Section 3 of 12

Schedule & Capacity

Control exactly when your restaurant accepts bookings and how many guests you can seat.

Availability is the heart of your Buqq setup. Everything in this section lives in Settings → Availability. Changes take effect immediately on your public booking page — no publish step required.

Open days#

Select the days of the week your restaurant accepts reservations. Days that are toggled off show as unavailable on your booking page and are excluded from availability calculations.

Open days control booking availability, not your restaurant's physical opening hours. If you are open but not taking reservations on a particular day, leave that day toggled off.

Time slots#

Time slots are the start times guests can choose when booking. You select them from a checkbox grid grouped by hour, in 15-minute increments.

  1. Go to Settings → Availability and scroll to the Bookable time slots section.
  2. Click an hour row to expand its 15-minute increments.
  3. Tick each time you want to offer as a bookable start time.
  4. Repeat across all the hours you want to offer.
  5. Click "Save" at the bottom of the page to apply your changes.
Bookable time slots
Each ticked time is a start time guests can select. For example, ticking 19:00 and 19:30 offers those two as the only available evening start times.
If you run separate services — a lunch sitting and a dinner sitting — only tick the start times that belong to each block. Avoid selecting every slot from noon to midnight continuously; that creates one unbroken booking window rather than two distinct services.

Dining capacity#

Dining capacity is the maximum number of guests that can be seated simultaneously across all concurrent bookings. When this number is reached for a given slot, the slot shows as full on your booking page.

Dining capacity
The total number of guests that can be seated at one time across all active bookings. Set this to the number of covers in your dining room — for example, a restaurant with 40 seats should set capacity to 40.

Party size limits#

Control the minimum and maximum party size that guests can book online. Requests outside this range cannot be submitted — guests see a message to contact you directly.

Minimum party size
The smallest group that can book online. Default is 1. Raise this if you do not accept solo diners.
Maximum party size
The largest group that can book online. Large groups typically require special arrangements — direct contact lets you handle these personally.

Booking duration#

Booking duration is how long each reservation occupies the table. It is used to calculate whether concurrent bookings exceed your dining capacity.

Booking duration (minutes)
How long a single booking occupies capacity. E.g. 90 minutes means a 19:00 booking holds capacity until 20:30.
Set duration generously — it is better to leave a small buffer than to double-book a table. Most casual dining restaurants use 90–120 minutes.

Advance booking window#

The advance booking window controls how soon before a slot closes for new online bookings.

Minimum advance notice
The minimum amount of time before a slot starts that online booking is still open. For example, setting 2 hours means the 19:00 slot stops accepting online bookings at 17:00. Use this to prevent last-minute bookings you cannot prepare for.

Blocking dates#

Use closure blocks to mark specific dates as unavailable — bank holidays, private events, renovations. A closure block makes your booking page show no available times for all slots on that day, or for part of that day if you choose Selected hours.

  1. Go to Settings → Availability and scroll to the Temporary closures section.
  2. Set Block type to "Full day" to close the entire day, or "Selected hours" to close specific time slots only.
  3. Enter a Reason for your own reference (e.g. Bank holiday, Private event).
  4. Set the Start date. If the closure spans multiple days, set an End date too.
  5. If using Selected hours, tick the specific slots to close.
  6. Click "Save closure block" — the block appears in the saved list below.
  7. Click "Save" at the bottom of the page to apply all changes.

Pausing bookings#

The Accepting bookingstoggle on the main dashboard pauses all online bookings immediately. When paused, your booking page shows "Not currently accepting bookings" and no slots are offered. Toggle it back on when you are ready to resume.

Pausing bookings only affects new bookings — existing reservations already in your system remain in place and are not cancelled. Pausing affects all future slots, not just today. Use a closure block if you only want to block a specific date.