Managing a restaurant means your availability can change based on seasons, special events, or even daily services. By keeping your reservation schedules up-to-date, you can ensure your online widget always reflects your current operations & capacity, preventing overbooking and optimizing your seating flow. You have the ability to configure your online and in-house reservation schedules based on days of the week, experiences, specific times, and dates.
Here are the steps to follow in order to add or modify your schedules:
Go to your Libro back-office
Once in My Restaurants, click on the Settings
Go to Online Availability Planning (Schedules)
Click Modify to update an existing rule
Click Add a rule to create a new rule
To save time, you can duplicate a rule with similar settings by clicking
Complete all fields and click Save (see a description of each field below).
Note: Green schedules are active. White schedules occur in the past or in the future. Orange schedules signal an overlap. It is extremely important to correct any overlaps to prevent overbooking your restaurant.
Description of Settings
The following table defines the role of each field inside a reservation schedule. When adding a new rule, you are required to complete each field to be able to save.
| Rule Title | Rule name (has no impact and is not displayed online). |
| Reservation Interval (Time Slot Frequency) | Possible time ranges to book online e.g. every 30 minutes = 12:30 p.m., 1:00 p.m., 1:30 p.m., etc. |
| Days of the week | Select one or more days for which this rule applies. |
| First reservation start time | First reservation time available for guests to reserve online. |
| Last reservation start time | Last reservation time available for guests to reserve online. |
| Target Experiences | Experiences have to be configured in order to be available in this field. This allows to link one or multiple experiences to this specific schedule and only allow your guests to reserve certain sections of the restaurant at specific times. |
| Maximum online party size | Maximum number of guests allowed per online reservation. |
| Total capacity (number of seats available) | This field is only visible for accounts that do not use booking table inventory. It determines the maximum number of guests per average seated time. |
| Seated times by group sizes | The duration of each reservation according to the party size e.g. 1h30 hours for groups under 6 people & 2 hours for groups of 6 or more. This average seated time is used to calculate the availability in your restaurant, so ensure it is accurate. |
| Minimum Online Party Size | Minimum number of guests required to place an online reservation. |
| Minimum Reservation Lead Time | How far in advance guests must book online (e.g., if set to 15 minutes, an 8:00 a.m. reservation can’t be made after 7:45 a.m. the same day). Note that this is a barrier to online reservations. If the minimum lead time is too long, it is possible that potential guests will not be able to find the availability they want. If the minimum lead time is too short, your staff will need to manage last minute reservations. |
| Rule Start Date (required) | The start date you would like this rule to take effect. |
| Rule End Date (optional) | This rule is effective until (inclusive). The last date you would like this rule to take effect. The field can be left blank for the rule to be infinite. |
Verifying your reservation schedules
After creating or modifying a reservation schedule, verify that it works as expected. There are two steps to verify this:
Check your Libro widget. This is what guests use to reserve, so ensure the available options reflect your intended availability.
Check the Reservation List in your Libro dashboard. Review the available timeslots for a specific day and confirm they match the schedule you created.
More on availability
For more information on other settings that affect your restaurant's availability, refer to the following articles: