-solutions/bookings/resources/resources-v2/create-resource.md (opens in a new tab)
• Locations — locationOptions.specificLocationOptions binds a resource to business locations. Omit it for a single-location site (the default). When both workingHoursSchedules and locationOptions are set, workingHoursSchedules takes precedence.

STEP 3: No category — rental services don’t use categories

⚠️ Rental services do not use categories at all. Omit category from the service payload entirely — do not send "category": {}, a made-up id, or try to create one. There is no step here; the numbering is kept so STEP 4 keeps its name.

This is the one place where the bookings invariant does not carry over. setup-bookings.md STEP 2 calls category.id critical because a Bookings service without one is hidden on the live site. That rule is specific to Wix Bookings and does not apply to Wix Rentals — rentals are surfaced through the appId-filtered catalog read, not through Bookings categories. Confirmed on a live Rentals site: services created with no category come back from that read with hidden: false, and the Rentals install’s own demo service ships without one.

On a Rentals-only site the categories API isn’t reachable anyway — it belongs to the Wix Bookings app, so POST …/bookings/v2/categories returns 428 APP_NOT_INSTALLED. That is expected: rentals don’t use categories, so there is nothing to do here. If the site also runs Wix Bookings for plain services, the categories API works there — assign categories only to those Bookings services, never to rentals.

STEP 4: Create the rental services

Create the services one at a time with POST https://www.wixapis.com/bookings/v2/services — one call per service, each with a top-level service object. A rental service is a normal Services V2 APPOINTMENT carrying the rentals-specific values.

⚠️ Do NOT use the bulk endpoint (…/bookings/v2/bulk/services/create) for rentals. It creates the service correctly but attaches a schedule tagged with the Wix Bookings app id instead of the Wix Rentals one, and calendar events inherit their app id from the schedule — so every booking and every event on that service becomes invisible in the Rentals dashboard calendar. The service itself looks perfect, which is what makes this hard to spot. Verified on a live site: bulk-created schedules carry 13d21c63-b5ec-5912-8397-c3a5ddb27a97; single-created ones carry the rentals app id. Use single create until that is fixed upstream. (Bulk is still fine for plain Wix Bookings services — see setup-bookings.md.)

⚠️ CRITICAL: the V2 service payload is FLAT — name/description/tagLine are top-level, not nested under info. Price uses value (a string), not amount. Full field contract: https://dev.wix.com/docs/api-reference/business-solutions/bookings/services/services-v2/create-service.md (opens in a new tab)

One hourly rental service, bookable 1–8 hours at $40/hour:

serviceResources carries both levels. resourceType.id is the type from STEP 1; resourceIds.values lists the individual resources from STEP 2 that this service can book (max 100 ids, max 8 serviceResources entries).

List the concrete resourceIds — the service’s availability comes from them. Verified on a live site: identical services returned 48 time-slots with resourceIds and 0 without. Add resources later by updating the service’s resourceIds.

⚠️ Price decides how many services you create. The rate lives on the service, not the resource, so resources that rent at different rates must be separate services, each pinning its own resource in resourceIds. Three meeting rooms at ₪60, ₪120 and ₪250 per hour are three services sharing one resource type — not one service with three resources. Resources that rent at the same rate can share a single service.

For a daily rental, swap the duration range (everything else is identical):

⚠️ CRITICAL FORMAT REQUIREMENTS:

• appId must be the Wix Rentals app id ff5d6eb1-65e4-4f9a-8b14-64d34c12cc2e, and it is immutable after create — a service created without it is a plain Bookings service forever, and no update can convert it. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive mistake in this recipe.
• appId also means the service does NOT appear in the Wix Bookings dashboard — it appears in the Rentals dashboard. That is correct and expected; don’t “fix” it.
• ⚠️ serviceResources is REQUIRED and is the real cause of MISSING_APPOINTMENT_RESOURCES — do not trust the error text. The message reads “service of type appointment requires at least one staff member or service resource”, which invites you to go check whether your resource type has resources in it. That is a dead end — the create fails even when the type is fully populated. What the service actually needs is the resource type declared on the service:

  jsonCopy

  "serviceResources": [ {
    "resourceType": { "id": "<resourceTypeId>" },
    "resourceIds": { "values": ["<resourceId>"] }
  } ]

