(OBW) Pickup spacing for online reservations

What is pickup spacing?

Pickup spacing allows you to define a maximum number of customers (or pickups) allowed over a day. (or other duration)

For example, you could set a limit of 2 customers between 10 and 12 AM on Saturday and Sunday. Customers will then be blocked from placing online bookings within this timeframe once the limit of 2 reservations is reached.

See the diagram below. A pickup spacing rule is applied between 10:00 and 12:00 where the maximum number of pickups is 2. Once the pickup window is full, any subsequent reservations will be rejected. Reservations can still be placed outside of the window, capacity dependent of course.

Limitations of pickup spacing

The maximum duration of a pickup spacing rule is 1 day. You cannot have rules spanning multiple days.

Set up pickup spacing

To get started, first enable pickup spacing in Settings > Admin > Features and Customization. You'll then find the pickup spacing lozenge under Settings > Online.

To add a new pickup spacing rule, click the create button to bring up the detail page:

Enter the following parameters to define your pickup spacing rule:

1. Pickup spacing window. This is a start and end time within a day. Note that start and end time are always on the same day and a pickup spacing window cannot span multiple days.
2. Maximum number of customers accepted between the start and end time of the pickup spacing window.
3. The days of the week the pickup spacing window is valid.
4. The valid date range to restrict the pickup spacing rule to a set time of year/season.

Here is what your customers will see when you're running low on 'slots';

and here is what they will see when you're full (due to pickup spacing)

Don't forget also you can customise any an all your online messages in language customization.

Please note this feature must be enabled in features & customization:

See Also

Language Customization