🏪 Location View

Table Reservations

Table Reservation lets guests book a table at your restaurant, and lets your staff run the room on the day. This guide follows one booking from the moment a guest picks a time to the moment the table is cleared, and explains every setting that changes what happens along the way.

It is a Location View feature. Every setting, table and booking described here belongs to one location, so check the correct location is selected in the header before you start.

How the pieces fit together#

Four screens share one set of data. You will move between them constantly, so it helps to know what each one owns:

A booking always carries two separate statuses, and confusing them is the single most common source of trouble. Keep them apart:

• The booking status — is this reservation live? Pending, Confirmed, or Cancelled. This is about the agreement with the guest.
• The service status — what is this table doing right now? Confirmed, Arrived, Seated, Finished, No-show. This is about the evening.

The journey, end to end#

1. You set the rules in Table Settings — opening hours for bookings, how long a table is held, and whether you take deposits.
2. You draw your room in the Floor Plan editor — areas, tables, seats, and where each table stands.
3. A guest books, through your booking widget, over the phone, or at the door. The system checks whether a suitable table is genuinely free.
4. The booking arrives in Table Bookings and on the Floor Plan for that date — instantly, without a refresh.
5. On the day, staff run the floor — assign a table, mark the guest arrived, seat them, and clear the table when they leave.
6. Money settles itself if you take deposits: a held deposit is released when the guest is seated, or charged if they never come.

Setting up: Table Settings#

Operations → Table Reservation → Table Settings. Everything on this page applies to the selected location only.

When you take bookings#

Bookings can only be made inside the hours you declare here. This is separate from your opening times for orders — a kitchen that serves until 23:00 might stop taking reservations at 21:30.

• Setting Hours — your normal week. Add a time slot per period you take bookings: one row for a lunch service, another for dinner, for each day.
• Date overrides — different hours for one specific date. An override replaces the weekly hours for that date entirely, rather than adding to them. To close for a bank holiday, add an override for that date with no bookable period.

How long a table is held#

Accepting bookings#

Auto Accept Bookings decides what a new booking's status is the moment it arrives:

• On — new bookings are Confirmed immediately. The guest gets certainty, and nobody has to do anything.
• Off — new bookings arrive Pending and wait for someone to confirm them from the bookings list. Use this if you want to look at every request before committing the table.

Deposits#

Deposits ask the guest for money, or for permission to take money, before a booking is confirmed. They are the main defence against no-shows on busy nights.

The waitlist#

When a guest asks for a time you cannot offer, the waitlist keeps them in order instead of losing them. Enable Waitlist turns it on; Waitlist Mode decides what happens when a table frees up:

• Notify customer when a table frees up — the guest is texted and invited to book. The table is not held for them, so it is still first come, first served. Safe, and the usual choice.
• Automatically confirm when a table frees up — the system creates the booking for them and texts them that it is done. Nobody has to act, but you have committed a table to a guest who has not re-confirmed they still want it.

Floor plan behaviour#

Your room: areas and tables#

The floor plan is a drawing of your restaurant. Before it can help you, it has to match the room — the right tables, the right sizes, standing roughly where they stand in real life.

Areas#

An area is a named part of your room with its own plan: Main, Terrace, Bar, Upstairs. Each becomes a tab on the floor plan, and each has its own canvas to arrange tables on. Open Manage areas from the floor plan header to add, rename, reorder or hide one.

An area can only be deleted once it is empty. If it still has tables, move them to another area or delete them first.

Tables#

Every table belongs to exactly one area. Select a table in the layout editor to edit it in the panel on the right.

Laying out the floor#

1. Open Edit layout from the floor plan header. This is a separate mode, deliberately — so nobody drags a table by accident in the middle of service.
2. Drag tables into position. They snap to a grid as you go.
3. Select a table to change its number, seats, shape or size in the right-hand panel.
4. Use Add table for a table that does not exist yet.
5. Click Save layout. The whole area saves at once.

How a booking is made#

Where bookings come from#

The floor plan shows the source on every booking, which is worth glancing at: a walk-in has no phone number to ring if they wander off, and a widget booking has a guest who expects an email confirmation.

What the system checks before offering a time#

When a guest asks for a time, four things are checked in order. Understanding them explains almost every "why can't I book that?" question:

1. Are you open for bookings? The time must fall inside your Setting Hours for that day, or inside a date override if one exists.
2. Is there a table big enough? Only tables that are in service and have at least as many seats as the party are considered. A party of six is never offered a four-top.
3. Is that table actually free? The whole turn must be clear — not just the start time. A 19:00 booking with a 90-minute turn needs the table free until 20:30.
4. Is the buffer clear too? The turn buffer is added to both ends, so a table is not offered if it would leave no gap after the previous party or before the next.

Pending, Confirmed, Cancelled#

Taking a booking by phone#

1. Go to Operations → Table Reservation → Table Bookings.
2. Click Add Reservation.
3. Enter the date, time and number of people, then the guest's name, phone and email.
4. Add an Occasion (birthday, anniversary) and Notes if the guest mentions anything — both reach the floor, so the team knows before the guest sits down.
5. Assign a Table Number now if you want to, or leave it and let the floor decide on the day.
6. Save. The booking appears on the floor plan for that date immediately.

