Availability in the Dining Area

Dining area capacity and availability

The availability at each time is dependent on:

the dining area total capacity
reservations and walk-in entries
the capacity of the dining tables
the combined table setup
how dining tables have been allocated.

Dining Area Capacity is the sum of the seating capacity of available dining tables. Maximum capacity is not taken into consideration.

Dining Area Availability is the dining area capacity minus the number of seated and not seated guests (reservations and walk-ins) at each interval.

Whether a dining table or combined table counts as available depends on the dining area's Dining Table Selection Handler:

On a dining area set up for the default, single-seating handler, a dining table or combined table is available if it is free and with enough capacity for the exact dining duration that the reservation is for. It must have minimum capacity less than or equal to the requested number of guests and maximum capacity greater than or equal to the requested number of guests.
On a dining area set up for Multiple Seatings on a Dining Table, a table does not need to be entirely free to be available - a table that already has one or more groups seated or allocated is still a valid allocation target as long as enough seats remain free for the requested number of guests.

Gross and Net availability

Each dining area has an Availability Display Mode field, on the Dining Area Card, with two options:

Gross (allocated reservations only) - counts only reservations already seated at, or allocated to, a dining table. This is the default and matches the behavior of earlier versions.
Net (estimated non-allocated demand deducted) - also deducts an estimate of the demand from reservations that are made but not yet allocated to a table or seated, so you can see the demand that is coming.

Net figures are not a simple subtraction of guest count from Gross. The system first tries to model the non-allocated demand against the dining area's actual free tables for that interval - taking the smallest free table that fits each pending party, rather than an average table size - so a party of two is not charged the cost of a larger table it would never actually need. Only when the free tables on hand cannot be modelled this way does the calculation fall back to an average-based estimate.

Note: The number of available dining tables under Net is also capped so it can never be reported as higher than the number of tables that are physically free right now. This cap can apply even when there is no non-allocated demand to deduct - so a Net table count can differ from the Gross one for reasons other than pending demand.

Whether a reservation or walk-in is accepted does not depend on the Availability Display Mode. The accept-or-reject check that runs when you create a reservation or walk-in always uses Gross availability, regardless of what the dining area is set to display. Switching a dining area to Net changes only what staff see on the availability figures and the The dining availability lookup page - it never changes whether the system will actually let a booking through. Do not read a low Net figure as a sign that the system will start refusing bookings: it will keep accepting bookings up to the Gross figure.

You can switch a dining area between Gross and Net display at any time; existing reservations, allocations, and the accept/reject outcome of past and future bookings are unaffected by the switch.

Checking dining area availability on reserving

When you try to create a walk-in entry or reservation, the program always checks the dining area availability at the time of reservation, using Gross availability as described above.

There is no availability for an interval if the number of guests you are trying to create a walk-in entry or reservation for is greater than the dining area's Gross availability at this time.

Checking for available dining tables on reserving

When you try to create a walk-in entry or reservation, the program checks for available dining tables only if automatic allocation is set for the dining area, using the Automatic Alloc. on Reserv. field on the Dining Area Card. Depending on the option chosen, this can also stop a reservation from being confirmed at all when no table is available. See Automatic Allocation on Reservation for what each option does.

Overbooking on Bookings reservations

A reservation created through the Bookings add-on (activity reservations, including group bookings) can still go through even when the dining area reports it as overbooked - for example when the booking's length runs into a later, fully booked interval - but only when both of the following are true:

The staff member's Activity User record has Overbooking Allowed set to Yes.
The reservation's activity product has its Overbooking field set to Allowed or Allowed To Overbook.

If either condition is not met, the reservation is rejected with the same availability error as any other overbooked reservation. This exception applies to reservations created through Bookings; walk-ins and POS-created reservations are checked against the same Gross availability gate but do not go through this override.

No dining area availability but dining tables are available

The situation can arise where there is no availability in the dining area, but there are still dining tables available. If enough dining tables are allocated to their maximum capacity and their maximum capacity is greater than their normal seat capacity, the dining area capacity can be reached with one or more dining tables still available.

Note: Availability has more than one axis - the number of available dining tables and the number of available seats (capacity) do not always move together, for the reasons above. The The dining availability lookup page shows both figures side by side.

Section and preference availability

When a reservation specifies preferred dining area sections or dining table preferences, availability for that reservation is checked twice: once against the dining area as a whole (Gross, as described above), and once against only the tables that match the preferences.

Unlike the area-wide check, the preference-matching check does deduct non-allocated demand that also matches the same preferences, even when the dining area's display mode is Gross. This stops a popular section from being overbooked while the area-wide figure still has room, because a section-level quota that never accounted for pending demand in that section could otherwise be filled twice over by the time every pending reservation is seated.

These same section and table preferences also decide whether some Automatic Allocation on Reservation options fire - see the notes there on the dining area's two preference attribute fields and on why a section preference alone is not enough to trigger them.

The dining availability lookup page

Activity products with Custom Availability set to DINING use a dedicated dining availability lookup instead of the generic activity availability lookup, reached from the Bookings reservation flow and, on the POS, from the Front Desk. It shows, per time interval:

Field	Description
Dining Table Selection	Whether the dining area seats one party per dining table (single seating) or several parties at the same dining table (Multiple Seatings on a Dining Table). Availability is calculated per table in the first case and per seat in the second.
Availability Display Mode	Whether the figures below are Gross or Net, as described above. Use the Switch Availability Display Mode action to toggle between the two without leaving the page.
Tables for Group Size (or Tables for Group Size & Preferences, if preferences are set)	The number of available tables in the interval that match the reservation's group size, including combined tables.
Availability for Preferences	Only shown when section or table preferences are set. The number of free dining tables and seats in the interval that match those preferences.
Total Availability	The total number of free dining tables in the interval, and the number of seats that can still be booked. The seat figure is limited by the dining area plan's reservation capacity, which deducts every reserved guest whether or not a table has been allocated - so the seat figure can be identical in Gross and Net even while the table figure differs. The seat figure can be negative if the interval is overbooked.
Reservations/Guests, Allocated Reservations/Guests, Non-Allocated Reservations/Guests	The number of reservations in the interval (all, allocated only, and non-allocated only), each followed by the number of guests on those reservations. None of these three counts include walk-ins or the waiting list, and none are affected by the Availability Display Mode. Drill down on any of the three to list the reservations behind the count.
Walk-ins/Guests	The non-allocated walk-in demand for the interval, in the same reservations/guests format as the fields above. Drill down to list the walk-in entries behind it.

Note: Net availability, wherever it is shown on this page, is only an estimation of how many free tables and how much capacity remains after accounting for non-allocated demand - see Gross and Net availability above.

Above the availability figures, the page also shows the Number of Guests, Dining Duration (Min.), Preferred Sections and Preferred Dining Tables that the figures are calculated for - the last two only if the dining area configures a section or table-preference attribute. Use the Change Specifications action to change the guest count, dining duration, or either preference and see the availability figures recalculated for the new values; use Revert Specifications to restore the values the page opened with. Use Go To Date, Previous Day, or Next Day to change the date shown instead - the date is no longer part of Change Specifications.

When the page was opened for an existing reservation, closing the page with a pending Change Specifications applied, writes the new guest count and dining duration to that reservation - there is no confirmation prompt on close, so Revert Specifications is the only way to discard a pending change before closing. When the page was opened from the Dining Availability Search action instead, there is no reservation to write to: Change Specifications re-runs the search with the new product, location, guest count, duration or preferences, and a Create Reservation action becomes available to create a new reservation from a selected availability slot.