How to: Set Up Dining Reservations for Restaurants

Dining reservations for dining areas in restaurants are set up as an activity product with Custom Availability - DINING. You need to set up basic information in the Bookings module around dining reservations, but all the setup regarding dining areas, dining tables, their capacity and availability is set up through Hospitality.

  • From the Bookings Role Center you can access the setup tables from Setup on the Navigation menu.
  • Each dining area that is taking dining reservations must have a dining area plan that specifies dining periods and dining table capacity.
  • Once you have set up dining reservations within Bookings, you need to set up the Dining Reservation Desk panel.

Note: The program creates a dining reservation entry for each activity reservation with activity product with Custom Availability DINING. The dining reservation entries are used within the hospitality - allocation and reservation desk. When information is changed in the activity reservation, confirming the activity reservation will update the dining reservation entry accordingly.

If the activity status CONFIRM is configured to allow edit, after you change the activity reservation (such as name, email, and so on), you need to Confirm the activity reservation again to update the dining reservation entry.

Note: The Booking Time Flexibility (Min.) of the Activity User that is running Dining Reservation Desk and the Allocation panel, cannot be a positive number. It must either be zero (not filled out) or a negative number.

The following table gives an overview of what is required when setting up dining reservations for restaurants from within the Bookings module.

Reservation Type A DINING reservation type.
  • Multiple Clients: Yes
  • Multiple Locations: Yes
  • Show Activity Availability: Yes
  • Show Line Quantities: Yes
  • Show No. of Guests: Yes
  • Show Time Range: Show From & To Times
  • Date Range: Single Date

The activity type DINING must be assigned.
Activity Type A DINING activity type.

Required

  • Day Duration: Single Day
  • Table Mgmt Integration: Yes
  • No. of Days in Availability: 1 - this is very important for performance

Optional

  • Require Client No.
  • Show Non Availability (POS) - recommended
  • Web Bookings Allowed
  • Emails

Note: Interval Type comes from Hospitality, not the Activity Type.
Activity Product A dining reservation product. Best practice is to create a product per activity location (dining area) with fixed location.
  • Duration: 0
  • Duration Type: None
  • Interval Type: Keep this blank since the Custom Availability is used to render reservation intervals. However, if the product is used to sell a subset of reservation intervals (for example, only morning reservations or early dinner reservations), you can select here an interval type with times that filter the availability reservation intervals given by the custom availability. The availability intervals will only be those that are included in the interval type time settings.
  • Custom Availability: DINING
  • Fixed Location - the location for the dining area

The period limitations set for the product apply to the dining reservation availability also.
Activity Status Setup No specific requirements on status setup.
Activity Setup Table Reservation fast tab:
  • Table Reservation Type: DINING
  • Table Reserv. Draft Status: DRAFT
  • Table Reserv. Confirmed Status: CONFIRM
  • Table Reserv. Canceled Status: CANCEL
  • Table Reserv. No-Show Status: NO SHOW
  • Table Reserv. Closed Status: CLOSE
Activity Locations For each dining area that is open for reservations, you need to set it up as an activity location with:
  • Code: Any code that identifies the location.
  • Store: The restaurant that the dining area belongs to ( Restaurant No. of the dining area),
  • Opening Hours: Store Settings.
  • Work Location: The restaurant that the dining area belongs to.
  • Dining Area: Dining area ID.
  • Dining Reserv. Desk Activity Product: If there are more than one dining reservation product with the same fixed activity location (dining area), you need to specify which product is used to take reservations in the reservation desk.

See also

How to: Manage the Reservation Desk