Managing bookings

The Bookings hub is where you run your service day to day. From one screen you can see every reservation, take a new booking over the phone, confirm the ones that came in overnight, seat guests as they arrive, and tidy up cancellations and no-shows. This is the page you will keep open during a shift.

Before you begin

Find it in the left sidebar under Bookings (/dashboard/bookings). Available on plans that include Bookings. You need permission to view bookings to open the hub, to create bookings to add reservations, and to edit bookings to confirm, change, seat, complete or cancel them. The Waitlist view needs the waitlist capability and permission to view the waitlist. As the restaurant owner you have all of these permissions already; employees get only the permissions you grant them.

Three ways to look at your bookings

At the top of the hub you choose how the same reservations are displayed. Switching views never changes your data — it just changes the lens.

List

A sortable table of reservations for the date or date range you filter to. Best for reading through the day, checking details, and acting on individual bookings.

Calendar

A month-at-a-glance grid. Each day shows how many covers are booked and how full you are, so you can spot busy and quiet days at once.

Waitlist

Guests waiting for a fully booked time slot, in the order they joined. Appears only if your plan includes the waitlist.

Alongside the view switch you will also find two buttons: New Booking, which opens the reservation form, and Schedule, which opens a side panel for your service periods, time slots and blocked dates. Those building blocks are covered on their own pages — see Service periods and Time slots.

The Bookings hub. The view switch, New Booking and Schedule sit in the top-right; filters sit above the reservation table.

Filtering the list

The List view opens on today by default. The filter row lets you narrow it down:

• Date — show a single day.
• From and To — show a range of days instead of one. Setting a range clears the single-day filter, and vice versa.
• Status — show only one status (for example only Pending), or All Statuses.
• Clear — a button that appears once any filter is set, resetting everything.

When a filtered list runs long, page through it with the Previous and Next buttons at the bottom. A short “showing X of Y” line tells you where you are.

Booking statuses, and what each one means

Every reservation carries a status. It drives the colour you see, and it decides which actions are available. Understanding the six statuses is the key to the whole page.

Pending (yellow)

Held but not yet confirmed. Bookings taken through your public booking page can arrive this way when you require guests to confirm by email. A pending hold is temporary — see the confirmation flow below.

Confirmed (blue)

Locked in and expected. Bookings you create yourself in the CRM start here. Guests who confirm their email land here too.

Seated (green)

The party has arrived and is at their table right now.

Completed (grey)

The visit is finished. This is a final status — there are no further actions.

Cancelled (red)

The reservation was called off, by you or by the guest. You can reinstate it if it was cancelled by mistake.

No Show (orange)

The party never turned up. You can flip this back if they arrive late after all.

Where bookings come from, and the email confirmation flow

Reservations reach the hub in two ways, and they behave a little differently.

Bookings you create in the CRM — from the New Booking form — are trusted straight away. They are created as Confirmed, with no email round-trip needed.

Bookings from your public booking page depend on one setting: whether your booking page requires guests to confirm by email.

1. A guest submits the booking form on your public page. Their table is held immediately.
2. If your page requires confirmation, the booking is created as Pending and the guest receives an email with a confirmation link. They have a short window — about 20 minutes — to click it. When they do, the booking becomes Confirmed. If they never confirm, the temporary hold lapses and the slot frees up again.
3. If your page does not require confirmation, the booking is created as Confirmed right away and the guest simply receives a confirmation email.

Two more automatic emails are worth knowing about, because they happen as you work the hub:

• Confirming a pending booking (clicking Confirm) sends the guest a confirmation email — the same receipt they would have gotten had they confirmed themselves.
• Cancelling a booking sends the guest a cancellation email.

Tip

Email is optional on the booking form, but if you leave it blank the guest cannot receive a confirmation, reminder or cancellation message. Add an email whenever you have one.

Creating a booking

Use New Booking for phone and walk-in reservations. The form fills in from the top down — each choice unlocks the next.

1. Click New Booking (top-right of the hub).
2. Pick the Date and enter the Party Size (from 1 up to 20 guests).
3. Choose a Service Period — the named window of service, such as Lunch or Dinner. Only periods that run on the chosen day appear, each shown with its start and end time.
4. Choose a Time Slot — the bookable start time inside that period. This list stays locked until you have picked a service period.
5. Optionally pick a Table. The dropdown lists only tables that are free and big enough for your party size; leave it on No table (assign later) to seat them nearer the time.
6. Optionally set Extend Duration if the party needs the table longer than a standard slot — add +15, +30, +45 or +60 minutes. The form shows the new end time.
7. Fill in Customer Details. Name is required; Email, Phone and Special Requests are optional. You can also use Search existing customer to auto-fill a returning guest.
8. Click Create Booking.

