The live floor map

The live floor map is your command centre during a shift. It is the Dashboard — the first screen you land on after signing in — and it shows your restaurant’s floor map with every table coloured by what is happening on it right now. From this one screen your team can see who is seated, who is due, seat arriving guests, take a walk-in booking, and move, merge or set tables aside as the night unfolds. Keep it open on a tablet at the host stand and it becomes the single source of truth for the room.

Before you begin

The live floor map is your CRM home page — open Dashboard in the left sidebar (/dashboard). Available on plans that include Bookings; without that plan the Dashboard is replaced by your Menu. To seat guests and take bookings from the map you need permission to view, create and edit bookings. To rearrange, merge or deposit tables you need the map-editing permission. Taking food orders from an occupied table is part of a higher plan tier. As the restaurant owner you already have every permission; employees get only the ones you grant them.

What “live” means

The map is a real-time picture of today. Each table reads its status from today’s bookings and from the current time, and the whole board refreshes on its own roughly every 30 seconds — so a booking taken on your public page, or a change a colleague makes on another device, appears here within moments. A live clock ticks in the header, and you can force an immediate update at any time from the actions menu (Refresh).

Because it is tied to today, the live map is different from the map you build in the editor. The editor is where you design the room and place tables; the live map is where you work it. Rearranging, merging or depositing tables here changes your active map for the day.

The four table statuses

Every table wears a colour that tells you, at a glance, what to do next. The exact colours follow your restaurant’s branding, but the defaults are:

Available (green)

Free right now — no one is seated and no reservation is due imminently. Ready for a walk-in or an arriving booking.

Reserved (amber)

A booking is due here soon. Tables with an imminent arrival gently pulse so you can spot them coming.

Occupied (red)

A party is seated here right now. This is where your active covers are.

Maintenance (grey)

Out of service — not bookable and not countable. Use it for a broken or reserved-for-repair table.

A small legend in the bottom-left corner of the map keeps a running count of how many tables are Available, Reserved, Occupied and (if any) in Maintenance.

The live floor map. Tables are coloured by status; the header carries the live clock and actions; the legend bottom-left tallies each status.

Getting around the map

Before you work the room, get comfortable moving around it.

• Pan — click and drag any empty part of the floor, or scroll. On a touchscreen, drag with one finger.
• Zoom — use the + and - buttons top-right, or hold Ctrl and scroll. On a touchscreen, pinch. The middle button shows the current zoom level; click it to fit the whole floor back into view.
• Switch floors — if you have more than one map (for example an indoor room and a terrace), a Select floor dropdown appears in the header. Pick the floor you want to work.
• Fullscreen — the expand icon hides everything but the map, ideal for a dedicated host-stand screen. Press it again (or Esc) to exit.

Lock the map during a rush

Tables on the live map can be dragged around — which is exactly what you want when you are setting up, but a nuisance when you only mean to tap a table during a busy service. The lock toggle in the top-left corner solves this. A green, gently pulsing padlock means the map is unlocked and tables can be moved; click it and it turns red and locked, so taps only ever select a table and never move it by accident. Your choice is remembered on that device.

Tip

Lock the map once you have the room set for the shift. You can still seat, free and book from a locked map — locking only stops tables being dragged, merged or deposited.

Selecting a table and the quick-action ring

Everything you do to a single table starts the same way: click the table. A ring of round action buttons fans out around it, and — on a desktop — the panel on the right switches to show that table’s details. Click the same table again to hide the ring, or click any empty part of the floor to deselect.

The buttons in the ring change with the table’s status, so you only ever see the moves that make sense right now:

Button	What it does	Shows when
Sit	Seats the table (see below)	The table is free or reserved
Free	Ends the current visit and frees the table	The table is occupied
Book	Opens the Quick Booking form for this table	The table is free or reserved
Select / Deselect	Picks the table for merging with others	Any working table
Split	Breaks this table out of its merged group	The table is merged
No Show	Marks the current booking as a no-show	A confirmed or seated booking is on the table
Deposit	Moves the table off the floor into the deposit	The table is free
Block	Closes this table for part of the day	Any working table
Info	Opens the full table details	Any table

Click a table to open its quick-action ring. The buttons shown depend on the table's current status.

Seating and freeing guests

Seating is the heartbeat of the live map, and Sit is smart about it.

• If the table already has a confirmed booking due around now, Sit simply marks that booking as seated.
• If the table has no booking, Sit creates a quick walk-in booking for the current time and seats it in one step — no form to fill in.

Either way the table turns red (Occupied) and joins your live covers. When the party leaves, click the table again and choose Free: the visit is completed and the table returns to green (Available), ready for the next guests.

Worked example: a walk-in of two

Two guests arrive without a reservation on a quiet Tuesday.

1. Scan the floor for a green table big enough — the number under each table’s label shows its seat range, for example 2 to 4.
2. Click that table to open its ring.
3. Click Sit. The table turns red and a walk-in booking is created and seated automatically.
4. When they finish, click the table again and choose Free. It goes back to green.

Seating walk-ins needs a time to attach to

Because a walk-in becomes a real booking, it needs an open time slot to sit in. If you have not set up service periods and time slots for today, Sit will ask you to Configure them first. See Service periods and Time slots.

Taking a booking on the spot

When a guest phones ahead or asks to reserve a specific table for later, use Book (the same form is also reachable from a table’s details panel).

