Choosing automatic or request confirmation

Choose whether online bookings are confirmed immediately, sent to the restaurant for approval, or handled differently according to the size of the party.

Table Harmony allows the restaurant to use automatic confirmation, request confirmation or a mixture of both.

Opening the online booking settings

Open Settings → Booking rules → Online bookings.

Accepting online bookings

The Customers can book online switch is the master control for the restaurant’s public booking page.

• When switched on, customers can make online bookings according to the restaurant’s availability and booking rules.
• When switched off, the public booking page stops accepting bookings.

Turning this switch off does not prevent staff from adding bookings directly in Table Harmony.

Confirming every booking automatically

Switch on Confirm online bookings automatically if available online bookings should normally be confirmed immediately.

The guest receives confirmation without waiting for the restaurant to approve the booking.

Automatic confirmation still follows the restaurant’s configured availability, tables, capacity, opening hours and other booking rules.

Sending every booking as a request

Switch off Confirm online bookings automatically if every online booking should wait for the restaurant’s approval.

The guest submits a booking request rather than receiving immediate confirmation. Staff must then accept it, offer another time or decline it.

For complete instructions, see Managing booking requests.

Automatically confirming smaller parties

The restaurant can combine automatic confirmation with approval for larger groups.

Keep Confirm online bookings automatically switched on and then activate Hold larger parties for my approval.

Choose the number of guests from which bookings should become requests.

For example, with the threshold set to 9:

• Parties of 1–8 are confirmed immediately.
• Parties of 9 or more are sent to the restaurant as requests, up to the restaurant’s maximum online party size.
• Parties larger than the maximum online party size cannot book online.

This allows routine bookings to be confirmed automatically while giving the restaurant control over larger parties.

Event bookings

Activate Always ask me first for event bookings if bookings connected with an event should always require approval.

When this is active, an event booking may be sent as a request even when its party size would normally qualify for automatic confirmation.

Checking what guests will experience

The What guests will get summary updates automatically to show:

• Which party sizes are confirmed immediately.
• Which party sizes are sent as requests.
• Which party sizes cannot book online.

Check this summary after changing the confirmation settings to make sure they produce the intended result.

Changes to these settings are saved automatically.