A full hall and people on the stairs
On your website, you wrote “limited seating,” and tickets are sold via direct messages. By 5:00 p.m., you have forty confirmations and thirty chairs. Some people pay on the spot, while others think an Instagram DM counts as a reservation.
The same applies to the hall, the bowling alley, and the class. The venue has a maximum capacity and overlapping time slots. When the system isn’t keeping track of them, the instructor’s memory does.
Capacity is a property of a time slot, not a phrase on a poster
An event has a date, time, and capacity. No additional reservations will be accepted beyond the limit, because occupancy is calculated based on reservations, not on a hunch. Time-based service reservations work the same way: calendar, time slot, and payment in advance.
Anyone who has paid online has a spot. Anyone who comes “just to look around” won’t see an available seat in the system that you’ve already sold to someone else. At the entrance, you check the reservation, not a list in a notepad.
- Capacity limit for an event or venue
- Online payment before anyone arrives at the door
- No additional reservations beyond the occupied slots
- The same calendar for classes, event spaces, and tastings
What to do with people who can’t be accommodated
When a time slot is full, the next guest is assigned a different time or date. You aren’t selling them a promise that you’ll take back on the spot. That’s the whole difference between a limited-entry ticket and a poster that merely describes the limit.
