Lightspeed Reservations enables merchants to accept and manage reservations through the Back Office, POS, and a custom online reservation website with shareable booking link. 

To start, you need to enable Lightspeed Reservations on your account. Contact your Account Manager for all the details. 

Lightspeed Reservations requires your location to have a floor plan set up with an accurate number of tables and covers.

Once enabled, you’ll be able to go through the set up process for each of your locations, manage reservations in the Back Office and POS, as well as create a custom reservation website.

Launching the Lightspeed Reservations setup wizard

1. Log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. Navigate to Lightspeed Reservations in the sidebar.
3. Click Set up Reservations to launch the setup wizard.

The wizard will walk you through setting up your available reservation hours, configuring your booking options, setting up your reservation website, adding the reservation button to your POS, and going live with Lightspeed Reservations. You can always edit your settings later.

While completing the wizard, you can click the Back button at any time to return to a previous page. To restart a page with its default settings, press Reset. To abort the wizard at any stage, you can click X > Exit.

Configuring your reservation hours

These are the hours that your restaurant will be available for booking via online reservations. 

1. To remove a day from the schedule, click the toggle next to the name of the day.
2. To set the start of reservations for each day, enter your opening hour in the first box (set to 9:00 AM by default).
3. To set the end of reservations for each day, enter the closing hour in the second box (set to 7:00 PM by default).

4. If you have one or more intervals where reservations are not available during the day, click + to add another open/closing window of time to the day.

   If you have multiple days that are identical, you can set the hours on the first open day and then click Apply to all. The hours from the first open day are then copied to each other open day. Only the first open day can be copied.

5. Click Continue.

Configuring your Automatic booking settings

Here you will configure your capacity and timing for automatically approved reservations.

1. Toggle each floor plan to accept or decline reservations by clicking its name. A colored background means that the floor plan is available for reservations.
2. Set the percentage of tables available for automatic booking via the website. If you wish to reserve some tables for walk-ins, set the percentage to less than 100%. Your options are: 20%. 25%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100%.
3. Set the Standard meal duration. This is how long you aim to have a table occupied before it becomes available again. Your options range between 30 minutes and four hours, in 15 minute increments.
4. Set the turnaround time. This prevents the system from booking a reservation immediately after the end of another to give staff time to prepare the table for the next customer. Your options range from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, in 5 minute increments.
5. Select your table optimization priority. Your options are:
   • Maximize occupancy: This option only allows reservations that leave a maximum of one seat empty per table.
   • Maximize reservations: This option allows more bookings, even if it means leaving empty seats at the table.
6. Click Continue.

Configuring your guest website details

These settings allow you to configure the maximum party size and the information shared with your customers when they use the reservation site.

1. Set the Party size limit. This is the maximum number of guests per online reservation.
2. (Optional) Set the Phone number. Your location’s phone number is shared with the booking customer.
3. (Optional) Set the Note to guests. This message is displayed after the reservation is completed on the site. Here you can include any additional details they may wish to know such as parking, cancellation policy, or important news.
4. Click Continue.

Adding a reservation button to the POS

This allows you to add a button in your menu to create and manage reservations in a POS configuration.

1. Click Add button to each POS configuration that you’d like to create reservations from.

   You can click the menu or configuration to be taken to their details page in the Back Office. However, this will cancel the setup process and delete all settings entered so far.

2. In the new pop-up window, select which existing Main screen you want to add a Manage reservations button to via the drop-down menu. If you’d like to create a new main page on the menu for reservations, select Create a new main screen, then give the screen a name.

3. Click Add button to complete this step.

   If you change your mind, click Delete for each POS configuration you wish to remove the button from.

4. Click Continue.

Completing the setup process

Your online reservation website is almost ready to launch!

1. Click Copy link to copy the website’s URL to your clipboard for sharing. 
2. Click Open guest website to open a new page with the reservation site.
3. When you’re done, click Finish setup.

The link to your online reservation website is always available under Lightspeed Reservations > Settings.

Your reservation website is live and you can now manage your reservations via the Back Office or POS. Repeat this process for each location you wish to add an online reservation website.

Configuring advanced reservations settings

After setting up Lightspeed Reservations, some advanced settings become available for seated reservations on the POS.

1. Log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. Navigate to Lightspeed Reservations > Settings.

On this page, you can configure all of the same settings that were available during setup plus an additional section with some advanced settings.

Setting up your POS for Lightspeed Reservations

Prepare your POS to handle reservations by taking a few simple steps.

1. Ensure each POS device has the latest version of software installed.
2. Ensure each Menu has the reservation button, as needed, under Lightspeed Reservations > Settings > Manage Reservations.
3. Ensure each POS device is loaded with a configuration with the reservation button. Reload each device under Devices and clicking the reload button (two arrows icon).