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Every experience has one of three statuses, and only one of them is bookable. Change it from the Status card in the right-hand rail of the experience editor. It applies immediately — there’s no save step for status. A new experience’s Draft reads “Draft — not yet published” until it has been Active once.

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Draft

A new experience is born Draft. Guests can’t see it, staff can’t book it, and no Shopify product exists yet. Draft is also where you go back to. Un-publishing an Active experience returns it to Draft — Riserva doesn’t have a separate “paused” state, because a paused experience and a draft one behave identically. Existing reservations are untouched by any status change.

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Active — what publishing actually does

Setting an experience to Active does two things:
  1. It becomes bookable — on your website, in staff availability search, and on Host. The Status card reads “Live — guests and staff can book it.”
  2. Riserva creates its Shopify product, if it doesn’t already have one.
  3. For an experience whose card is saved at checkout and charged later, it also sets up the purchase option Shopify uses to save the card.
The product is created with your experience’s name, description, photo and price, and made available on your Online Store and Point of Sale (an Unlisted experience’s product is on Point of Sale only). From then on, Riserva keeps it in sync — saving the experience pushes the title, description, photo and price to Shopify, and the product’s status mirrors the experience’s (Draft → draft, Active → active, Archived → archived). The sync is one-way, Riserva → Shopify. Editing the product in Shopify won’t change your experience, and your next save will overwrite it.
Good to know Reservation products are services. Riserva marks every variant as not requiring shipping and not tracking inventory. That matters twice over: Shopify won’t ask a guest for a shipping address to book a wine tasting, and Shopify’s inventory count can never become a second, conflicting answer to “is this slot full?” Riserva’s availability engine is the only source of truth for capacity.

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Archived

Archived is for something you’ve retired but can’t erase — last year’s harvest dinner, a tasting you no longer run. It’s not bookable, and it drops out of the experiences list unless you filter for it. Reservations and reporting are untouched. The rail spells it out:
Retired and hidden from the experiences list. Existing reservations and reporting are untouched.

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If the Shopify product doesn’t sync

Riserva will tell you, and it will not roll back the status change:
The status changed, but the Shopify product didn’t sync: …
or, from the create flow:
Published, but the Shopify product didn’t sync: …
This is deliberate — you saw the experience go live, so it went live. Fix the sync separately. The same goes for a charged-later experience whose purchase option didn’t sync: the message names it (“the saved-card checkout option didn’t sync: …”), and saving the experience again retries it. To retry: the rail’s Online store card shows Create Shopify product while the experience isn’t linked to one. Once it’s linked, saving the experience pushes content again.
The Online store card in the rail tells you where you stand:
  • Linked → “Linked to a Shopify product. Its title, description, and photo update when you save.” plus a View product link into Shopify admin.
  • Not linked → “Guests buy through a Shopify product. Create one to sell this online.” plus Create Shopify product.
If an experience is Active but has no product, guests will see the booking window but hit an error when they try to reserve. That’s the single most common publishing mistake.

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Publishing checklist

Before you set something Active, confirm:
  • It has at least one schedule — a weekly schedule or an event date
  • It’s linked to at least one venue, and each schedule names one
  • Capacity and party size limits are what you actually run
  • The price is right, and When is it charged? on the Pricing card matches what you tell guests
  • The cancellation policy in its Booking rules card is the one you want — your shop policy, or custom rules
  • The description and photo read well in the preview
  • The booking widget is on the relevant page — Add the booking widget
What things mean on this screen: What things mean: Experiences