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Services and hours

A service is a bookable sitting with a name: "Lunch", "Dinner", "Sunday brunch". You can have as many as you like, and each has its own hours, sitting length and largest party.

Adding one

Open the menu (the cog) and choose Services.

1. Tap a suggestion — Lunch, Dinner and so on — or Other to name your own.
2. Sitting length is how many minutes a party keeps its table. Leave it blank for two hours.
3. Largest party is the biggest group that can book online. Anything bigger has to ring you, which is usually what you want.
4. Press Add service, then Set hours on the row that appears.

How the hours become times

Diners are offered a start every thirty minutes, from opening, for as long as a whole sitting fits before you close. The dashboard says this back to you in a sentence before you save, so there is no guesswork:

Dinner, 5pm to 10pm, two-hour sitting: tables offered from 5pm to 8pm.

If you want an 8:30pm booking, close at 10:30pm or shorten the sitting. The last time offered is always close minus the sitting length.

Hours are one window across the days you tick. A service that runs different hours on different days is two services — "Dinner" and "Weekend dinner" — which also lets you give the weekend a longer sitting.

Changing things

• Hours: press Set hours on the service, change them, Save hours. Existing bookings are not touched.
• Sitting length or largest party: edit the service. New bookings use the new numbers; existing ones keep the length they were booked with.
• A service you no longer run: delete it. Past bookings keep their details.

What we do not do yet

Fixed seatings — "we seat at 6 and at 8:30 and nothing between" — are not built. Everything is a rolling start. If that is how you run, tell us at hello@thezi.app; we would rather hear from a venue than guess.

Still stuck? hello@thezi.app reaches a person, usually the same day.