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I want to take bookings on a date we are normally closed.
I want to take bookings on a date we are normally closed.

Take bookings on a day or service time your restaurant is normally closed with partial open days.

C
Written by Chelsea
Updated over a week ago


There might be a certain date or time period where you might want to open up your restaurant for online and bookings outwith your normal trading hours. Be it opening up for a special booking event, Christmas Day that falls on a Monday when you are normally closed or a private function you need to record but don't want customers to book. 

simpleERB has a neat trick where you can use the 'partial open days' setting in reverse from its normal use, outlined in this article.  


 Here is how to do it, we have a video here as well

One of the first things that you do in simpleERB’s Simple Settings’ “Open Times”  is set up what days of the week you are open.

In Advanced Settings’, “Closed Days”, you can close completely on particular days of the year, say Xmas Day.

You can then decide in “Partial Open Days” if you are going to be partially closed on a day that you are open, or conversely, partially open on a day that you have  already closed.

(Note that you do not need to close off days on which you are not open.) The system will not take bookings a date you don't specific in Open Times.

So if opening times are Tue-Sun 10-10 you do not need to have Mondays as Closed Days as you are never open. Closed Days/Partial Days are exceptions to the base rules of open times.)

However you can also set up what days/dates/times that people can book via your widget, in "Configure Widget”


Here is the way that the rules interact:

If you are closed in Open Times, or Partially Closed then you can’t:

  • take manual telephone or walk in bookings for the days/dates/times that you are closed.

  • people won’t be able to book on the widget for the days/dates/times that you are closed.

So these are the settings that you should do first.

However if you set days/dates/times as Closed in the “Configure
Widget” setting then these can be different from the ones that you
have set in the settings we have just talked about.

Why have we done this? We have arranged things this way as some
customers want to have times when web bookings are regularly not
available. e.g “No web bookings on a Saturday night, as we get enough walkin business”.

If you have added in your partial open times and the time slots are not showing on your widget, then please take a look at the article below to troubleshoot settings that may be conflicting your set up. 


Remember to tweak other advanced settings you might wish to apply on this special day/date such as override covers, table turn time and min/max booking size for tables. 

You can also used the widget availability to close out the special date if don't want this bookable online or you could also close off to specific tables. 

You might find our quick video here helpful as well. 


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