How to set up different seatings

Resos guides are meant to help you set up your profile in the way you need it to. Running fixed seatings, such as 17:45 and 20:15? This guide also shows how to offer only those times, so a guest cannot book in between and hold a table for the whole evening. With this guide on how to set up different seatings, you will quickly be ready to take online bookings with different time intervals and booking durations for a customized experience. You can choose to create a personalized set of settings both for the default setup or further customize it for each opening hour. Read more to find out how to do so.

Video walkthrough

Prefer to watch instead of read? This short video shows how to set up your default seating settings and customize them for individual opening hours:

What is the time interval and booking duration

Here are some quick definitions for these terms:

• Time interval: The time between available times shown to guests when booking online. E.g. if the interval is 0:30, guests can book at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, etc.
• Default duration: The duration of a booking made by guests online and the default duration set on bookings created by the staff. Including turnaround time. Format: hours: minutes.

Between them, these two settings decide the gap between your bookable times and, by default, how long a booking holds a table. The time interval has no other source. The duration does: turn on Set duration based on number of people and the party size decides the duration instead, overriding Default duration for the bookings it covers. See set a booking duration based on the party size.

Seatings do not cap how much you take in. The time interval and duration control spacing and length, not volume. They cannot stop you accepting more bookings or guests than you want in a service. That cap is the Limits tab on each opening hour, under Menu → Settings & add-ons → General → Opening hours. See how to set up limits within opening hours.

Set up default seatings

Your opening hours can have the same settings on a daily basis for consistency. If this is something that applies to your establishment, then you can simply set up the default seatings for your profile, and then the same time interval and booking duration will be applied to every opening hour and special opening hour created (even though you can still customize these).

In order to set up the default time interval and booking duration, you can go to: Menu → Settings & add-ons → Bookings → Seatings. In this section, you can also choose if you wish your guests to see the booking duration, or to set a booking duration based on the party size.

Set up seatings for your opening hours

If you wish to have different seatings for the days when you are open, you can override the default on a single opening hour. Go to Menu → Settings & add-ons → General → Opening hours, click Edit on the opening hour you want to change, and open its Seatings tab. Turn on Overwrite default seating settings first: until you do, Time interval and Default duration on that tab stay greyed out. Then set the time interval and booking duration you want for that day and save.

As shown in the image below, there are small icons in line with some of the opening hours. These icons indicate the customized settings for that seating, so this might be useful in case you need an overview of the opening hours that have customized seatings.

Fixed seating times and table reuse

Offer only fixed seating times, such as 17:45 and 20:15

Resos builds the times guests can book from three settings on the opening hour. The first time is the Opens at time. Each next time is one Time interval later. The last time is Guests leave by minus the booking duration. So to offer only your seatings, make the time interval the gap between them.

1. Go to Menu → Settings & add-ons → General → Opening hours and click Edit on the opening hour.
2. On the General tab, set Opens at to your first seating, for example 17:45.
3. Set Guests leave by to the time your last seating ends, for example 22:45.
4. On the Seatings tab, turn on Overwrite default seating settings. Set Time interval to the gap between seatings (2:30 in this example) and Default duration to how long each seating holds the table, no longer than the interval.
5. Save.

Guests are now offered 17:45 and 20:15 and nothing in between. A booking that ends at 20:15 does not block a booking that starts at 20:15, so the same table can be sold for both seatings.

If the gap between your seatings is not one of the Time interval options, use one opening hour per seating instead, as described under two seatings that are not evenly spaced.

If Set duration based on number of people is on in the same Seatings tab, the party size decides the duration instead of Default duration. Keep each of those durations no longer than the interval too, or a booking runs into the next seating.

Why one booking between seatings blocks a table all evening

With a short time interval, such as 0:15, guests can pick any quarter hour. A table is held from the booking time for the full duration. A booking at 19:00 with a 2:30 duration holds its table until 21:30, so that table cannot be offered at 17:45 or at 20:15. Fixed seating times, set up as above, stop guests booking in between.

Two seatings that are not evenly spaced

If your seatings are not the same distance apart, add one opening hour per seating on that day. Set Opens at to the seating time and Guests leave by to that time plus the duration. Each opening hour then offers exactly one time. Give each a Title, such as “First seating” and “Second seating”, so guests see them as separate options (see how several opening hours show to guests).

Different seating times for different areas

Seating times belong to the opening hour, not to tables or areas. To give one area different times from another, turn on opening hours per area and attach each opening hour to the areas it applies to, as described in open an area only on certain days. Guests then choose an area first and see the times of the opening hours attached to it.

Several parties at one shared table

With table management on, online booking treats a table as taken while a booking is running, however many seats are left, so a second party cannot book it online. Staff can still place a booking there by hand after confirming the overlap warning. To take several parties per seating online, either:

• Split the table in your setup. Add the shared table as several smaller tables, so each party gets one of them. See how to add and manage tables and areas.
• Cap guests instead of tables. Under Menu → Settings & add-ons → Bookings → Managing bookings → New online bookings, set Accepting new online bookings to Automatically accept all bookings or Manually accept or decline each booking. Times are then no longer checked against free tables. If the shared table is your only table, also set Managing tables to Don’t use table management. Then, on the opening hour’s Limits tab, set Max guests per interval to the number of seats, for example 10. With fixed seating times, that caps each seating at 10 guests. See how to set up limits within opening hours.

Open extra times only when the fixed seatings are full

Resos cannot release more times automatically once your fixed seatings are full. Resos never offers a time because other times are full. You can do it by hand for each date instead: when the fixed seatings fill up, add a special opening hour for that date with the extra times and turn on Supplement (add to regular hours), so it adds to your fixed seatings instead of replacing them. See offer a service on certain dates only.

Charge a deposit for one seating

Deposits need an active paid plan and the Online payment add-on connected to Stripe. Online payment cannot be activated on the Free plan, so deposits cannot be taken on it either. Which paid tier you are on does not matter, any of them will do. On top of that, the Prepayment add-on has to be active: if Require prepayment is greyed out on the opening hour, activate it at Menu → Settings & add-ons → Payment → Prepayment. Prepayment only becomes available once Online payment is active and connected to Stripe.

A deposit is not a seating setting: it lives on the same opening hour, on its Payment tab, so a service you run as its own opening hour (a show night, a tasting menu, a fixed-menu sitting) can ask for a prepayment while your regular service asks for nothing. See set a different deposit for each service for the full walkthrough, including how to split a day into two opening hours for a one-off event.

Need help? We hope this guide for setting up seatings is useful. However, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at hi@resos.com!