Set up the Party Bookings guest site

Sign in with your own owner or manager account. If the tile is missing, ask the owner to check your module access and whether this installation has Party Bookings enabled.

Only the owner account sees the setup guide. It opens automatically on a first visit when saved status confirms that booking setup has not been published. Managers and staff go to Today. Owners can reopen it under Settings → Booking link & status. A new browser or cleared cache does not restart the guide for an already-published venue.

Have your room capacities, package prices, opening hours, cancellation policy, and venue contact details ready. Do not enter real guest information for a rehearsal.

In Booking service connection, use the venue token and Test or Live environment supplied by the FECForge service administrator. This token is not your license key or payment-provider password.

Choose the environment supplied for this venue. Selecting Live does not enable live payments or bypass service readiness checks.

Paste the token privately. It stays on the server and is not shown again. Never include it in screenshots or support tickets.

Expect a connection result for the intended venue. If it fails, check the supplied environment and token with the service administrator. Existing settings are unchanged.

Save other booking edits first: this reloads setup and discards unsaved setup edits. Expect Current connection to show the saved environment and Connected. It does not publish the guest page.

Add the rooms or spaces that parties can occupy. Enter Room name using a label staff and guests will recognize.

Set a realistic total-person limit. Keep the room active only when it should be offered for bookings.

Choose Add package. Enter a clear name and description for one package before creating the next.

Enter Base price, Package deposit, the included guest allowance, and extra-person fees. A package deposit cannot exceed its base price.

Enter minimum and maximum guests and maximum birthday people. Birthday people count within the party’s total and the room capacity; they are not extra places outside those limits.

Review duration and preparation/cleanup buffers. These occupied times affect whether another party can use the room.

Select at least one active room with enough capacity. A package with no suitable room will not offer times to guests.

Choose Add add-on. Set Guest chooses quantity or One per guest and enter the corresponding price. Check the resulting total in a guest test.

Under Optional add-ons, choose Add add-on and set Add-on type to Extra room time. Enter your Hourly price and Maximum extra hours, then save and publish. Guests choose whole extra hours before checking times. The extended room reservation must fit opening hours, other bookings, room blocks and hosted-party limits. Extra room access runs concurrently with existing attractions. Attractions keep their original schedule; no extra attraction time is included. The visit ends when both the original attractions and extended room access are complete. Reserved hours are read-only on invoices; edit the reservation first, subject to its payment safeguards. No extra-time item or price is created automatically.

Under Venue and booking window, set Advance booking notice (hours) to the number your venue requires. For example, 72 requires at least 72 elapsed hours before the party starts; 0 allows same-day bookings when other availability rules permit. FECForge does not force a 72-hour rule on every venue.

Add a Blackout date when no new booking or reschedule should use that entire local calendar date. Blackouts are separate from the rolling notice window and from weekly venue hours.

Choose Save & Publish so the guest site receives the new revision. A saved but unpublished draft does not change public availability. Existing reservation records remain in history; review them separately when closing a date.

If a valid date still has no times, check weekly hours, booking horizon, package duration and buffers, booking interval, active eligible rooms, room capacity, and collisions with pending or confirmed reservations.

Open a package or an item under Optional add-ons, then choose Upload photo. Recommended: a landscape photo at 1280 × 720 pixels (16:9). PNG, JPG, and WebP files up to 8 MB are accepted; the source must be at least 120 × 120 pixels. Photos are optional; galleries and remote image links are not supported.

Drag the photo and adjust Zoom to choose what appears in the 16:9 preview. Horizontal and vertical position controls also let you adjust the crop without dragging. Choose Use photo to apply it to your draft, or Cancel to keep the previous photo. FECForge optimizes the selected crop to a maximum of 960 × 540 pixels.

Choose Adjust crop to reframe a saved photo, Replace photo to use a different image, or Remove photo to return to text-only choices. Upload the original again if you need areas removed by an earlier crop. If the combined photo limit is reached, remove a photo or try a simpler image.

Choose Save draft to keep changes private, or Save & Publish to update guest package and add-on choices. Uploading or removing a photo alone does not save or publish. Guests still see the last published item while you edit.

Under Party Bookings → Settings → Guest appearance, find Booking page icon. Upload a PNG, JPG, or WebP up to 8 MB. A simple square logo is easiest to recognize in a browser tab.

