How do I cap party sizes and covers?
Set the largest party customers can book online, apply it to staff too, and cap total covers per time slot.
You cap party sizes and covers in Settings → Bookings → Booking rules, in the Capacity & limits card. Owners, Admins and Managers can open this page.
- Set Maximum party size — the largest party size customers can book online. The default is 6; you can set anything from 1 to 100 guests. On its own, this restricts the public booking page only. If the number you set is bigger than your largest table, a note under the dial explains what that means for your floor plan: with Auto-split online bookings on we join adjacent tables automatically wherever your plan allows, and anything bigger — or tables that aren't next to each other — arrives unassigned for your team to seat. A party bigger than your total seating can never be booked online at all, and the note says so.
- Optionally switch on Apply max party size to staff bookings too (off by default). When on, staff also can't create bookings above this size from the dashboard.
- Set Maximum covers per time slot to cap how many guests can be booked in online around the same time — even if tables are free. Example: with a cap of 40, once the bookings sitting at 7:00pm add up to 40 guests, guests online can no longer book a time that overlaps 7:00pm. Walk-ins and staff bookings aren't blocked, but their customers do count towards the total. The default is 0, which means no limit. The page shows your current table count and total seat capacity for context.
- Click Save changes.
Maximum covers per time slot is plan-gated: Available on Pro plan and above. The other two controls are on every plan.
Per-type covers caps (food and drinks)
If you've turned on Food & drinks-only bookings (the card on the same page), you also get two extra dials there: Max food covers per slot — protects the kitchen and Max drinks covers per slot. Each counts only bookings of its own type, on top of the overall cap above (which still counts everyone). Set either to 0 for no separate cap. Both ride the same Pro plan and above gate as the overall covers cap.
What customers see
A party above your maximum can't book online at that size — your restaurant phone number (from Restaurant profile) is shown on the booking page for large-party enquiries. Once a slot's covers cap is reached, guests can no longer book that time online; staff bookings aren't blocked by it.
Related: How do I control booking times and durations? · How far ahead (and how late) can customers book? · How are tables assigned to online bookings?