Reservation Booking setup controls the public listing, live booking window, online waitlist, table availability, deposit quote, and policy version for one location. Confirm the active store before changing these rules.
Configure public booking and availability
- Open Admin → Reservations → Booking setup.
- Set the public handle, display name, timezone, booking window, minimum notice, dining duration, maximum party size, and slot interval.
- Configure up to four booking periods per day. Overnight periods are supported.
- Add full-day or timed closures for dates when guests must not book.
- Choose whether the location is Publicly listed and save the marketplace settings.
Availability is calculated from these rules and live table capacity. Saving a public handle or weekly hours does not guarantee that every requested party size has a table. Test the exact date, time, and party size through the public booking page.
Control the online waitlist
Use Accept new online joins to pause or resume new customer waitlist entries. Pausing online joins does not remove guests already waiting and does not stop staff from managing the waitlist in the POS Host workspace.
The Published wait quote is copied to each new online entry. Changing the default quote does not rewrite the quote already stored on an existing waitlist entry. Staff should update the active entry when the real wait changes materially.
Configure reservation deposits
Choose No deposit, Fixed per reservation, or Per person, then enter the amount, three-letter currency, and quote lifetime. Fixed charges apply once to the reservation; per-person charges scale with party size.
Saving a deposit policy does not activate payment processing. Stripe Connect and the approved application-fee configuration must also be ready. Checkout fails closed when payment configuration is unavailable, so do not tell guests a deposit was collected until the customer payment view shows paid.
A quote can expire before checkout completes. The customer can use Check deposit policy or Resume secure checkout from the Payments section for an eligible requested, pending, or confirmed reservation. Repeated checkout attempts use duplicate protection and must not create a second charge for the same live quote.
If a guest reports a charge but cannot find the booking
Do not create a second reservation or start another deposit checkout until the original records are checked.
- Confirm the guest is signed in to the same customer account and viewing the same location used for booking.
- Search for the reservation reference in the customer reservation list and the location's reservation workspace.
- Open Payments and compare the reservation reference, amount, and deposit state.
- Treat checkout pending as unresolved, not paid. Paid is the recorded deposit state; failed, cancelled, or expired does not prove that a provider-side charge can be ignored without reconciliation.
- If the deposit is recorded as paid but the reservation is not visible, stop duplicate attempts and escalate with the reservation reference, location, deposit ID or quote ID, amount, state, and time. Do not send payment credentials.
Deposit checkout is created for an existing reservation reference and uses a stable idempotency key for the live quote. Reopening an eligible pending checkout can return the existing session instead of creating a second one.
Publish customer policies safely
Set the cancellation policy, no-show policy, optional full-terms URL, and whether acceptance is required before booking. Policy or cancellation-cutoff changes create a new version for future bookings. Existing reservations keep the policy evidence recorded when they were created.
After saving, place a signed-out test booking and verify the local time, party limit, required consent, deposit requirement, and resulting reservation. Do not use a staff-created test alone as proof that the public customer flow is ready.