  Verified on a live site: adding this field is what makes the create succeed. resourceType.id is the type from STEP 1; resourceIds.values lists the resources from STEP 2 this service can book. Max 8 serviceResources entries, max 100 ids each. resourceIds supplies the service’s availability — list them (48 slots with, 0 without, otherwise identical). Add resources later by updating resourceIds.
• primaryResourceType is the resource type GUID from STEP 1, and must be one of the types listed in serviceResources. It is what makes availability come from the rooms/vehicles rather than from staff schedules. Omitting it silently falls back to the staff resource type, which produces a normal staff-driven appointment service.
• form.id selects the booking form. Set it to the Wix Rentals default booking form — 3a2ea2ce-91f4-4617-ab24-629933c0c31a. Installing the Rentals app provisions that form, and because it is cloned from the template with the template’s own id, the GUID is the same on every site — treat it as a constant, like the appId. Omit the field and the service uses the standard Wix Bookings form instead, so the rentals form’s own fields won’t be there. It’s the Rentals app’s own choice too: RentalsProvisioner sets it on every service it creates.
• durationRange and sessionDurations are mutually exclusive — send one or the other, never both. durationRange also can’t be combined with workingHours on the service.
• unitType selects which config object is read: HOUR → hourOptions, DAY → dayOptions. Sending dayOptions with unitType: "HOUR" leaves the range unset.
• Ranges: hourly minDurationInMinutes/maxDurationInMinutes are 30–1440; daily minDurationInDays/maxDurationInDays are 1–8 for rentals. Min must be ≤ max. (The underlying Services V2 schema permits days up to 60; Wix Rentals documents 1–8 — stay inside 1–8.)
• One unit type per service. A service is hourly or daily, never both. If the request wants a room by the hour and by the day, that is two services, each with its own price.
• Omit staffMemberIds. Rentals are resource-driven, not staff-driven — serviceResources above is what satisfies the appointment-resource requirement. Never add a staff resource to get past MISSING_APPOINTMENT_RESOURCES; that reintroduces staff-based availability and produces a service that is no longer a rental in behaviour.
• Omit category. Rental services don’t use categories at all (STEP 3).
• onlineBooking: { "enabled": true } is required — V2 rejects the create without it even though it reads as optional.
• defaultCapacity is required; use 1 (one customer rents a given resource at a time; parallel capacity comes from having more resources, not higher capacity).
• payment.options — at least one of online/inPerson must be true, even for free services. NO_FEE must pair with online: false, inPerson: true.
• Price is per unit — per hour for HOUR, per day for DAY. Wix multiplies it out at booking time (hourly is prorated per minute: minutes × price ÷ 60). Do not pre-multiply into a whole-rental price.
• locations[].type — use "BUSINESS", never "OWNER_BUSINESS" (that enum belongs to createBooking‘s slot location).
• Currency — the site’s business currency wins; a EUR-locale site stores EUR even if you send USD. Not an error.
• Imagery is opt-in (SEED.md § “Entity images”) — seed text-only, attach images in the pass-2 step below.

Reading the response. A single create returns the created service under a top-level service:

Keep each service’s service.id and service.mainSlug.name (the frontend links by slug; if absent, derive it: lowercase, non-alphanumerics → hyphens). A failed create returns a normal error — retry that one service once with the same body; don’t loop, and don’t re-create ones that already succeeded.

Verify the range actually landed. durationRange is a newer field and a silently-dropped range yields a service that looks fine and books as a fixed slot. Re-read one created service (GET https://www.wixapis.com/bookings/v2/services/<serviceId>) and confirm schedule.availabilityConstraints.durationRange.unitType is populated before moving on.

STEP 5: Resource attributes (only when the request wants filterable properties)

Attributes are typed custom properties on a resource — Capacity (number), Has projector (boolean), Bed type (string) — used to describe resources on the site and to filter the catalog. Skip this step entirely unless the request calls for it.

⚠️ The attributes API is the one surface here that really does live under /_api/. Unlike Services V2 (where the _api form in the schema header is wrong and the public form is correct), the attributes reference’s own examples call https://www.wixapis.com/_api/attributes/v1/.... Use the paths exactly as written below — don’t “correct” them to a public form.

1 · Define each attribute once per site. Keep each returned attributeDefinition.id.

2 · Set values per resource. The resource id is the {entityId} path segment. Each entry is matched by attributeDefinitionId, so only the listed attributes are created or updated.

The value key is typed — numberData for NUMBER, and the string/boolean equivalents for those valueTypes; check the reference for the exact key rather than guessing.

3 · Reading them back for display — filter to attributes whose attributeDefinition.visibility is true. ⚠️ The API does not enforce visibility server-side, so an unfiltered render leaks attributes the merchant marked hidden.

References: https://dev.wix.com/docs/api-reference/business-solutions/bookings/resources/attributes/attribute-definition/create-attribute-definition.md (opens in a new tab) and https://dev.wix.com/docs/api-reference/business-solutions/bookings/resources/attributes/attribute-value/bulk-upsert-attribute-values.md (opens in a new tab)

Attach images (imagery ON only — skip otherwise)

Identical to the bookings flow, because it is the same Services V2 entity. Obtain the image per references/IMAGE_GENERATION.md, then PATCH https://www.wixapis.com/bookings/v2/services/<serviceId> writing under media.mainMedia and media.coverMedia, each { "image": { "id", "url", "width", "height" } }, echoing the current revision.

⚠️ Writing the image under media.image returns HTTP 200 but silently drops it — confirm by re-querying the service and checking media.mainMedia is populated. Never block on image failure; leave the service text-only. Full shape and caveats: setup-bookings.md § “Attach images”.

Conclusion

Following these steps in order sets up a Wix Rentals site:

• A resource type exists, and it contains resources — without resources the service’s availability is permanently empty.
• Every service carries the Wix Rentals appId (ff5d6eb1-65e4-4f9a-8b14-64d34c12cc2e), set at create time because it is immutable afterwards.
• Every service carries serviceResources with concrete resourceIds listed — resource type alone gives 0 availability slots — plus primaryResourceType, so availability comes from the resources rather than from staff.
• Every service carries form.id = the Rentals default booking form constant, so it uses the rentals form rather than the standard Bookings one.
• Every service carries a durationRange with a single unitType and its matching hourOptions/dayOptions — never alongside sessionDurations.
• No category is set — rental services don’t use categories, and the bookings visibility rule doesn’t apply to them. They are surfaced by the appId-filtered catalog read.
• Resources are seeded 24/7 (no working-hours schedule), which keeps a multi-day daily rental to a single booking.
• IDs kept for the coding handoff: resourceTypeIds[], resourceIds[], serviceIds[], service slugs (mainSlug.name), and any attributeDefinitionIds[].