Get started with bookings

When bookings is switched on for your account, the Bookings section opens on a checklist: five things to do before guests can reserve a table. Each one takes you to the screen where the work actually happens, and you come straight back.

The checklist tells you which step is next, and only that step has a solid black button — so there is always one obvious thing to do.

The five steps

1. 1

   Your floor plan

   The areas guests sit in, and the tables in them. Ticks once you have at least one area with at least one table in it. Your till uses the same areas, so a tab opened at table 4 knows which room it is in.

2. 2

   Opening hours

   When guests can book. Ticks as soon as your venue has trading hours — most venues never need more than that. Set up an hours profile instead if bookings run at different times from the rest of your trading.

3. 3

   Your booking setup

   Turn times, minimum notice, pacing and cancellations. These start on sensible defaults, so you are mostly tuning rather than filling in blanks. What this step really waits for is a setup with at least one of your areas attached to it — without that, nothing has a table to give a guest.

4. 4

   Your web address

   Claim the name your booking page sits on, for example your-venue.tillable.app. One address serves the whole venue, so if you already claimed one for your menu, your ordering links or your loyalty page, this step is already ticked and there is nothing to do.

5. 5

   Your booking page

   Switch bookings on, then take a booking on the page yourself. This step waits for that real booking, because it is the one that proves your address, hours, tables and availability all work together.

Why the page comes last

The first four steps are all things that feed the fifth. Your floor plan says where guests can sit, your hours say when, your booking setup says how long a table is held and how many covers you will take at once, and your web address says where the page lives. Your booking page is what comes out of the other end.

Without an address there is nowhere for the page to be, which is why it comes before the page rather than after it.

Reach the page before the setup exists and it has nothing to offer: a guest picking a date sees Bookings aren't available right now, because no area has been attached to a setup yet. Doing the setup first means the test booking on the last step can actually succeed.

You do not have to do them in order

Later steps are never locked. If you want to set your turn times before your opening hours, go ahead — the checklist simply keeps pointing at whatever is still outstanding.

A step that has already ticked keeps an Edit button, so you can go back and change anything at any time. Changing something so it no longer meets the step's condition — removing every table from an area, say — unticks the step again, because the list always reads your real setup rather than remembering that you once visited a page.

Getting back to the checklist

When you open a step from this page, that screen gets a bar across the top with Step 2 of 4 and a black button back to the checklist. Press it whenever you like.

The button tells you where you stand. While the step is still outstanding it says Back to checklist. Once the step is genuinely done it says Done — next: your booking setup, naming whatever is still left.

It saves before it leaves

If you have unsaved changes on the screen when you press it, it saves them first and then takes you back — you will not be asked whether to throw your work away. The button reads Saving… while that is happening. If the save fails, you stay on the page with the error in front of you, so nothing is lost either way.

Branding and the booking flow

Two screens are reached from step 4 rather than being steps of their own: Branding and the booking flow builder. They are part of setting up your page, not separate jobs, so their bar says Back to your booking page and takes you straight back there rather than out to the checklist. Neither says "Done", because there is nothing for them to complete.

During setup, Build a flow opens the template picker on the booking page itself and drops you straight into the builder — you never pass through the list of flows you have not made yet.

Opening any of these screens another way — the floor plan builder from Table Management, opening hours from Settings, Branding from My business — leaves them exactly as they were. The bar only appears when you arrive from this checklist.

When the checklist goes away

The first time a guest actually books, Bookings stops opening on this page and opens on Guest engagement instead — the view of who is coming back. That happens on your first real booking, not when all four steps are ticked, because a venue taking bookings has a history worth reading even if part of its setup is still outstanding.

Get started then leaves the Bookings menu too. Going to the checklist after your first booking always sent you on to Guest engagement anyway, so the menu row was pointing at a page you could no longer see — now the menu says the same thing the page does. Everything the four steps link to is still there in its own section: your floor plan, your opening hours, your booking page and your booking setups.

What's next

• Booking setups — the rules each setup follows
• Your booking page — your public address and the on/off switch