Run front of house on a screen

If you run service from a laptop or a tablet on the host stand, you don't need the till app to see your bookings. Go to /foh in any browser, sign in once, and bookmark it. It is the same Bookings Mode screen the till shows on a host stand — a soft dark slate, with the same buttons down the left — with your own bookings in it.

Each view has its own address, so you can bookmark the one you use most: /foh/day-brief, /foh/grid, /foh/floor-plan, /foh/live-spend, /foh/waitlist and /foh/requests. The screen always opens on today; use the arrows at the top to look at another day. The Cover flow and the Grid open scrolled to the busiest part of the day, so you see where the bookings are straight away. The gear at the bottom of the left-hand bar opens your Booking settings in a new tab, so the screen stays open behind it.

The portal's usual menu is hidden here on purpose. This screen is meant to be left open across a room all night, and it keeps itself up to date: a booking taken on the phone shows up on its own within half a minute.

What's on it

Down the left are the six views, in the same order as the till:

• Day brief — the day at a glance.
• Grid — every booking against every table.
• Floor plan — your room, table by table.
• Live spend — what each open table has spent so far.
• Waitlist — your queue, if you use one. Seat lets you pick the table: free ones first, busy ones greyed with when they free up, and a tap on a busy one asks Seat anyway?.
• Requests — bookings waiting for you to accept or decline. The number next to it is how many are waiting on the day you're looking at.

Under them is the gear, which takes you to your bookings settings, and the day's service times with the time now.

Along the top are the arrows and the date, Go to now (lit up whenever you're looking at a day other than today), search, print, and the three green buttons: + New booking, + Add walk-up and + Large party.

Day brief

The numbers across the top are the day's covers, upcoming, seated, completed, walk-ups, no-shows and cancellations. Down the side is everyone seated and everyone still to come. Tap a name to see the whole booking: covers, table, how they booked, any allergies they declared, notes and contact details, with Seat and No-show buttons — or Departed once they're seated.

If the guest has a customer profile, its note shows as PROFILE NOTE under the booking's own note. And if the booking still lists an allergy their profile no longer does, a plain line under ALLERGENS DECLARED says so, with Remove from this booking — the same one-step check as in the booking details panel. Both need an access level that can see customers, and removing needs a connection.

SEAT · T12 names the booking's table and seats the party there in one tap — table and arrival together — so the bill a waiter opens on that table is tied to their booking. CHANGE TABLE seats them where they really are. Only when the table is already busy (a bill open on it, or another party sitting there) the stand asks "Are they sitting at T12?" first.

On the right, Needs a decision picks out the bookings worth a look before service — declared allergies first, then parties too big for any one table, then guest and visit tags, then notes. Under it, the Cover flow shows how many bookings and covers land in each part of the day, with a tile for each booking.

By service

If you run more than one booking setup — say Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner — and your venue has bookings by service switched on, the Day brief changes in three ways:

• A strip of services sits under the numbers. Each shows the service's covers and bookings, a small chart of covers arriving every half hour, and a line like in service · 9 of 14 in or starts in 2h 20m. The service that's on now has a green edge.
• The list down the side is split by service instead of seated and to come, each with its bookings and covers. Parties that have finished fold into a + 3 completed line you can tap open.
• The Cover flow names each service above its part of the day.

Tap a service to see only its bookings; the rest of the Cover flow fades. Tap it again to see everything. Walk-ups and anything else not booked through a service show under Other.

Grid

One row per table, time running left to right. The blue line is now. Tap a booking to open it; hold it for half a second and drag to move it to another table or time. If the table is smaller than the party, the screen tells you — but it still lets you, because you know your room. A drop onto a table that already has someone in it at that time is refused.

Bookings made without a table appear in an Unassigned row at the top.

If a booking is holding several tables for a big party, dragging it off them is refused and the screen says which tables it's holding — change those under Book tables on the booking first.

Bookings marked Do not move

A booking somebody pinned to its table — the window table a guest asked for — has a pin on its bar and DO NOT MOVE in its details. Dragging it to another table, or to Unassigned, asks first: Move it from T5 to T9 anyway? Keep it on T5 puts it straight back and changes nothing. Move anyway moves it, and the pin goes with it. Moving it to another time on the same table never asks.

The same goes for CHANGE TABLE when you seat them: picking a different table for a pinned booking asks first. Keep seats nobody — tap SEAT to seat them at their own table — and Move anyway seats them where you picked.

To pin or unpin a booking, open it and tap PIN or UNPIN. You can pin a booking once it has a table. See Keeping a booking on its table.

