Tables and services

Before guests can book, Placemat needs your room and a service: the tables you have, and the hours, turn length and capacity of a sitting such as Friday dinner. Owners and managers set these up under Services & tables.

Add your tables

Expand Add table and fill in:

• Table label, the name staff use, such as T1.
• Seats, how many people the table holds.
• Across the room (%) and Down the room (%), where the table sits on the floor plan. 0% is the left or top wall and 100% the right or bottom wall.

Press Save table. The Tables list shows each table's seats and position, and the floor plan on Floor & bookings draws it at that spot.

Placemat combines tables by itself when one table cannot fit a party, so add each physical table on its own. A table that already has bookings shows History retained and can no longer be edited, so the history stays true; when your layout changes, add a new table.

Create a service

Expand Create service and fill in:

• Service name, for example Friday dinner.
• Turn duration (minutes), how long a party keeps its table, for example 90.
• Starts and Ends, in the venue's timezone.
• Cover limit, the most guests you will take across the whole service.

Press Save service. The service is a draft: it is private, and guests cannot book it yet. You can still change it with Edit service.

Publish it

Press Prepare publication on the draft. Placemat records the exact service, its hours, capacity and table plan as a plan to approve, and takes you to Approvals & reminders.

Expand Exact plan to read what will be published, then press Approve plan. The service is now published: it appears on the guest booking page, and staff can seat walk-ins and keep a waitlist for it.

Publication fixes the service's hours, turn duration and cover limit. Editing a draft after preparing it makes the old plan stale; prepare a new one. To offer another sitting, create another service.