FECForge fits the image into a square PNG up to 256 × 256 pixels without cropping. Replace icon changes the image; Remove icon returns to your venue logo, or the FECForge mark if no venue logo is configured.

Save draft keeps the change private. Save & Publish updates the guest booking page and its icon URL. The staff app and fecforge.com keep the FECForge icon.

Under Packages & add-ons, set Guests included in base price, Minimum guests, Maximum guests and Maximum birthday people separately. Birthday people count toward the included allowance and total party size. For example, two birthday people plus eight additional guests use ten included places, not twelve. Room capacity uses that combined total.

Set Each birthday person after the first to the amount charged for every additional birthday person, or zero for no such fee. This charge is separate from extra-guest charges above the included allowance. Save and publish the settings for new bookings; existing reservations retain their saved fee rate. Extra-birthday fees do not increase the package-base limit for later online payments.

Under the package’s Birthday guest details options, turn on Collect the birthday guest’s name and full date of birth when needed. Every birthday person then needs their own name and birth date. Leave it off for packages that do not need birthday information.

Enter a whole-number Minimum age, or leave it blank for no age restriction. FECForge calculates every birthday person’s age on the party date and checks the rule before starting checkout and when staff reschedules. A February 29 birthday reaches the next age on March 1 in non-leap years for this rule.

The adult completing the request enters their own contact details separately from each birthday person. Exact birth dates are available to managers and owners; regular staff receive name and age summaries for every birthday person.

The guest contact step has no adult-contact affirmation or birthday-reminder opt-in checkbox. Entering birthday details does not opt someone into reminders. New requests record no marketing opt-in; historical permission is preserved. Staff cannot opt someone in, and changing the contact email does not transfer existing permission. Separate booking-policy acceptance still applies.

Set Venue timezone to the venue’s real timezone. Times and closed dates are interpreted for that venue, not the browser device.

Enter Booking interval (minutes), Advance booking notice (hours), and Booking horizon (days). For example, 72 hours is elapsed notice, not a fixed three-calendar-day rule.

Enter the days and intervals when parties can be booked. A party’s required occupied interval must fit the applicable hours.

Use seasonal date ranges for changing schedules. Check their dates and each day’s hours before publishing; use the guest site to verify a date inside and outside the range.

In Venue party capacity turn on Limit parties starting at the same time if needed, then enter Maximum same-time party starts. It counts full-visit start times across rooms. Leave it off for no venue-wide start limit.

Turn on Limit concurrently hosted parties if needed, then enter Maximum simultaneous room / hosted parties. It counts overlapping room time, not activities before/after the room or setup/cleanup buffers. Room occupancy checks still apply separately.

Select a fully closed local date and choose Add date. Existing parties are not cancelled by this change; review those reservations separately.

Set the guest-facing display name, introduction, logo, and theme. The venue name used in booking messages can differ from the display name in the masthead.

Open Settings → Promo codes and choose Create promo. Review dates and limits before saving. Promotions discount the package base, not extra guests or add-ons; existing bookings retain their saved prices. Promo controls save separately from the booking draft.

Open Settings → Confirmation & questions and choose Preview confirmation form. This uses the selected package’s current draft and fictional details; no form is issued or submitted.

As owner, open Settings → Email and choose Preview guest emails. Select each message. Samples use draft branding and disabled links; nothing is sent. Real messages use published branding.

Expect the draft to be saved privately. Saving the booking draft includes availability, appearance, confirmation, and package changes together; it does not update the guest site.

Expect the published revision to advance. Payment setup, sender settings, promotions, surveys, and booking policies have separate save controls; publishing does not save those for you.

Choose Open guest site. Use the provisioned booking address; editing Legacy preview identifier does not create a venue hostname.

Choose a published package, an available date/time, guest counts, and adult contact details. Use only provider test-payment controls when a test deposit is required.

Open Reservations and find the reference. Check the date, room, guest total, status, and payment amount. A payment return screen is not proof that payment was verified.

The owner can reopen the guide under Settings → Booking link & status and choose Check setup again. Fix the named missing step rather than repeatedly starting bookings. Share Copy booking link only after your owner and service administrator approve the venue’s operating mode.