Taking Reservations

All three live in Reservations→Store Settings→Booking Rules, in two cards: Slot & Duration at the top, and Capacity & Party Size below it.

The same card also carries Max Party Size — the largest single booking you will take online. The guest's party-size picker stops at this number, so a larger group has to contact you directly. Set it to the biggest table (or combination) you can actually seat.

Duration is the setting that does the work. With Reservation Duration at 90 minutes, a table booked at 16:00 stays occupied until 17:30 — so that table is not offered at 16:30 or 17:00.

A Saturday with capacity for 10 tables and a 90-minute duration runs like this:

If you use a table map, the system also counts your actual tables and closes the slot when every table is taken during that window — even if the slot limits above have not been reached.

A slot that has reached any limit simply stops appearing on your booking page. Guests cannot select it, so they are never shown a time you cannot honour.

Use a block whenever you know in advance that bookings will not work — a private event, a holiday, a staff shortage — regardless of how much capacity is technically free.

Everything here lives in Reservations→Store Settings→Special Dates, under Blocked Dates & Special Openings.

To close a whole day: set Type to Block, choose the date under Start Date, optionally add a reason so your team knows why, and add it.

To close part of a day: switch on the time-range option and enter a start and end time — 16:00 to 19:30 for a private function, say. Bookings outside that window continue as normal.

To close several days: fill in the optional End Date. One rule covers a continuous period of up to 365 days.

To open a day you are normally closed: set Type to Special Opening and give it a start and end time. This overrides both your regular opening hours and any block covering that date.

To reopen a date, delete the rule from the list — the date returns to your normal opening hours immediately.

Open Reservations→Booking URL. This is the address guests book through — put it on your website, your social profiles and your Google listing.

Use Preview whenever you change a setting — it opens the live booking page, which is the only place that shows what the change actually did. Further down the same tab there is an Embed on your website section, for putting the booking form inside your own site rather than linking out to it.

A guest picks a party size and a date, then a time, then enters their details:

The calendar only opens dates inside your booking window, so a guest cannot book a year ahead or a day you are closed. On the next step, times that have hit any of your limits are not listed at all — a guest is never shown a slot you cannot honour.

Tables can be assigned by hand — open a booking, click the tables on the map, save — and reassigned the same way whenever a party size changes.

The system can also choose for you. It is off until you switch it on, in Store Settings→Booking Rules:

It looks for one table first — the smallest that still seats the party, so a couple goes to a 2-top rather than the 6-top. Only when no single table fits does it consider combinations, and only ones you have declared. If nothing fits, the booking is left without a table for staff to place by hand; it is never refused for this reason alone.

Declaring which tables may be joined is a one-off job in Store Settings→Tables: choose Add join, tick two or more tables, set Seats when joined and save.

The system cannot see your room — it knows table numbers and seat counts, not which tables sit either side of a walkway. A table may appear in more than one combination: declaring 10+13 and 10+11 means both pairings are available, not that 11+13 may be joined.

Work through this once and the automatic protection is active from then on.

Worth testing: open your own booking page and try to book a period you know is full. If the slot does not appear, your limits are working. If it is still offered, one of the capacity fields is empty.