How to manage restaurant reservations during a busy service

At 7 pm the door doesn’t wait. Guests arrive, the phone rings and someone wants to move from inside to the terrace. The Reservations page keeps every booking for the day in one list, so the host can see what’s next at a glance.

Read the day at a glance

Open Reservations from the sidebar. The number beside it shows bookings waiting for approval.

The cards at the top show:

• Today’s reservations, and how many are checked in
• Confirmation needed: bookings awaiting approval
• Waitlist count
• Total guests booked for today
• No-shows so far

Below them, the status tabs (All, Awaiting approval, Confirmed, Checked in and the rest) filter the list. Use the search box to find a guest or a confirmation number.

Choose a view

• List is the quickest way to work through the day.
• Calendar shows bookings by day across the month.
• Timeline shows bookings by table. Drag a booking to move it, or click an empty slot to book it. Each booking holds its table for 90 minutes.

Move each booking to its next step

The Update status button on each row shows the next step:

Status	Button	When to press it
Awaiting approval	Approve	You’re happy to take the booking.
Confirmed	Check in	The guest has arrived and is seated.
Checked in	Complete	The table has paid and left.

To approve several bookings at once, tick them and approve them together.

Add a phone booking

1. Select New reservation.
2. Choose the Date, Party size and Time.
3. Add the guest’s first and last name, phone number and, if you have it, their email.
4. Leave Table assignment on Auto-assign, or pick a table.
5. Add Special requests the guest asked for, and Internal notes for your team. Internal notes aren’t visible to the guest.
6. Select Create reservation.

Bookings you add are confirmed straight away. If the time slot is full, the form tells you, and submitting adds the guest to the waitlist instead.

For guests who arrive without a booking, select Walk-in. See How to manage walk-ins and your waitlist.

Open a booking for the full picture

Select a guest to open their booking. You’ll see:

• party size, date, time, table, source and any occasion
• special requests and dietary notes
• how many times they’ve booked before, their no-shows and their lifetime spend, and whether they’re a VIP
• the deposit and its payment status
• internal notes from your team

From here you can edit the booking, move it to another table, cancel it or mark it as a no-show. When you save changes, the guest is emailed the new details.

Handle cancellations and no-shows

• Cancel: the guest is emailed that their booking is cancelled.
• No-show: use this when a guest doesn’t arrive. It counts against the guest’s record, and a saved card may be charged your no-show fee. See How to take booking deposits and cut no-shows.

Both ask you to confirm first, so a stray tap won’t cancel anyone.

Export the day’s bookings

Select Export CSV to download the bookings in the current view, for example to print a list for the door.