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These settings decide how much availability a shift offers and where guests are seated. Get them right and your online availability matches your real-world capacity.
Capacity and room settings live in the Advanced settings card on the General tab. Dining duration and strict seating are in the Advanced tab.

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Tables or covers?

The Availability type is the most important choice here — it changes how availability is counted.
TypeHow availability is countedBest for
TablesFrom your floor plan — the system tracks individual tablesRestaurants that assign real tables
CoversA simple number of seats you enter, no specific tablesVenues without a detailed floor plan, or volume booking
  • With Tables, total capacity is calculated automatically from your floor plan — you don’t set a number.
  • With Covers, you enter a Total capacity (total guests the shift can serve).

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Rooms

Decide which rooms a shift uses and whether customers get a say.
  • All rooms — on by default. Turn it off to pick specific allowed rooms for this shift (e.g. a dinner shift that only uses the main dining room).
  • Allow room selection — let customers choose their preferred room when booking.
  • Mandatory room selection — require them to choose a room.
  • Show room images — display a photo of each room to help customers decide.
When you use Covers and allow room selection, you can set a capacity per room so each room respects its own seat count. The shift’s total capacity is then the sum of its rooms.

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Average dining duration

Average durations tell the system how long a table is occupied, so it doesn’t offer a table that won’t be free in time. The default is 120 minutes. You can add custom durations by group size — for example a couple stays 90 minutes but a party of 8 stays 150. This keeps availability realistic for every party size.
If you see tables looking “full” sooner than expected, your average duration may be too long. If you’re getting double-booked, it may be too short.

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Strict seating

By default, a table frees up for new bookings once its expected duration passes. Turn on Strict seating calculation (Advanced tab) to instead hold a table until the reservation is actually marked completed — even if its time is up. Use this when you’d rather protect a seated party’s table than reclaim it on a timer.

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Isolated availability

By default, shifts that overlap in time share the same tables, so a booking in one reduces availability in the other. Turn on Isolated availability calculation (Advanced tab) to make this shift’s bookings not affect other shifts.
Only isolate a shift when it genuinely uses separate capacity (for example a private-room-only shift). Isolating a shift that shares tables with another can lead to double-booking the same tables.

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FAQ

Why can’t I edit Total capacity? In Tables mode it’s calculated from your floor plan. In Covers mode with per-room capacities, it’s the sum of the rooms. Switch to a plain Covers setup to enter a single number. What’s the difference between strict seating and strict end? Strict seating holds a table after its time is up until you mark the party done. Strict end (on the Schedule page) stops bookings that would run past the shift’s closing time. They solve different problems and can be used together.