The New Booking form. Fields unlock top-to-bottom: date and party size, then service period, then time slot.

Preview the floor before you save

Once you have a date and time, click Inspect floor to open a live snapshot showing which tables are free, occupied, blocked or inactive for that exact slot — a quick sanity check before you commit to a table.

Worked example: a phone booking for four

A regular calls on Tuesday wanting a table for four this Friday at 8 pm.

1. Click New Booking, set Date to Friday and Party Size to 4.
2. Choose the Dinner service period, then the 8:00 PM time slot.
3. Start typing the guest’s name in Search existing customer and select them — their name, email and phone fill in automatically.
4. They mention it is a birthday, so type “Birthday — small cake at dessert” into Special Requests.
5. Leave Table on No table (assign later) and click Create Booking.

The booking lands in the list as Confirmed, and because it has an email address, the guest gets a confirmation message.

Double-booking warning

If you assign a table that already has an overlapping reservation, a Booking Conflict dialog lists the clashing bookings and warns that the table will be double-booked. You can back out, or choose Proceed Anyway if you truly intend to seat both (for example, a large party spanning two tables). The same check runs when you edit a booking onto a busy table.

Working a booking through its lifecycle

As service unfolds, you move each booking along with the action buttons. They appear both on the list row (next to the eye icon that opens the full details) and on the booking’s own details page, under Actions. Only the moves that make sense for the current status are shown.

Current status	Available actions
Pending	Confirm (to Confirmed) · Cancel
Confirmed	Seat (to Seated) · No Show · Cancel
Seated	Complete (to Completed) · Revert Seat (back to Confirmed)
No Show	Revert No Show (back to Confirmed)
Completed	none — this booking is finished
Cancelled	Undo Cancellation (back to Confirmed)

A booking's details page. The status badge sits top-right next to Edit; the Actions card holds the buttons for the current status.

Worked example: an evening from start to finish

A couple booked online and confirmed by email, so their reservation is Confirmed.

1. They arrive on time. Open the booking and click Seat — it turns green (Seated).
2. Later they finish and leave. Open it again and click Complete — it turns grey (Completed) and drops out of your active list.

If a different party had never shown up, you would open their Confirmed booking and click No Show instead. And if you clicked Seat on the wrong table, Revert Seat puts it straight back to Confirmed.

Editing a booking

Need to move a reservation to a different time, resize the party, or fix a typo in the guest’s details?

1. Open the booking (click the eye icon in the list, or the booking row).
2. Click Edit (top-right of the details card).
3. Change any fields — date, party size, service period, time slot, table, duration or customer details.
4. Click Update Booking.

Editing uses the same form as creating, so the same table-conflict check applies if you move the booking onto a table that is already taken.

Cancelling a booking

Cancelling is reversible, so don’t worry about calling it off too early.

1. On the list row or the details page, click Cancel.
2. A Cancel Booking dialog opens. You can optionally type a Cancellation reason — handy for your own records and for anyone reviewing the booking later.
3. Click Cancel Booking to confirm, or Keep Booking to back out.

The reservation turns red (Cancelled), its cancellation details (when, by whom, and the reason) are recorded on the booking, and the guest receives a cancellation email if they have one on file. Changed your mind? Open the cancelled booking and click Undo Cancellation to put it back to Confirmed.

The Calendar view

Switch to Calendar for the big picture. Use the arrows to move between months, or Today to jump back to the current one.

Each day cell shows a coloured badge with the total covers booked that day, plus a small count of how many bookings that represents. Cancelled and no-show bookings are left out of both numbers, so what you see is your real expected covers.

Reading the colours

The covers badge is colour-coded by how full you are against your total table capacity: green when you have plenty of room, amber as you fill up (roughly half full), and deep red when you are close to or fully booked. A day tinted red is fully blocked; a day tinted amber is partially blocked (see Blocked dates).

Hover over any day to reveal two quick actions:

• Add booking — jump straight to the New Booking form pre-set to that date.
• Block this date — close the day (or part of it) to new reservations.

Click a day to open its bookings in the panel on the right, where you can act on each one without leaving the calendar.

The Calendar view. Coloured badges show each day's covers; clicking a day lists its bookings on the right.

The Waitlist view

If your plan includes the waitlist, the Waitlist button shows guests waiting for a fully booked slot on a chosen date, listed by their position in the queue. Each row shows the guest, party size, date, time and their waitlist status — Waiting, Offered, Accepted, Expired or Cancelled. For anyone still Waiting or Offered you can Cancel their entry. Pick a date at the top to see that day’s queue.

Related

Service periodsDefine the named windows of service that your time slots live in.

Time slotsSet the bookable start times inside each service period.

Blocked datesClose days or tables to new reservations.

The floor mapWork your tables live during service.