Service periods

A service period is a named stretch of your day when the restaurant takes bookings — your Lunch, your Dinner, a weekend Brunch. It sets the hours the service runs, the days of the week it happens, and (optionally) how many guests your kitchen can handle. Everything guests can book flows from the service periods you define here, so this is the first thing to set up before reservations can come in.

Before you begin

Service periods live in the Schedule Setup panel on the Bookings page. Available on plans that include Bookings. You need the Manage service periods permission to add, edit, or delete them. As the restaurant owner you have every permission by default; employees only see this panel once you grant it to them.

What a service period is

Think of a service period as one “service” in the day, with a name your team recognises:

• A window of time — for example, lunch from 12:00 to 15:00.
• On certain days — Monday to Friday, weekends only, or every day.
• With an optional guest limit — the most covers the kitchen will take in a single sitting.

A service period is the container. Inside it you create time slots (also called turns) — the actual start times a guest can pick, such as 12:00, 13:00 and 14:00. A period with no time slots has nothing for guests to book, so you will always create at least one turn inside each period. Time slots are covered in depth on their own page; this page focuses on the period itself and how it shapes capacity.

Here is how the pieces fit together:

• Service period → the service and its rules (name, hours, days, cover limit).
• Time slots → the bookable turns inside that window.
• Booking → a guest reserving one specific turn on a specific date.

Where to find it

1. Open Bookings from the left menu.
2. Click Schedule (the gear button, top right of the page). The Schedule Setup panel slides in from the right.
3. Everything for service periods lives under the Service Periods heading in that panel.

The Schedule Setup panel. Click a period to expand it and reveal its turns (time slots).

Create a service period

1. In the Schedule Setup panel, under Service Periods, click Add period.
2. Fill in the form (each field is explained below).
3. Click Create. The new period appears in the list right away.

Creating a service period. Name it, set the hours and days, and optionally cap the covers.

The fields, one by one

• Name — what you and your guests call the service. The box suggests something like Lunch or Dinner. Use whatever your restaurant actually says.
• Start Time and End Time — the window the service runs. Guests can only be seated inside this window. New periods start at 12:00 to 14:00, so change these to match your real hours.
• Days of Week — tick the days this service runs, Sunday through Saturday. A new period starts with Monday to Friday ticked. Untick a day and the service simply is not offered then.
• Max Covers — an optional guest ceiling for the service. Leave it empty for no limit (the box reads “Leave empty for unlimited”), or enter a number to cap capacity. See How Max Covers caps capacity below — it is the most important field to understand.
• Active — a switch. When it is on, the service is live and shown to guests. Turn it off to hide the service from your booking page without deleting it — handy for a seasonal brunch or a service you have paused.

Tip

Give periods clear, guest-facing names. Lunch and Dinner read better on your booking page than Service 1 and Service 2.

Edit, pause, or delete a period

Every period in the list has a pencil (Edit) icon and a trash (Delete) icon.

1. Open Bookings, click Schedule, and find the period under Service Periods.
2. Click the pencil icon to open the form, change any field, and click Update.

To pause a service without losing its setup, open it and switch Active off. It stays in your list (shown as Inactive) and stops appearing to guests. Switch it back on whenever you like.

Caution

Deleting a period also deletes all of its time slots — the confirmation dialog spells this out. If you only want to stop taking bookings for a while, switch it to Inactive instead of deleting it.

Adding turns (time slots) to a period

A period on its own defines the window; guests book a turn inside it. Once a period exists, click it in the list to expand it, then use the Time slots controls.

1. In the Service Periods list, click a period to expand it.
2. Under Time slots, click Add slot to create a single turn, or Generate to create several evenly spaced turns at once.
3. For Generate, set the Start Time, End Time and Slot Duration (15, 30 or 45 minutes, or 1, 1.5 or 2 hours). A live preview shows exactly which turns will be created. Click the Generate button to confirm — it shows how many turns it will add.

The generator starts from the period’s own hours, so generating turns for a 12:00 to 15:00 lunch at a one-hour duration gives you three turns in one click.

Generating turns. The preview lists every turn before you commit.

How Max Covers caps capacity

Max Covers is your kitchen throughput limit, and it applies to each turn in the period — not to the whole service added together. It is the largest number of covers (guests) you are willing to seat in a single sitting.

Here is what happens when a guest books:

• Eighty-Six adds up the party sizes already holding that turn on that date.
• If the new party would push the turn’s total past your Max Covers, that turn is shown as fully booked and the guest is steered to another turn.
• If you leave Max Covers empty, there is no cover cap and the only limit is your tables.

Because the cap is per turn, splitting a service into more turns lets you serve more people over the whole service while never overloading the kitchen at any one moment.

Worked example: lunch, two ways

Both setups start from the same service period — Lunch, 12:00 to 15:00, Monday to Friday, with Max Covers set to 40. What changes is how you slice it into turns.

Three turns

Split lunch into three one-hour turns:

• 12:00 – 13:00
• 13:00 – 14:00
• 14:00 – 15:00

With Max Covers at 40, each turn can seat up to 40 covers. Guests turn over quickly, so across the whole lunch you can serve up to 120 covers — while never seating more than 40 at the same time. Good for a busy, fast-moving lunch.

Two turns

Split the same window into two longer, ninety-minute turns:

• 12:00 – 13:30
• 13:30 – 15:00

Again each turn is capped at 40 covers, so lunch tops out at 80 covers in total. Fewer seatings, but guests get a more relaxed, unhurried table. Good for a slower service or larger parties.

The lesson: Max Covers protects a single sitting, and the number of turns you create decides how many sittings you get. Set the cap to what your kitchen can plate comfortably at once, then choose turn lengths that match the pace you want.

Tip

Match your turn length to how long guests actually stay. If tables rarely free up inside an hour, three one-hour turns will look bookable but leave you scrambling — two longer turns will reflect reality better.

A quick checklist

1. Create a period for each service (Lunch, Dinner, and so on) with the right hours and days.
2. Set Max Covers to what the kitchen can handle in one sitting, or leave it empty for no cap.
3. Add or Generate the turns guests will book inside each period.
4. Leave the period Active when you are ready to take bookings, or switch it off to pause.

Related

• Time slots
• Managing bookings
• The floor map