How far ahead (and how late) can customers book?
Set minimum and maximum advance booking, cancellation deadline, table-hold time, cut-offs, and manual confirmation.
You control how far ahead, how last-minute, and on what terms customers can book in Settings → Bookings → Booking rules, in the Booking windows card. Owners, Admins and Managers can open this page.
Advance booking
- Set Minimum advance booking — customers must book at least this many hours ahead. The default is 0 (no minimum). Available on Plus plan and above.
- Set Maximum advance booking — how many days ahead customers can book. The default is 3 days, and your plan caps the maximum you can enter: 5 days on Free, 14 on Plus, 30 on Pro, 365 on Complete.
Staff timing tweaks
- Set Allow staff to book slightly in the past — lets staff create a booking with a start time up to this many minutes ago, handy when a customer has just sat down. Default 5 minutes, range 0–60. Very small values round up to your time-slot length.
- Set Cut-off for scheduled bookings before close — stop accepting scheduled bookings this many minutes before close. Default 0 (no cut-off), up to 180 minutes. Walk-ins use their own cut-off in Walk-In settings.
Cancellation deadline
- Set Cancellation deadline to block customer cancellations within this many hours of the booking. The default is 0, which always allows cancellations. Available on Plus plan and above.
This one feeds your public customer cancellation policy — when you save a change to it, you'll see "Saved — this also updated your customer cancellation policy" with a Preview link. It also matters elsewhere: deposit refund rules and late-cancellation no-show fees both hinge on this deadline.
The deadline counts back from the booking time on your venue's clock — "24 hours before" always means the same time on the clock the day before. On the two nights a year the clocks change, the window is therefore an hour shorter or longer in real terms; that's deliberate, because customers read a calendar and a clock, not a stopwatch.
One exception to the block: if you've switched on Also charge for late cancellations (in no-show protection) and the booking has a chargeable saved card, a customer inside the window can still cancel online — their manage-booking page names the exact fee and they must confirm it before the cancellation goes through. See How do I charge no-show fees?. In every other case, inside-window customers are asked to call you instead.
Holding tables and approving bookings
- Set Hold table for late arrivals — how many minutes you'll hold a table for a guest who's running late. Default 15, range 0–240. The number is shown to customers in booking emails when the "we'll hold your table" line is switched on in Settings → Email templates.
- Optionally switch on Require manual confirmation (online bookings only) (off by default; Available on Plus plan and above). When on, online bookings land as "pending" awaiting staff approval. Staff-created bookings and CSV imports always confirm immediately.
Click Save changes when you're done.
If you use Food & drinks-only bookings, these windows apply to both types equally — the lead times and cancellation deadline never differ per type. Only the online booking hours can differ (see How do I set my opening hours?).
Related: How do I approve or decline online booking requests? · When do customers get their deposit back? · How do I charge no-show fees? · How do I control booking times and durations?