Once bookings start coming in, two questions come up again and again: is this service filling up? and how do I fit everyone onto the tables I have? Eighty-Six answers both from your Live Map — the live view of your floor for the current service. Inspect floor shows you, slot by slot, how full you are and which tables can still take a party. Organize Tables goes a step further and proposes a whole seating plan you can apply in one click. This page covers both.
These are two different tools for two different moments, and it helps to keep them straight.
Inspect floor
A read-only snapshot of a single time slot. It shows which tables are free, occupied, blocked or inactive, and lists the tables that could seat a given party. Nothing changes on your floor — it is purely a check. Great while you take one booking.
Organize Tables
Looks at every booking across a whole service period and proposes a complete seating plan: who sits where, which tables to merge for larger groups, and what to move. You review it, then apply it or throw it away.
Both open from the top of the Live Map on your Dashboard. On a computer you will see the Inspect floor and Organize Tables buttons side by side; on a smaller screen, Organize Tables tucks into the three-dots actions menu, and Inspect floor also appears inside the New Booking form once you have chosen a date and time.
Both tools live at the top of the Live Map on your Dashboard.
Inspect floor opens a window titled Booking situation. It is the quickest way to answer “can I still seat a party of four at eight o’clock on Friday?” without hunting through your bookings.
Click Inspect floor at the top of the map. (You can also click Inspect floor inside the New Booking form after you pick a date and time — handy when you are mid-booking.)
The Booking situation window opens on the slot you were looking at.
Across the top is a toolbar you use to aim at exactly the moment you care about:
Date, Service period and Time slot — the slot you are inspecting.
Party size — how many guests you are trying to seat.
Draft table — an optional table you are thinking of giving this party. If it turns out to be taken at that slot, the window warns you.
On the right, three running tallies show how many tables are free, occupied and blocked right now.
The main area shows your floor map with every table coloured by its status for that slot. Underneath sits a timeline of the neighbouring time slots — each one shows its time range and how many tables are still free. A slot with space shows green; a full slot shows red. Use the arrows to step to the slot before or after without leaving the window, so you can quickly find one that still has room.
The Booking situation window: floor map and slot timeline on the left, the read-out on the right.
Down the right-hand side is the read-out that does the thinking for you:
Floor Snapshot — a one-line verdict, in green when there is room (“3 tables available for 4 guests”) or red when there is not (“No tables available for 4 guests”). Below it, a short breakdown of where the rest of the floor went — how many tables are occupied by other bookings, blocked as staff reserved, too small for this party, or inactive at this time.
Your Options — the tables that would actually seat the party, best first. Each line names a table, or a pair to push together such as “Tables 4 + 5 together”, and how many seats it gives. The tightest single table that fits is flagged as the best fit with a green check, so you seat the party without wasting a big table on a small group. Hover or tap a line to light those tables up on the map. If more than a few tables fit, click Show more to see the rest.
If nothing fits, Your Options says so plainly (“No tables can seat 4 guests at 20:00”) and nudges you to try another slot from the timeline. And if you had picked a Draft table that is already taken, or the party is too large for any single table, a yellow banner explains and suggests merging tables or splitting the party.
Floor Snapshot gives the verdict; Your Options ranks the tables that fit, best first.
When a service has a lot of bookings, arranging them across your tables by hand is fiddly and easy to get wrong. Organize Tables does it for you: it looks at every booking for a service period and proposes a complete seating plan — which party goes on which table, where two small tables should be joined for a big group, and whether any tables need to be nudged on the map to make it all fit.
Open your Dashboard and click Organize Tables at the top of the Live Map. On a smaller screen, find it in the three-dots actions menu. The Table Organization Planning window opens.
Choose the Date you are planning for.
Choose a Service Period. Only the periods that actually run on that day of the week appear; if the list is empty you will see “No active service periods for this day of week.”
Eighty-Six comes back with a Review Plan view. Four tallies across the top give you the shape of it at a glance:
Total Bookings — how many reservations it looked at.
Assigned — how many of them it could seat.
Merges Needed — how many table pairings it wants to make for larger parties.
Tables to Move — how many tables it would reposition on the map.
Below the tallies, the plan spells out the detail:
Table Assignments, grouped by time slot — each guest, their party size, and the table or tables they would get. A Merged tag marks a party seated across combined tables.
Table Merges — the specific tables it wants to join, the seat range they would give, and the reason.
Table Repositioning — any tables it would move to make the plan work.
If a booking cannot be seated, a yellow note lists it with the reason, so you can sort that one out by hand.
If your floor is already arranged well, you will instead see “Current table layout is already optimal” — nothing needs moving. If there are no bookings for that date and period yet, it tells you there is nothing to plan.
Review Plan lays out every assignment, merge and move before you commit to anything.
To put the plan into action, click Confirm & Apply. (When the plan needs no table moves or merges, the button simply reads Confirm.) Eighty-Six assigns the bookings, creates the merges and repositions the tables on your active map, then confirms with a short summary of what changed.
Not what you wanted? Click Reject to discard the plan and leave your floor exactly as it was, or Back to pick a different date or service period and try again.
Taking a single booking, or double-checking one slot? Use Inspect floor.
Setting up the whole room before a busy service? Use Organize Tables to lay out every booking at once, then use Inspect floor to sanity-check any slot that still looks tight.
Remember that a slot only shows tables as available while covers remain for the period. Even with free tables, a service stops taking bookings once its Max covers ceiling is reached — see Time slots for how that ceiling works.