Running service on the Floor Plan#

Operations → Table Reservation → Floor Plan. This is the screen your team uses during service. It always shows one date and one area at a time.

Reading the screen#

What the table colours mean#

What the booking colours mean#

A booking carries a service status. Three of them are worked out from the clock as the evening moves, so they appear on their own:

Seating a guest#

1. Find the booking in the rail, or click its table on the plan.
2. If it has no table, assign one — either drag it onto a table, or use the Suggested panel, which ranks the free tables that fit the party and marks the best fit.
3. When the guest walks in, click Arrived.
4. When they sit down, click Seat. The turn starts now, not at the booked time.
5. When they leave, click Finish & clear. The table is free immediately.

The rest of the floor's tools#

Two people, one booking#

If someone changes a booking on another device while you have it open, your change is refused rather than silently overwriting theirs, and the floor refreshes so you can see what actually happened. Make your change again on the fresh version.

The waitlist#

Operations → Table Reservation → Waitlist. The queue of guests who wanted a time you could not give them, oldest first.

Guests are texted when they join, so they know they are in the queue, and again if a table opens up. When a table frees, the system walks the queue oldest first and picks the first guest whose party actually fits — a two-top freeing up does not go to the party of eight who have been waiting longest.

You can also seat someone from the queue yourself with Seat now, which turns them into a seated booking on the tables you pick. The screen warns you if the tables you have chosen do not seat the party.

Deposits, end to end#

If deposits are switched on, money moves by itself as the booking progresses. Here is the whole path, so you know what has happened to a guest's card at any point.

1. The guest books. They are quoted the deposit — a fixed amount, or the per-person amount times the party size.
2. They pay or authorise. Charge upfront takes the money. Authorise and hold reserves it without taking it.
3. The booking is confirmed. The deposit shows as Charged or Held on card.
4. They arrive and are seated. A hold is released automatically the moment staff seat the party — nobody has to remember.
5. Or they do not come. Marking the booking a no-show charges the held deposit.
6. Or they cancel. Inside the cancellation window the money is returned — a hold is released, a charge is refunded. Outside it, the deposit is kept.

You can also settle a deposit by hand from the bookings list, where a booking with a deposit has a Deposit action showing the amount, the mode and the dates it was charged, released or refunded, plus Customer arrived — release hold and No-show — charge deposit.

Who can do what#

Every action is controlled by a permission. Buttons you do not have permission for are hidden rather than disabled, so if something described here is missing, ask your administrator rather than assuming it does not exist.

Everyday situations#

A guest is fifteen minutes late#

The booking turns Late on its own once your threshold passes. Ring them. If they are on their way, leave it — seating them late is normal and the turn starts when they sit, not when they booked. If they are not coming, mark No-show: it frees the table for a walk-in and charges the deposit if you hold one.

A party of eight, and your biggest table seats six#

Mark the two tables you would push together as Can be joined in the layout editor. The suggestion panel will then offer them as an adjacent join for parties that need it, and assigning the booking holds both tables at once — so neither can be given away separately.

A table breaks during service#

Use Block table for the rest of the day with a reason, so nobody seats anyone on it and the whole team can see why. If it will be out for longer, take it out of service in the layout editor instead. Do not delete it — you would lose its booking history, and the system will refuse anyway if it has ever been booked.

A guest wants to keep the table longer#

Extend +30 min, or set an exact Turn length. Check the timeline first: if a booking is due on that table, you will see it, and can move the later party to another table before you promise anything.

Someone booked online for a time you are closed#

Check your Setting Hours for that weekday, and check whether a date override exists for that date — an override replaces the weekly hours completely, so an override added for a different reason can quietly open a period you meant to be closed.

The floor plan says Reconnecting#

Real-time updates are unavailable, so the floor is refreshing every 20 seconds instead. Everything still works and nothing is lost — changes just take a few seconds to appear. If it persists, check the device's internet connection.

A new table is not being offered to bookings#

Work down the list: is it In service? Does it have enough Seats for the party? Is it free for the whole turn, not just the start time? And is there room for the turn buffer on both sides?

Setup checklist#

1. Confirm Table Reservation is enabled for your company.
2. Set your Setting Hours for each day you take bookings.
3. Set Booking Duration, Slot Interval and Turn Buffer to match how your service actually runs.
4. Decide on Auto Accept.
5. Set up Deposits if you want them, and set the cancellation window.
6. Turn on the Waitlist and choose notify or auto-confirm.
7. Enable the Floor Plan, and set Late After and Ending Soon.
8. Open the floor plan, check your tables are all there, and drag them into place in Edit layout.
9. Add any extra areas and move the right tables into them.
10. Check seats and Can be joined on every table.
11. Give your team the permissions they need.
12. Take a test booking and walk it through: assign, arrive, seat, finish.