Floor plan

Your room as you drew it in the portal, with the chairs drawn round every table. Every chair is the same size and each table is drawn as big as its seats need — a table for two is small, a table for eight long — in the place you put it. Tables go green when seated and amber when a booking is due in the next 30 minutes. The chairs show how full a seated table is: green is someone sitting there, red is a seat that party has but isn't using (three at a table for four is three green, one red), and grey is free. A seated table shows the guest's name in place of the table's, with how many are sat there out of how many seats underneath. Tap a table to see who's on it, the rest of its bookings today, and how long it's free — "Free 1h 20m · next 19:30", or "Taken · free at 20:15".

If you've drawn more than one floor plan — say a restaurant and a bar — you see one at a time. Tap a floor's name above the room to switch. Each name shows how many tables on that floor are seated or due, so you won't miss a party arriving on a floor you aren't looking at. It opens on the floor you last picked on that screen; otherwise on a floor with someone due soon.

Live spend

Every open check: the table, who's on it, covers, what they've spent and the spend per cover, with the room's totals across the top. If a check can't be read, or has no cover count, the screen says so rather than guessing, and leaves it out of the average.

If you have more than one site

The stand works one site at a time. With more than one site, pick the site under the Tillable logo: the diary, the floor plan and Live spend then show only that site's tables and open bills.

Walk-ups, new bookings and large parties

All three open the same sheet, and it asks for the booking first: the day, the time and the covers, all as taps. Under the times it tells you how full each one already is — "42 of 90 covers booked at 19:00 · room for 48 more" — so you can answer the phone without leaving the sheet. Covers go up to twelve as single taps, and 12+ opens a box for the number. Then come the guest's details, then allergies and anything else, and the bottom of the sheet always says what is about to be saved.

+ Add walk-up is for a party at the door. There's no day or time to pick — it uses the moment you press Save walk-up, and it's always today. It counts as a walk-in in your figures, and the guest gets no confirmation email: they are standing in front of you. + New booking is for booking ahead, with a day and time, and does email the guest. Both need a first name, surname, phone number and your own name in Taken by.

Either way you can leave the table to the system, pick one from the row of tables, or press Choose it on the floor plan and tap it on your own room. The floor plan is the same one the Floor plan tab draws, so the table you tap is the table you can see. Tapping another one swaps it: an ordinary booking sits on one table. Use the table brings you back to the sheet with it.

+ Large party is for a party that needs more than one table — a birthday across the back of the restaurant. It is taken in two steps. First the sheet, exactly as above but with no table on it; when the guest's details are in, Choose tables opens your room. There you tap as many tables as the party needs, or take a whole area in one tap, and the panel beside the room counts the seats against the covers as you go, so you can see whether everyone sits down. A table that another party is already holding at that time is greyed out, says what's on it, and can't be tapped. A table that merely has a booking of its own then is still yours to take: it's ringed in amber and named, because you may be moving or combining it. Back to the booking keeps everything you picked.

Saving does two things: it books the party, then keeps those tables for them for the booking's own time, so nobody else is seated there. The party sits on the first table you tapped — the panel says so — and the rest are kept for them. If the tables can't be kept — someone took one while you were filling the sheet in — the booking is still saved and the sheet tells you why, with the button offering to try the tables again. It doesn't close the area for the day, and it doesn't move anyone else. To change the tables afterwards, open the booking and use Book tables.

If the booking setup limits how many guests can book online to arrive in one slot, the sheet shows a note when this booking would take that slot over the limit — for example "19:00 would have 20 guests arriving, more than your online limit of 16. You can still book it." It's only a note: the booking still saves, and it counts towards that slot's online places. Create booking on the till shows the same note, as long as the till is online.

When a party leaves

Open a seated booking and tap Departed when they've gone. Their table is free straight away: the booking now ends when they left, so it can go to a walk-in or the next booking. It's the same as Mark left in the booking panel and on the till, and nothing is sent to the guest.

• Their bill is closed but they're still sitting there. The booking reads Left, but it still holds the table until its booked end. Tap Departed when they actually go.
• Their bill is still open (say they've moved to the bar with it): you're asked Their bill is still open on T5. Free the table anyway? Tap Free the table to go ahead; the bill stays open on the till and keeps that table busy until it's closed or moved. See When a party leaves.
• Tapped it by mistake? Tap Undo departed on the same booking. It won't go ahead, and says why, if someone else is on that table now or their booked time is already over.

Changing a booking's date, time, length or guests

Tap the time under a guest's name, or the number under COVERS (both are underlined), to open Change date, time, length or guests. Pick the new date, time or how long the table is held, or tap − and + beside GUESTS, and tap SAVE.

