Party size limits
Set Min party and Max party on each experience, under Capacity & party. Guests are held to them strictly. The booking window’s guest stepper won’t go outside the range, and the experiences list tells them the range up front: “For 2–8 guests”. If a guest somehow submits a party outside the range, they’re told:That party size can’t be booked online for this time. Try a different party size or contact us.
Groups per slot
Behind Advanced on the same card is Max groups per slot — a cap on the number of distinct parties in one seating, regardless of headcount. Twelve seats can be twelve solo guests or two parties of six, and those are very different services. If your team can only handle four conversations at once, cap the groups at four. Leave it blank for no limit.Sharing a table
Whether strangers share a table is set on the table, not the experience: tick Communal seating on a bar or farm table in the venue’s floor map, and it takes several parties until its seats run out. See Tables and the floor map.The online booking cutoff
Booking rules → Online booking cutoff (min) is how close to a seating you’ll still take a reservation from the website. The template you start from sets it — 60 minutes for a tasting, 30 for restaurant service, 120 for a tour, a day for a private buyout — and you can change it. The help text says exactly what matters:How close to a start time online reservations close. Staff can always book past this.So a 60-minute cutoff means the 3:00 tasting drops off the website at 2:00 — but your team can still book someone into it at 2:55 from the admin. Availability search, the host desk and the waitlist all ignore the cutoff. Guests who hit the cutoff mid-booking (they had the window open when it passed) see:
That time can no longer be booked online. Please pick a later time or contact us.Set it to match your actual prep: a tour that needs a guide briefed wants 120 minutes; a walk-up-friendly bar might want 15.
Public or members only
In the experience editor’s right-hand rail, Who can book has three options:- Anyone
- Members only
- Unlisted — staff book it
- Ticked (the default): listed, with a way to join. In your store’s Experiences list a non-member sees the card like any other — photo, Members only chip, price and Book button — but no times on a date search. Pressing Book opens the booking window on a “Reserved for members” notice: your message, your join button (“Join to book” unless you change it) and Sign in. It sells the club: guests see what membership opens up, and the pitch comes when they reach for it.
- Unticked: not listed. Non-members never see the experience in the Experiences list. Use this for a private members’ event you would rather not advertise.
/pages/wine-club, or a full web
address), a Join button label, and Which button leads — “Join first,
Sign in underneath” (the default) or “Sign in first, Join underneath”. The
leading one is the big button; the other is a quiet link under it. Leave the
link blank and the window offers Sign in only. A single Experiences list
or Experience booking block can use a different link and label from its own
settings in the theme editor.
The same notice opens when a non-member lands on the experience’s own
product page (a shared link, a search engine) and presses its booking
button — never a dead calendar. A logged-in customer without member access
sees your message, your join button and a quiet line saying their account
doesn’t currently have member access — and no Sign in, which would only
bring them back. A recognised member sees the normal calendar.
Riserva knows who’s a member from the customer’s Shopify tags, matched against
the member tags you set in Settings → Memberships → Member recognition. See
Member benefits.
Set up member recognition first. If no member tags are set up, a members-only experience can’t be booked by anyone online — the editor warns you when you pick “Members only” in that state: “No member tags are set up yet, so no guest can book this online”.Unlisted is for private events — buyouts, industry dinners, anything booked by phone or email rather than self-serve. An unlisted experience is fully operational for your team (admin and POS book it normally) but invisible online: it never appears in the experiences list, its times are never served, and its Shopify product is published to the POS channel only — there is no product page for a guest to find. Guests who hold a reservation on it can still manage it with their confirmation code and email, including rescheduling. Flip it back to Anyone and the product returns to the Online Store on the next save. Staff always see and can always book members-only experiences. An experience marked members-only carries a Members only badge on its own page, in the experiences list, and in staff availability search.
Good to know A guest reaches “member” status by being logged in to your store as a customer whose tags match your member tags. A club member browsing while logged out is, as far as your website is concerned, a stranger — so tell members to sign in before booking, and expect some phone calls either way.
What staff can override, in one table
Every override is recorded on the reservation’s timeline with the staff member’s
name against it.
What things mean on this screen: What things mean: Experiences