Booking Options in simpleERB are easy to add and can be used in a variety of different ways. You can add booking options that are specific to dates, days or even certain times and only apply to certain cover types. Booking options are great for a one-off event you are holding such as a wine tasting or a set menu for a specific celebration date such as Mother's/Father's day or Easter. They can also be used as 'private' booking options for promotions or to handle coupon voucher companies.

To set up a booking option, go to the General settings section and select; Booking Options.

In the booking option setup box, add your requirements.

Choose a title and add a description for the customer to view, you can include links to menus. You can limit the cover allocation of the option if you wish. You might do this if you are running it alongside a drinks promo where you only have a certain amount of stock or you might only want a certain amount of customers to be able to get a special discount.
​
Please note, if you are creating a Booking Option for a ticketed event with a set overall cover allocation, the Booking Option can only be used once. This is due to the cover allocation being locked to the Booking Option and once reached, it can no longer be booked, even if additional future availability is added.
​

If you want this to be available to book on your widget, click 'available for web bookings'. 

If you want this to be a private option that can only be booked if you provide the unique link to your customer, please click the 'private only. A private-only option can be used for a special promotion booking that you limit to certain customers in your mailing list.

You can also have the option to force your online booking widget users to select only a booking option and not book just a table for a la carte. To do this, tick the check box listed in the help text.

Finally, set if this option requires an advance booking time. When an advance booking time is set, the option won't be available to book in time slots prior to the advanced booked time.

You can then add availability between two dates and choose on which days and at which times the option is bookable. If you are only running the option on a set date, you need to make sure you also tick in the day of the week the event is on for it to show on site. You can also enter any minimum and maximum booking sizes. You might not want large tables booking a high discounted booking option.

Once you've confirmed availability and saved the option, you will now be able to apply this to any bookings you make manually and it will be available to customers on the widget only at the times that you have specified.

If you want to set the booking option to only be available to a select few customers, or maybe an option only for your mailing list, just tick 'private only' and share the URL of the offer with whoever you want to have access to it.

You will then be able to see all your enabled booking options at the top of the setting, they can be disabled at any time. You can also select to view your disabled booking options.

Please be aware that if you are adding an option for a one day event, please ensure you are listing the start date as the offer event date and the end date as the following date. The system will not allow the offer bookable on the specified 'end date' but this tells the system that it should be bookable on the start date.
​

​We recently added a new article here about how to add to a specific booking option a payment or card capture rule. This feature can be used to make a prepayment in full for the bookable offer.