1. Click the table and choose Book, or open the table’s panel and click Quick Book. The Quick Booking form opens with the table already selected.
2. If you run more than one floor, confirm the Floor Map. You can also change the Table, or leave it on No table (assign later) to decide nearer the time.
3. Pick a Service Period (such as Lunch or Dinner) and then a Time Slot — the form pre-selects the period and slot closest to now to save you time.
4. Set the Party Size.
5. Attach a guest: use Customer to search an existing customer, or type a Phone number. Expand Additional details to add a Name, Email and Special Requests.
6. Click Confirm Booking.

The new booking appears on the map straight away — the table turns amber as a reservation, then seats normally when the guests arrive.

The right-hand panel: today’s bookings and table context

The panel on the right of the map has two faces, and it flips between them automatically.

With no table selected, click Bookings in the header to open Today’s Bookings — every reservation for the day, grouped into Seated, Upcoming and Completed, with a running count of bookings and guests along the bottom. Click any booking in the list to jump straight to its table on the map.

With a table selected, the same panel shows that table’s context: its capacity and status, the Current Booking and Next Booking, and a Daily Availability timeline that lays out every time slot for the day and marks each one Open, booked, seated or past. From here you can Seat a waiting party, mark a visit Complete, or Book the table. A Back arrow (top-left of the panel) returns you to the day’s booking list.

Select a table and the right panel shows its context — current and next bookings, plus a slot-by-slot availability timeline for the day.

Order-taking on occupied tables

When you select an occupied table, this panel can also show an order pad for taking the party’s food and drink. That is part of a higher plan tier — if your plan doesn’t include it, you still keep all the booking and table controls, with a short note where the order pad would be.

Preview the room at any time of day

Open the Bookings panel and you will find a Time Preview slider. Drag it to any moment in the day and the whole map re-colours to show how the floor will look then — which tables are reserved for the 8 pm sitting, say, or which are still free at 1 pm. A Preview badge and a dot on the Bookings button remind you that you are looking ahead, not at now. Click Now to snap back to the present.

Tip

Time Preview is the fastest way to answer “can we fit a walk-in of six at 8:30?” — slide to 8:30 and read the green tables straight off the map.

Setting tables aside: the deposit

Sometimes a table shouldn’t be on the floor at all right now — a two-top you have pushed against the wall, a section you have closed for the evening. Rather than delete it, move it to the deposit: a holding area that keeps the table (and its settings) safe and off the map until you need it again.

1. To store a table, click a free table and choose Deposit — or simply drag it onto the open Table Deposit panel, which lights up as a drop zone. The table leaves the floor and appears as a card in the deposit list.
2. To bring one back, open Table Deposit in the header (the count badge shows how many are waiting). Drag a card onto the exact spot you want on the map, or click Place to drop it into the centre.

A table in the deposit is invisible to guests and to availability — it simply isn’t part of the room until you place it back. You cannot drop a table onto a greyed-out (unavailable) area of the floor; if you try, the map tells you the spot isn’t available.

Worked example: closing the terrace early

Rain arrives and you want to pull four terrace tables out of service for the night.

1. Open Table Deposit in the header so the panel is ready as a drop target.
2. One by one, drag each terrace table onto the panel. Each disappears from the floor and lands in the deposit list.
3. Later, if the sky clears, open the panel and drag any table back onto the terrace — or click Place and nudge it into position.

Merging tables for larger parties

A party of six but only four-tops free? Combine tables into one bookable unit. Merged tables are joined by a dashed amber line, share a single booking, and pool their seats — so seating one seats the whole group, and freeing one frees them all.

There are two ways to merge.

Drag one table onto another. As you drag a table close to a neighbour, the neighbour glows amber to show it will merge. Release, and the two snap side by side and join. Drag a third table toward the pair to grow the group.

Select, then combine. Click a table and choose Select; click another and choose Select again. A bar slides up from the bottom of the map showing how many tables are selected, their numbers, and the combined seat range. Click Combine to merge them, or Cancel to start over.

Selecting tables to merge. The bar at the bottom shows the combined seat range before you click Combine.

Worked example: two two-tops for a party of four

1. Click the first free two-top and choose Select.
2. Click the second free two-top and choose Select. The bar at the bottom now reads that two tables are selected, with a combined range of about four seats.
3. Click Combine. The tables join with a dashed line and behave as one.
4. Seat the party by clicking either table and choosing Sit — both tables turn occupied together.

To split a group back apart, click any merged table and choose Split — or simply drag one table well away from its partners, which breaks the merge automatically. Note that Free ends the group’s visit but keeps the tables merged; use Split when you actually want them separate again.

Other quick actions

Two more buttons in the ring handle the awkward moments of a service:

• No Show — the party never turned up. With their booking selected, choose No Show to mark it, freeing the table and recording the miss.
• Block — take a single table out of play for part of the day (a wobbly table, a reserved private spot). This opens the blocked-time form already filled in for that table and today’s date. Blocking is covered in full under Blocked slots and availability.
• Info — opens the table’s full details, including its current and next bookings, in a panel you can act on.

Undo, refresh and sharing the map

• Undo / Redo — moved, merged or deposited a table by mistake? The undo and redo arrows in the header (or Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z) walk back and forward through your table changes.
• Organize Tables — opens a helper that tidies and arranges your tables for you, a quick way to reset a messy floor.
• Refresh — forces an immediate re-sync if you don’t want to wait for the automatic update.
• Download as PNG / PDF — from the actions menu, export a snapshot of the current floor to print for staff or keep for your records.
• Configure Maps — jumps to the map editor when you need to change the room’s design rather than just work it.

Related

The floor mapDesign your restaurant's room and place its tables.

Managing bookingsThe full bookings hub — list, calendar, statuses and the reservation lifecycle.

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

Time slotsSet the bookable start times inside each service period.