Sections

What this covers

What sections are for, how to set them, and how to name them well. Requires the manage-tables permission.

What a section is

A section is a label on a table that groups it with others: Terrace, Bar, Upstairs, Garden, Main. It is free text — you invent whatever matches your room.

What sections actually do

More than cosmetic grouping, which is why they are worth setting up properly:

The Timeline and Live View group by them, so your staff read the room in the same divisions they already think in (link The Timeline).
Reports break down by them. The revenue report names each table's section, and the utilisation report shows how bookings split across sections — which is how you answer "is the terrace worth staffing?" (link Utilisation report).
Event table selection can work by area, so you can give a whole section to a private function instead of ticking tables one by one (link Creating an event).
The floor plan groups its table list by them, which makes a large plan manageable.

That reporting benefit is the one people underrate. A restaurant that has never set sections cannot answer whether its upstairs room earns its heating, and no amount of later analysis recovers the data — the grouping has to exist while the bookings are being taken.

How to set a section

On the table itself. Type a section name in the Section field when you add or edit a table at Property Settings → Tables. That is the only place a section is set.

Bulk add applies one section to the whole batch, which is the fastest way to set up a room: run it once per section — all your terrace tables, then all your main-room tables.

Areas in the floor plan are not the same thing

Worth being clear, because the two look related. The floor-plan editor lets you draw an area — a labelled rectangle for the terrace, the bar, a partition. When you label one, it offers your existing section names to pick from, so the drawing matches your data.

But an area is a drawing. Dropping a table inside it does not give that table a section. If you want the table grouped and reported under Terrace, set its Section field to Terrace.

The tidy way to work is both: set the section on each table, and draw an area with the same name so the plan reads the way the room looks.

Naming them well

Use what your staff already say. If everyone calls it "the back", call it The Back. A section named Zone B that nobody uses out loud is a section nobody will maintain.
Keep them short. They appear as headings on the Timeline and Live View.
Keep them stable. Renaming a section splits its history in reports — the old name and the new one look like two different places.
Spell them identically. "Terrace" and "terrace" are two sections as far as grouping is concerned. There is no picker on the table form, so it is worth writing your list down.
Not too many. Three to six suits most restaurants. One section per table is no grouping at all.

Leaving a section blank

Perfectly fine. Tables with no section are grouped together and shown as the main area. A small single-room restaurant may never need sections — and can add them later if it opens a terrace, without disturbing anything.

A worked example

A restaurant with a main room, six terrace tables and four bar stools:

Main-room tables — section left blank, or Main
Terrace tables — Terrace
Bar seats — Bar

Now the Timeline shows three groups, the utilisation report shows how the terrace performs against the main room, and a private hire can take the terrace by area. Three words typed once, and a year later you can answer whether the terrace paid for its awning.

Good to know

Changing a table's section is immediate and safe. Past bookings are reported under the table's current section, so a rename moves history with it — which is why stable names matter.

Sections are not a capacity or a rule. Nothing limits bookings per section, and no booking rule works per section. They group and they report.

Guests never see them, on the booking page or anywhere else. They are yours.