Understand Cover pacing

This article will help you better understand how Cover Pacing works - and how it should work for your daily operations.

Go to Admin Panel -> Availability -> Cover Pacing.

How it works:

Time slot (increments) in minutes - The minimum time increment is 15 minutes, and the maximum is 60 minutes.

You can select which time slots are available for online reservations in the Online Reservation hours section.

This setting limits the number of guests who can book online within a single time slot

Sometimes it can happen that one timeslot is not available for reservations even though they are not over the limit.

That happens because of the number of guests that are counted in the next time slot, depending on default table turnover setting (see image below - you can find it in Admin Panel -> Settings -> Floor rules).

For more details - check image related to Cover limit for online reservations.

Important Note: This rule also applies to Cover pacing per slot for reservations added by hosts.

The difference is that the customers won't be able to make reservations once the limit is reached BUT the host can manually add the reservation even though it's over the limit, however, the host will get a message "Cover limit exceeded" and can decide if he/she still wants to add the reservation or not.

This limit applies to the number of online reservations.
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That means it doesn't limit the number of guests. If it's set to 5 for example, you can have 5 reservations with different group/party size, for example:

Important Note: This rule also applies to Limit number of reservations per slot added by hosts.

The difference is that the customers won't be able to make reservations once the limit is reached BUT the host can manually add the reservation even though it's over the limit, however, the host will get a message "Cover limit exceeded" and can decide if he/she still wants to add the reservation or not.

This setting refers to the total number of guests at the restaurant at the same time

and it will override the settings above.

See the example of how it works:

This setting shows the capacity of your restaurant. The customers won't be able

to make reservations once the limit is reached but the host can manually add

the reservation even though it's over the limit.
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Nevertheless, the host will see "Cover limit exceeded" message and decide if they still want to add the reservation or not - keeping in mind it might lead to overbooking.

Key Points to Remember

Sometimes a time slot may not be available for online reservations even if it's not over the limit. This is due to the number of guests counted in the next time slot, based on the default table turnover setting (found in Admin Panel -> Settings -> Floor Rules).

Admin Panel settings

You can find Cover Pacing settings in Admin Panel -> Availability -> Cover Pacing.

You can find Floor Rules settings in Admin Panel -> Settings -> Floor Rules.

We hope this information provided clarification on how Cover Pacing works. Feel free to reach out to our customer support if you need further assistance.