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Add a booking by hand

For phone bookings and walk-ups — date, time and covers, then the guest's surname and phone number. Large parties pick their tables on the floor plan.

For phone bookings and walk-ups, use New booking (top right of the diary).

  1. 1

    DATE, TIME and COVERS

    Pick the date first. TIME then shows every time your booking setup takes bookings that day, stepped by its slot interval — tap one. A time that is already busy is marked, and the line underneath says how many covers are booked at the time you picked. Need a time that isn't there (a private event outside your hours)? Press Another time. If no booking setup or hours are set up, you get a time picker instead of the chips.

    COVERS: tap 1 to 12, use − and +, or tap 12+ and type the number.

  2. 2

    LARGE PARTY BOOKINGS (only for a big party)

    For a party that needs several tables, an area or a section, press Choose tables and areas — see Holding an area for a large party below. Leave it alone for an ordinary booking: when you save, we seat the party at the best free table that fits — the same choice your booking page makes, including tables you've set up to join together.

  3. 3

    GUEST DETAILS

    Booked with you before? Type two or more letters of their name, email or phone into the Existing guest details box and pick them — their details fill in, and the booking is added to the profile you already hold for them rather than creating a second one. Skip it for anyone new.

    Surname and Phone are required. First name and Email are optional. A profile stored under a single name — just "Priya" — goes into Surname.

    If your login's access level includes bookings but not customer records, the box says so instead of listing anyone: type the guest's details and the booking saves as normal.

  4. 4

    OTHER REQUIREMENTS

    Your booking questions — allergies, and any others you've set up — and Notes. Questions like Dogs and High chairs are buttons: None, 1, 2 or 3. Tap the one you've pressed again to clear it. See Booking questions below.

  5. 5

    Click Save booking

    The button is at the top of the page. It stays greyed out until you've filled something in, and it says Save booking, not just "Save", because it creates a real reservation. Saving takes you to the diary on that date, with the booking showing.

    If your venue asks who took each booking, Who took this booking? opens first — see Who took the booking.

When a time is full

If a booking setup has Max covers per slot set (Booking setups → Pacing), each time chip knows how many covers are already in the room then.

  • Most venues: a time over the limit is marked, and the line under the chips says so — 19:00 is full for 4 — 6 of 8 covers are booked. You can still book it. It's only a note; the booking saves.
  • Venues switched to stop overbooking (ask us to switch it on): a full time is struck through and can't be picked, so you offer the caller the times that are free. A time with no single table free asks you to choose tables under Large party bookings. If nothing is left that day, the page says so — and for today, links to the waitlist. We check again when you press Save booking, so a time somebody else filled in the meantime is refused rather than double-booked.

A Max covers per slot of 0 never stops you: 0 is how you switch a setup's online bookings off, not your own.

Over the online arrivals limit

If the booking setup has a limit on how many guests can book online to arrive in the same slot (Booking setups → Pacing → Max new guests starting per slot), the form tells you when the booking you're adding would take that slot over it. The note appears under TIME:

19:00 would have 20 guests arriving, more than your online limit of 16. You can still book it.

It's only a note. Save stays on and the booking always saves — you can take more people than the online limit allows. The time it names is the slot your booking falls in: with 15-minute slots, a booking at 19:10 is in 19:00. Your booking still counts, so it uses up online places in that slot.

Holding an area for a large party

For a big party — 39 for a birthday up in the loft — you can hold the tables while you take the booking, so nobody else is booked onto them.

  1. Put in the date, time and covers first — your floor plan needs them to know what's free.
  2. Press Choose tables and areas, under LARGE PARTY BOOKINGS. Your floor plan opens straight away.
  3. Tap an area in the list on the right, like Loft, to take every free table in it, or tap tables on the plan one at a time. To keep part of an area open for other guests, tap the area and then take the tables you want to keep free back out.
  4. Press Use 5 tables — the button says how many you've picked. You're back on the booking, which now shows the tables and the seats they hold. Press Change tables to go back to the plan, or Clear to drop them.
  5. Finish the booking and press Save booking. The booking and its tables are saved together, and you're taken to the diary.

If you change the date, time, covers or site after picking, the tables are cleared and we say so — what was free at the old time may not be free at the new one.

The column on the right counts the seats you've booked against the party's covers, lists the areas on the floor you're looking at, and lists every table you've booked with its seats. Every table you pick is green; there's no main table to choose. A table that's already in use at that time can't be picked. Holding several tables for one booking covers the rest — what shows where, releasing tables, and moving the booking.

Note

The booking is always saved, even if its tables can't be. If something goes wrong as you save — say a table you picked was changed while you were filling the rest in — the page keeps the booking and tells you the tables aren't booked, and why. Press Choose tables to pick again, or Go to the diary and use Book tables on the booking later.

Who took the booking

Taken by records the member of staff who entered the booking. At a venue that asks for it (ask us to switch it on), pressing Save booking opens Who took this booking? — type your name as you'd say it ("Sam", "Sam on the bar"), or tap one of the last few names used on that device, and press Save booking again. The booking isn't saved until a name is given. It shows under the guest's name on the parties list. Venues that don't ask leave it blank.

It is deliberately not filled in for you. Most venues run the host stand on one shared portal login, so the account name would be the same on every booking of every shift and would tell you nothing. Typing it is the point.

Note

Only bookings added by hand carry it. A booking the guest made on your booking page, one taken on the till, or a walk-up seated from the waitlist has no member of staff to name, so the line simply doesn't appear.

Adding several bookings for the same guest

If you're entering a backlog — a regular with four bookings to catch up on — use the existing guest box each time after the first. That's what keeps all four on one customer record, so their history, spend and any tags stay in one place.

Note

Change the name, email or phone after picking someone and we take that as a correction to that guest: their customer record is updated with what you typed, and the booking is filed under them. So adding a regular's new mobile while you book them is all it takes to put the new number on their record.

The line under the box says which details are about to change. If you picked the wrong person and typed over them, press This is a different guest — that is the one thing we can't tell apart from a correction, so it needs a word from you.

It used to work the other way round: an edited box created a second customer record. That is why a guest can appear twice in your customer list from before October 2026 — tell us if you'd like a pair merged.

Booking questions

If you've set up custom fields, they appear on this form under OTHER REQUIREMENTS — the same questions a guest answers on your booking page. Fill them in and the answer is recorded properly: it shows on the booking, and an allergen or dietary field raises the alert your team sees during service and reaches the kitchen ticket.

Answers are also saved to the guest's customer record, so next time they book you already know.

Note

Leave a question blank and nothing is recorded for it. That's deliberate — if the guest told you an allergy last time, leaving the box alone keeps what's already on their record rather than wiping it.

Allergies taken over the phone

Put an allergy in the allergen field under OTHER REQUIREMENTS, not in Notes.

The Notes box is free text for your team. It is read by people, not by the kitchen: nothing typed there reaches a kitchen ticket, and it doesn't raise the allergen alert your team sees on the booking.

What the box asks for depends on your setup. If you have a custom field flagged as an allergen or dietary alert, the box stops mentioning allergies, because that field is where an allergy belongs. If you have no such field, it still says Allergies, occasion, requests… — with nothing structured set up, it's the only place anyone writes it down.

Type something that looks like an allergy and a line appears under the box reminding you that notes don't reach the kitchen ticket.

Heads up

"No allergies" is its own answer. Tapping it records that you asked and the guest said none — which is different from leaving the question blank, where nobody knows whether it was ever asked. Use it when you've checked.

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