Basic Package Settings
In this section, we will get familiar with the basic package settings for the plugin. Basically, you can configure more complex dates and times, as well as available seats for your restaurant.
In order to access the Basic Package setting, select Settings$ from the WordPress menu.
At the homepage, you can see a brief explanation of what each option does, but following the links on this page you will be able to go through them one by one in a more in-depth manner.
As you can see, you can configure addons, custom fields, notifications, reservations, reservation settings, security, special occasions, SMTP settings, seats by weekday, open times, blocked times, email templates, and reply comments via advanced settings. There’s also the Waiter Dashboard, which we’re going to discuss first.
Waiter Dashboard
Waiter Dashboard is a very important part of the plugin as it’s mainly used for reservation management. This is where you can manage all of your pending reservations. You can accept or reject reservations anytime, anywhere you are, as long as you know the URL.
The URL to the Waiter Dashboard page
The full tutorial on waiter dashboard can be found here.
Addons
Add-ons are a fantastic way to upgrade and customize the basic package to your needs. Why pay for items you have no use for? Review and select only what you need! Review the functionality of each add-on and see what you feel you will get the most use from.
Information about addons can be found on this page.
Blocked Times
Another straightforward setting is the blocked times. Here, you can configure a date range where your restaurant will be closed to the public. This is very helpful to let your customers know when you are closed and the reason why you are closed.
The full tutorial on blocked times can be found here.
Custom fields
The custom fields settings add a variety of possibilities to customize the plugin for your restaurant needs. With this function, you can add extra fields to a reservation form.
More information can be found here.
Email Templates
In this section, you can customize the predefined email templates to your liking.
Tutorial how to customize E-Mail templates you can find on this page.
Notifications
In this field, you can customize the predefined notifications to your needs.
The full tutorial on notifications can be found here.
Open Times
This is almost similar to Working Times in the basic settings, but here, you can configure it more thoroughly. This allows you to set a time when you are open in the morning and close in the afternoon and open again in the evening. This also allows you to require a 1-hour advanced reservation for lunch or a 3-hour advanced reservation for dinner, etc.
As you can see, this is a powerful setting as it allows you to effectively manage your time, thus giving you and your crew enough time to rest, work or prepare for a certain reservation.
The full tutorial on open times can be found here.
Reply Comments
Reply comments allow you to create predefined templates for rejection reasons, so you won’t have to manually type a reason every time you need to reject a reservation.
More information can be found here.
Reservations
With help of this feature, you can see all the information about the incoming reservations.
More information can be found here.
Reservation settings
You can fully adapt the plugin to your restaurant needs. You can set specific duration of reservation, extend reservation duration after kitchen closes to closing time, set service time between reservations and a lot more.
Further information on how to customize the reservations can be found here.
Seats By Weekday
Here, you can set the available number of seats for a particular day. This is useful if you have a varying number of seats on a daily basis, either because of special reservations on a particular day, maintenance or if you lack the staff to handle more people because of holidays or rest days or sick days.
Seats by Weekday
The full tutorial on seats by weekdays can be found here.
Special occasions
Special occasions allow defining dates when you are open specifically on a specified day for a special occasion.
The tutorial on a special occasions can be found here.
Security
This section allows configuring various security settings.
More information can be found here.
SMTP Settings
SMTP Settings allows you to specify your email server credentials. In this case, all emails will be sent out using your server.
The full tutorial on SMTP settings can be found here.