Set default booking behaviour and total seats for a location
The Booking Settings section of Location Settings controls how bookings behave at this venue by default: how long a table is kept, whether you book on tables or on a total number of seats, and how seated bookings are closed. Advanced Settings has tools to recalculate availability if numbers look wrong.
Where to find it
Backoffice › Settings › Location & Operations › Location Settings. Scroll down to Booking Settings and Advanced Settings.
What it does
Work without tables (Beta)
- Take reservations on a number of seats instead of a floor plan. Bookings arrive without a table, and the Host App shows them as blocks on the timeline and in the list.
- Total seats: "How many guests can be seated in the restaurant at the same time." It is used as the room capacity in the Host App, and as the online limit when no separate online limit is set.
- The online limit itself ("Max guests at the same time") is set in Widget Management › Booking Rules and can never be higher than the total seats.
- Your tables and floor plan are kept. You can switch back at any time.
Booking defaults
- Default Reservation Duration: how long a booking keeps a table, in minutes (at least 30). The page recommends 90–120 minutes for restaurants and 60 minutes for cafés.
- Squeeze Duration, Enable Squeeze for all days and Customize per shift: the shortest seating time for gap-fill bookings when squeeze mode is on. Requires the Capacity Booster add-on.
- Staff max party size (internal): an optional maximum party size for bookings made by staff in the Host App and backoffice. Leave it empty for no limit.
- Duration Picker Options: Minimum, Step and Maximum for the duration dropdown when staff create or edit a reservation. The default is 15-minute steps from 15 minutes to 4 hours.
- Allow Reservation Overlap: when on, several bookings may share a time slot up to your maximum capacity. "Use with caution."
- Auto-complete reservations: when on, seated reservations are marked completed once their expected end time passes. When off, they stay open until staff complete them.
Advanced Settings
- Capacity & Availability Tools: Trigger Capacity Profile Calculation and Compute Widget Availability Cache recalculate which tables fit each party size and what the widget can offer.
- Day metrics totals: Rebuild day metrics recounts the per-day reservation totals used by calendar heat maps, dashboards and reports.
How to set it up
- To book on seats: enter Total seats, click Save next to it, then turn on Work without tables.
- Set Default Reservation Duration and the other options.
- Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
Good to know
- Work without tables and Total seats save straight away with their own Save button. The other fields need Save Changes.
- When Lightspeed POS is connected, seated reservations complete when the check is closed in the POS, so Auto-complete reservations has no effect.
- Day metrics are kept in sync automatically and recalculated every night. Use Rebuild day metrics only when numbers look wrong.
Troubleshooting
"Enter the total seats first." You tried to turn on Work without tables without a seat count. Enter Total seats, then turn it on.
Squeeze settings say "Capacity Booster add-on must be enabled to use squeeze controls on the Dashboard." Squeeze only works with the Capacity Booster add-on. See "How to enable or disable an add-on".
"No shifts configured in operating hours yet." under squeeze Add shifts first in Settings › Location hours and shifts.
Dashboard or calendar counts look wrong Open Advanced Settings › Day metrics totals and click Rebuild day metrics. If you see "Failed to rebuild day metrics. Please try again.", wait a moment and retry.
The widget offers times that don't match my tables Open Advanced Settings › Capacity & Availability Tools and run Compute Widget Availability Cache. Progress shows while it runs. If you see "Failed to compute widget availability cache", contact 10Seat support.