Bookings & availability

Bookings are the heart of Eighty-Six. This section explains how reservations work from start to finish: you define when your restaurant takes bookings (service periods and time slots), your guests pick an open time on your booking page, and every reservation lands on the Bookings page where you and your team work it through the night.

This overview shows how the pieces fit together and links to the detailed guides for each one.

Before you begin

The Bookings page lives under Bookings in the left-hand menu of the CRM.

Available on plans that include Bookings. Viewing reservations requires the View bookings permission; adding one manually requires Create bookings. Setting up availability, the waitlist, and blocked dates are each separate capabilities that may need their own permission. The restaurant owner has every permission by default — employees need each one granted by an admin.

How availability works

Before a guest can book, Eighty-Six needs to know when your restaurant is open for reservations and how many guests it can take. Three concepts work together to describe this.

Service period

A named window of a service — for example Lunch or Dinner — that runs on certain days of the week between a start and end time. A service period can carry a Max covers limit (the total number of guests your kitchen can handle across that whole service).

Time slot

A bookable start time inside a service period — for example 12:00, 12:30, 13:00. Each time slot has its own Max bookings cap. Time slots are what a guest actually chooses when they reserve a table.

Blocked dates

One-off or repeating closures — a holiday, a private event, or maintenance — that make a date (or a single table) unavailable, even if a service period would normally be open.

Put simply: a service period sets the hours and the days, time slots are the individual start times guests can book within it, and blocked dates close things off when you need to. A cover is one seat, or one guest — capacity throughout Eighty-Six is measured in covers.

The Bookings page

Open Bookings from the left menu to see every reservation for your restaurant. Along the top you switch between views and reach the two main actions.

The Bookings page. Switch between List, Calendar, and Waitlist, or use New Booking and Schedule.

• List and Calendar — the two ways to view your reservations, toggled with the buttons at the top right.
• Waitlist — a separate button that appears when your plan includes the waitlist. It shows guests waiting for a spot in a fully booked time slot.
• New Booking — opens a form to add a reservation yourself (for a phone or walk-in guest).
• Schedule — opens the Schedule Setup panel, where you configure service periods, time slots, and blocked dates.

List view

The default view. Use the filters above the list to narrow things down by Date (or a From and To range) and by Status. Click Clear to reset them. Each row shows the Date & Time, the Customer, the assigned Table, and the Party size, along with a status badge. Click a row to open the full booking and change its status.

Calendar view

The Calendar view lays your bookings out across the month. Click any date to see the reservations for that day. From a selected date you can also jump straight into Add booking or Block this date.

Calendar view — click a date to see that day's bookings and quick actions.

Waitlist

When a time slot is fully booked, guests can join the Waitlist instead of being turned away. The waitlist shows each entry’s Position, the Customer, Party Size, Date, and Time, so you can offer a table the moment one frees up.

Setting up availability

Click Schedule on the Bookings page to open the Schedule Setup panel. This is where you build and adjust everything that controls when guests can book.

The Schedule Setup panel — manage service periods, time slots, and blocked dates in one place.

1. Under Service Periods, click Add period to create a service like Lunch or Dinner — giving it a name, start and end times, the days it runs, and an optional Max covers limit.
2. Expand a service period to reveal its Time slots. Add them one at a time with Add slot, or create a whole run at once with Generate.
3. Under Blocked Slots, click Add block to close a specific date or table — a holiday, a private event, or maintenance. Blocks can repeat.

Tip

Set up your service periods first, then generate their time slots — a service period has to exist before you can add bookable times inside it.

Taking a booking manually

Not every reservation comes through your booking page. When a guest calls or walks in, click New Booking and fill in the Date, Party Size, Table, and Time Slot, then the Customer Details (name, email, and optionally phone and any special requests). You can also Extend Duration if the party needs the table for longer than a standard slot. Save with Create Booking.

Booking statuses

Every reservation moves through a set of statuses as the service unfolds:

• Pending — awaiting confirmation.
• Confirmed — the guest is expected.
• Seated — the party has arrived and been seated.
• Completed — the visit is finished.
• Cancelled — the reservation was called off.
• No Show — the guest did not arrive.

You change a booking’s status from its detail page. See Managing bookings for the full workflow.

Where to go next

Service periodsDefine Lunch, Dinner, and other services — days, hours, and max covers.

Time slotsAdd or generate the bookable start times inside each service period.

Managing bookingsWork the List and Calendar, add reservations, and move them through their statuses.

WaitlistCapture guests when a slot is full and offer them a table when one opens.

Related

• The floor map — plan which tables a booking can use.
• Your booking page — the public page where guests make reservations.