Service Times pertains to your business's opening hours in the admin and replaces what you may have known as Seating Rules.
After you have created your Table Layout (click here for table layout creation article), the next - and essential - step is to set your Service Times. They define the times and 'rules' of how bookings can be made at your restaurant.
Next to your general opening hours, you can create so-called "overrides" to easily close bookings for holidays, pop-ups, private events, or similar.
And the system will guide you through each step to make sure you can take bookings smoothly without any extra hassle.
But first things first - where to begin?
1. Create your opening hours for the month, season or whole year:
In the "Opening Hours window, you are able to "Add New" schedules or edit existing ones. See more details in this article.
2. A guide with different steps open up and you will need to go through each of them in order to set your opening hours and times for this particular month, season or year.
Remember - you can always go back and adjust whenever you need.
3. Let's go through each of the steps and see what they mean
Set your schedule: You will be asked to define this schedule with a name, date and time range and connect it to the relevant table layout, which you have added in the previous step
Control Capacity: What are your limits during service? How many people can you accept at the same time and how long should the guests have their table? How far into the future or close to service can a guest book?
Booking modifications & notifications: You need to decide how much freedom you want to give your guests. Are they able to cancel or change their bookings themselves or do you prefer to keep full control?
Guest Payment: You want to pre-charge your guests prior coming or at least keep a guarantee by capturing credit card details?
Communications: If you want your guests to receive customised messages from you (see the types of messages you can customize here), make sure you visit the "Communication" tab first to then add the relevant template to this schedule. You will need to go back in and edit the schedule after doing so to return to the correct step. If you leave this step blank, RSVP has default messages for your guests, so it's not a requirement.
Note: You can use different languages
Extra: If you want to upsell a drinks pairing or merchandise, for example, while the guest is booking a table, you can add the different options under the "Shop" tab. Once added, they will appear under "Optional Extras" that you can then link to this schedule.
Et voilá! Once you completed all steps, your schedule should be all set.
IMPORTANT: Before you can go ahead and test it, you will need to enable the schedule first. With the toggle, you can easily enable and disable schedules as you like.
NOTE: You can preview and test your service times once completed with the URL link shown below the event title.
