Scheduling and turn times

Your scheduling settings are the rules the availability engine uses to decide what times to offer diners. Get these right and your booking page fills the room the way you want it to. They live in venue settings under service hours and booking rules.

Service hours

Set your service periods for each day of the week — the windows you take bookings, e.g. dinner from 5:00 to 9:00 PM. A day with no periods takes no bookings. All times are in your venue's own timezone.

Booking rules

These shape what the booking page offers:

• Slot interval — how often bookable times appear: every 15, 30 or 60 minutes.
• Buffer between seatings — rest time after a party leaves before the table is offered again, so tables get bussed and reset.
• Pacing cap — the most covers you'll seat per 15 minutes, smoothing arrivals so the kitchen and floor aren't slammed. Leave it empty for no cap.
• Covers per server — feeds the staffing hints on your covers forecast.

Turn times by party size

A turn time is how long you hold a table for a given party size. You set bands — for example up to 2 guests for 75 minutes, up to 4 for 90, up to 6 for 105, and a final band that catches any larger party. Availability uses these to know when a table frees up for the next booking.

Turn-time learning

TableStack watches how long parties actually stay and, once it has enough real visits (at least five in a band), tells you the median actual time next to your setting — for example "actually running ~95 min (median of 40 visits)". If your guess is off, one tap applies the learned number. Your targets stay in your hands; the suggestion just shows you the truth from your own floor.

Closures and special dates

Mark days you're closed (holidays, private buyouts) and they drop off the booking page and show grey in the calendar. You can also set special hours for a single date — a shorter New Year's Eve service, say — which override that day's normal template.

Slot rules: fine-grained windows

For finer control, add slot rules — windows that override the venue-wide settings for specific days and times. Each rule can:

• cap covers or parties per 15 minutes for that window, and
• restrict the booking channel: Online + in-house (the default), Online only, or In-house only — which keeps a window open for walk-ins and phone bookings while hiding it from the public widget. That's how you protect prime-time capacity for regulars and walk-ins.

Blocking a window

A slot rule can also mark its window as blocked — no bookings at all, from any channel, for that window. Blocked windows show shaded on the reservation book's pacing strip and timeline.

Managers rarely need the settings page for one-off changes: tap a window on the pacing strip to block it, cap its covers, or remove the rule again — the change applies to that date only, so your weekly template never moves.

What this affects

• Availability — every rule here feeds it directly.
• Your booking page — changes apply immediately.
• Reports — your turn-time targets are the benchmark the service-pacing report measures against.

What affects this

• Real service data — the turn-time learner suggests numbers from your actual visits.

Related: overbooking and holds.

Closing days from the calendar

Venue settings → Closures & special dates now leads with a month calendar: tap any day to close it (tap again to reopen). Red is closed, amber marks special-hours dates (edited in the rows beneath), grey is your weekly day off. The lists below the calendar still work exactly as before.