If the new time runs into something — the table is already in use, the day is closed, it's outside your hours or in a different service, or it would go over your covers, bookings or arrivals limit — you're told first, and nothing is saved until you tap SAVE ANYWAY. More guests than the table seats, a deposit taken for a different number of guests, a party now big enough to need a deposit, or more guests than you take online are said the same way. When the table is taken or too small and another one is free, MOVE TO that table saves the change on the free table in one go. If the booking is marked Do not move, MOVE TO asks first, and KEEP IT leaves it where it is.

A booking holding several tables can't have guests taken off here — release tables in Book tables on the office diary first.

Tick Email the guest the new details to send the "your booking has changed" email. It only shows when the guest has an email address.

A party that's already sat down can change its time and length, but not its day. Moving a booking off a time can give its freed table to a booking on that day that had none — the message after you save says so. Moving a booking to another day takes it off the day you're looking at, and the message says where it went.

It's only there when you're online.

Fixing the guest, the note or their confirmation

Open a booking and look under CONTACT:

• EDIT GUEST changes the guest's name, phone and email. It saves to the guest's customer profile and to their other upcoming bookings, exactly as Edit guest details does in the office diary. Past bookings keep what they were booked with. Only the boxes you change are saved.
• EDIT NOTE changes the booking's note — the whole box, including anything the guest wrote when they booked. A note is not an allergy record: it doesn't reach the kitchen ticket, and the screen says so if you type about an allergy. If someone changed the note in the diary while you had it open, you're asked to open it again rather than writing over theirs.
• GUEST CONFIRMED BY PHONE records that the guest said they're coming. It shows until the guest has confirmed, and not once the booking is cancelled, a no-show or the party has left.
• OPEN IN DIARY opens the same booking in the office diary, for anything the host stand doesn't change — the guest's other answers, their tags, or the bill.

EDIT GUEST works on any booking that isn't cancelled or a no-show, so you can still fix a phone number after the party has left. EDIT NOTE works on every booking. They're only there when you're online.

Moving a booking to another table

Tap MOVE TABLE under BOOKED VIA in a booking. You get a list of your tables, each with its seats, and you tap the one it should go to. It keeps its time. Dragging the bar still works too; this is the slower, deliberate way.

• A table someone else has at that time says who, for example Booked 19:30 Patel. A table you've taken off sale says why. A table with fewer seats than the party says Seats 2. You can still choose any of them.
• No table takes the booking off its table. It's always in the list, so you don't need an Unassigned row on screen to do it.
• If you've said which tables push together, they're listed first under TABLES PUSHED TOGETHER, for example T5+T6 · 8 seats, but only the ones big enough for this party. Tap one to put the whole party on them. If one of those tables already has someone at that time, it says so, and nothing is saved until you tap SAVE ANYWAY.
• If the booking is marked Do not move, you're asked first, and KEEP IT leaves it where it is.
• This isn't CHANGE TABLE beside SEAT, which sits the party down somewhere else. MOVE TABLE only changes where the booking is.

It's only there when you're online, and not on a booking that's cancelled, a no-show or has left.

Undoing a mistake

A booking marked no-show or cancelled disappears from the grid, the floor plan and the cover flow. To bring it back, tap the magnifying glass, search for the guest — search covers the whole day, no-shows and cancellations included — open the booking and tap Undo — back to confirmed. It keeps its table if nobody has taken it since. If someone has, it comes back with no table and the message tells you to pick one. This is the same rule as the office diary and the till.

Seated a party by mistake? Open the booking and tap Undo arrival — they go back to confirmed and the table is no longer shown as seated. It isn't there once they've left, or once their bill has closed, and it's refused while a bill is linked to the booking.

To cancel a confirmed booking at the stand, open it and tap Cancel booking. It asks first. The guest is sent the cancellation email, the same as from the office.

In Requests, Decline asks first too, because the guest is told.

None of the undos email the guest.

Printing the service sheet

The printer button prints the day's running order — times, covers, names, tables, allergies and notes — through your browser's print window. Pick your receipt printer or any other printer there.

How it differs from the till

• Waitlist texts. On the till, Call and Reminder can text the guest. In the browser, Call marks the party as called and sends nothing, so ring them yourself. There's no Reminder button.
• Times are shown in your venue's time zone, whatever computer you use.

If you can't see it

You need Bookings switched on for your account. If you go to /foh and end up somewhere else, that's why — ask your account manager to add it. The Waitlist view only appears if your account has the waitlist.