Card at booking
See whether guests are asked for a card when they book, whether we can take one, and how many cards you are holding right now.
Bookings → Payments shows you one thing: what happens with cards when a guest books with you.
What happens when a guest books
The top of the page is the journey a guest's card actually takes: they pick a time, they are asked for a card, our payment provider holds it, and we remove it after their visit. The state of card at booking sits beside it.
When card at booking is on, a guest must give a card before they can confirm a booking. The card is held by our payment provider. Nobody at your venue ever sees the number, and you never store it.
When it is off, guests book without a card, and the last three steps of the journey are greyed out. You can still be holding cards taken before it was switched off.
Note
There is no switch on this page. We turn card at booking on for you, because it changes what every guest on every booking setup is asked, and it only works once your online payment details are set up. Ask us and we will turn it on.
Online payment details
These are the details that let us take payments online. Your venue has one set, shared with QR ordering and Click and collect. They sit along the bottom of the journey card, because card at booking cannot finish without them. The page tells you whether they are set up, and whether you are in test mode or live mode.
Cards you are holding
One big number — every card you are holding right now — and a bar underneath splitting it up:
- Stored and ready — a card is held for this booking right now.
- Being removed — you or the system asked for the card to go. We keep asking our payment provider until they confirm it.
Note
If any removals have stopped, they show as a red slice of Being removed, not as a separate pile. A stuck card is a card being removed — it is the same booking, just one we have given up asking about. So the two numbers never add up to more cards than you actually hold.
Under the bar, on its own line, is asked for a card and never arrived — the guest started the card step and did not finish. No card is held for these and the table is given back, which is why they sit outside the bar rather than inside it.
We start removing a card on its own about a day after the guest's table time, but only for bookings the guest actually turned up to. Cancelled and no-show bookings are left out of that sweep, so their cards stay until somebody removes them. To look at or remove the card on one booking, open it in the diary.
Cards we could not remove
Sometimes our payment provider will not delete a card. We try again and again, and if it still does not go through we stop trying. The card is still stored, and that guest was told it would be removed.
This is the one thing on the page that needs you. Nothing will try that card again on its own — it will sit there until somebody presses the button. No money has moved and nothing was charged: these are guests who came in, paid normally, and were promised their card would be forgotten.
Each one shows you the guest, the booking, and what our payment provider said. Press Try again and we start asking again from the beginning.
Note
If a card sticks a second time, tell us. Something at our payment provider needs fixing, and pressing Try again on its own will only stop again later without telling you. We will chase them for you.
When nothing is stuck, the page says so in words with a tick. An empty space would look the same as a broken page.
The longer explanation of all of this lives in How card at booking works, the panel at the bottom of the page — open it when you want the full wording, or hover an i next to anything on the page for the short version.
What this page does not do
It does not set your deposit or your cancellation terms. Those are set on each booking setup, because a big-party setup often needs a different rule from a walk-up one. It does not decide where the card step sits either — that is your booking flow.