The waitlist

A full night is a good problem, but a guest who is turned away is a guest you may never hear from again. The waitlist catches that demand instead of losing it: when a time slot is fully booked, guests can add themselves to a queue, and when a seat opens up, Eighty-Six offers it to the next person in line automatically. This page explains where the waitlist lives, how to read it, and how an entry becomes a real booking.

What the waitlist is

The waitlist is a queue of guests who wanted a fully booked time and asked to be notified if a spot opens. Each entry records who they are, how many covers they need, and the exact date and time slot they were after. Entries move through a short life cycle:

Waiting

The guest has joined the queue and is waiting for a seat to free up. This is where every entry starts.

Offered

A seat opened and Eighty-Six has emailed the guest an offer to confirm. The offer is time-limited.

Accepted

The guest confirmed the offer in time. Their entry has turned into a real booking.

Expired or Cancelled

The offer ran out before the guest confirmed (Expired), or the entry was called off by the guest or by you (Cancelled).

The important thing to understand is that most of this happens on its own. You do not have to chase the queue by hand — your main job is to keep an eye on it and step in when you need to.

Where to find it

Open Bookings from the left-hand menu.
At the top right, next to the List and Calendar buttons, click Waitlist.

If you do not see a Waitlist button, your plan may not include the waitlist, or your account may not have the view waitlist permission. Check with your restaurant’s owner or an admin.

The Bookings page with the Waitlist button selected, showing the queue of waitlisted guests for the chosen date — The Waitlist view on the Bookings page, showing guests queued for a fully booked day.

How guests join the waitlist

You do not add guests to the waitlist by hand from this screen — the list fills itself from your public booking page. When a guest chooses a day and party size and every time in that service is already taken, the booking page offers them the option to join the waitlist rather than turning them away. They confirm their name and email, pick the full time slot they were after, and land on a “You’re on the Waitlist” screen that shows their position in the queue.

From that moment their entry appears here, on the matching date, with the status Waiting. Nothing else is required from you to capture them.

Reading the waitlist

The waitlist shows one day at a time. Use the date picker at the top to choose which day you are looking at; it opens on today. Each guest in the queue appears as a row with these columns:

Position — the first column, headed #, is the guest’s place in line for that time.
Customer — the guest’s name, email, and phone number if they gave one.
Party Size — how many covers they need.
Date — the day they asked to book.
Time — the time slot they were after, shown as a start and end time.
Status — where the entry is in its life cycle (see below).
Actions — where a Cancel button appears for entries you can still remove.

If nobody is waiting for the selected day, you will see No waitlist entries found with a short note that guests appear here when they join the waitlist for fully booked slots. When the queue runs longer than one page, use the Previous and Next buttons at the bottom to move through it.

A single waitlist row showing position, the guest's name and contact details, party size, date, time and a status badge — Each row shows the guest's position, contact details, party size, and requested date and time.

Waitlist statuses

The coloured badge in the Status column tells you at a glance where each entry stands:

Waiting — in the queue, waiting for a seat to open.
Offered — a seat opened and the guest has been emailed an offer to confirm.
Accepted — the guest confirmed the offer; the entry is now a booking.
Expired — the offer ran out before the guest confirmed.
Cancelled — the entry was called off, by the guest or by you.

How a waitlist entry becomes a booking

This is where the waitlist earns its keep, and it runs mostly by itself.

A seat opens in a fully booked slot — most often because another guest cancels their reservation.
Eighty-Six emails the next guest in the queue an offer with a link to confirm. Their entry changes from Waiting to Offered. You do not send this yourself.
The guest has 30 minutes to confirm. If they do, their entry becomes Accepted and a confirmed booking is created — it then shows up in your List and Calendar views like any other reservation.
If the 30 minutes pass without a confirmation, the offer Expires and the seat can move on to the next guest in line.

Because the offer is time-limited and automatic, a freed-up table finds its next guest without anyone on your team lifting a finger. You can simply watch the status change from Waiting to Offered to Accepted as it happens.

Cancelling a waitlist entry

Sometimes you need to take a guest off the queue yourself — they called to say they no longer need the table, or you have already looked after them another way.

Open Bookings, then the Waitlist view, and select the right date.
Find the guest’s row. If the entry is still Waiting or has an active Offered status, a red Cancel button appears in the Actions column.
Click Cancel. The entry moves to Cancelled and is no longer in line for a table.

Once an entry is Accepted, Expired, or already Cancelled, there is nothing more to do from the waitlist and no Cancel button appears. An accepted entry has become a normal booking, so if you need to change or call it off, manage it from the Bookings list instead.