The parties list

The parties list — under Bookings → Diary — shows your bookings for the dates you pick, split into the five stages a service actually goes through.

It opens on today with no end date, so what you see first is what's still to come. To look further back, clear the From date — an empty From means no earliest date at all, and your whole booking history is there. (With Bookings Pro, opening Bookings takes you to Guest engagement first; the diary is one click from there. Without Pro, Bookings opens straight onto this screen.)

Across the top sit the tiles for the floor map, a new booking and — if you have it — the walk-in queue, described in Bookings — start here. New booking is one of those tiles: it used to be a button in this screen's header, and it does exactly the same thing from its new home.

The five tabs

Each tab shows how many bookings are in it, so you can see the shape of the day without opening anything.

• Upcoming — booked, not arrived yet.
• Seated — arrived and at the table right now.
• Finished — been and gone.
• Cancelled — cancelled, by you or by the guest.
• No-show — never turned up.

All shows everything together.

The day's covers

The tabs count bookings. When you're looking at a single day — the same date in From and To — the number at the end of the tabs counts people: for example 120 covers.

It adds up the party sizes of everything still coming, seated or finished that day. Cancelled and no-show bookings are left out, so a party that grows or shrinks, or a cancellation, changes the total straight away. That's the figure to watch when you're filling a day to a set number of covers, like Christmas Day.

It's always the whole day's total. Searching for a guest, filtering by Guest answer or picking a tab changes the rows you see, but not the total. If you run more than one site, it counts the same sites as the list: the one you've picked, or all of them when you haven't picked one.

Bookings by service

If you run more than one booking setup — say Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner — and your venue has bookings by service switched on, a row of small cards sits above the tabs: All day, then one card per service.

Each card shows the service's hours, how many bookings and covers it has for the day in From, a thin bar for its share of the day's covers, and a line like 6 seated · 3 finished · 5 to come. A booking belongs to the service it was booked through; walk-ins and anything else without one show under Other.

Click a card to see only that service. The list and the numbers on the tabs follow it, and it stays picked while you sort, page or change tabs. Click All day to see everything again. Other can't be picked.

When the list is in time order, each run of bookings gets a header with its service's name, hours and totals, so you can see where Breakfast ends and Lunch begins.

What else you can do

• Filter by a From and To date range.
• Filter by Guest answer — see below.
• Search by guest name, email or phone.
• Click a column header to sort by when, guest or party size. The Table column can't be sorted.

A Needs attention column flags bookings with an allergen alert, a large party, or one that's still unconfirmed. Where you ask an allergen question, its column shows the answers by name — Peanuts, Tree nuts — in red, so the list reads the same way as the booking itself.

A booking with nothing to flag leaves that cell empty, and so does a tag or a question the guest didn't answer. Nothing is missing when a cell is blank — it's how the ones that do have something stand out.

The Table column

Straight after Party, the Table column shows the table each booking is on and how many it seats: T4 · 4 is table T4, which seats four. It follows the order you work in before service: when, who, how many, and where they're sitting.

• Unassigned means no table is recorded for the booking. On a booking still to come, that's a table to allocate.
• A cancelled or no-show booking leaves the cell empty. Its table is free for other bookings again, so the list doesn't show it against a booking that isn't coming, and there's nothing to allocate. If you reinstate it, give it a table again from the booking.
• If the party is bigger than the table, a small Too small chip sits under it while they're still to come or sitting there. Hover it to see the seats and the party size. It's a reminder, not a block: you can keep them there, for example if you're adding a chair.
• A booking on one of your table groups shows the group and the seats you gave it, like T1 + T2 · 8, and is checked against those seats.
• A big booking spread over several tables with Book tables lists them, like L1 + L2 + L3 + 2 more. These are never marked too small, because you picked those tables for that party.

To put a booking on a different table, open it and change the table there — see Booking details panel.

A pin beside the table means the booking is marked Do not move: someone asked for that table. Anyone moving it is asked first. See Keeping a booking on its table.

Open a booking

Click any row to open that booking. You get the same panel as clicking a booking on the timeline, with everything about it and everything you can do to it: mark the guest arrived or a no-show, move them to another table, add a note, record that they confirmed by phone, cancel, or reinstate a booking you cancelled. See Booking details panel for all of it.

The list stays where it was underneath. Close the panel (the cross, Esc, or a click outside it) and you're back on exactly the list you had: the same tab, filters, sort and page. That includes a cleared From, so you can work through old bookings one after another without the list jumping back to today.

A button or chip inside a row, like Remove card or a Charged chip, does its own job and doesn't open the booking. To open a booking from the keyboard, tab to its date and time and press Enter.

An open booking has its own web address, so you can copy it and send a colleague straight to that booking.

Who took a booking

A booking added by hand shows Taken by … under the guest's name — the member of staff who entered it, as they typed it.

It's there on hand-entered bookings only. A guest's own booking from your booking page, one taken on the till, and a walk-up seated from the waitlist have no member of staff to name, so the line doesn't appear — the same rule as every other blank cell on this list. Searching by guest name, email or phone does not search it.

The Tags column

If you use the CRM, a Tags column shows any visit tags put on that particular booking — birthday, window seat, and whatever else your team has set up. They're the ones you apply to one booking rather than to the guest themselves.

These sit in their own column, on purpose. Needs attention is where you look for something that matters — an allergy, an unusually large party — and mixing "birthday" in with it would train everyone to stop noticing the ones that count. Tag chips are a different shape as well as a different colour, so at a glance you can tell which is which.

If you don't use the CRM, the column isn't there at all.

About the Status column

Every booking says where it's up to: Booked, Seated, Finished, Cancelled, No-show or Pending.

Booked is the ordinary one — the booking has been made and the table is held. It's the word you'll see on most of a normal day.

Has the guest answered?

If you ask guests to confirm — by email, or because they used the link in their confirmation — their answer shows as a small chip under the status.

• Guest confirmed — they've told you they're coming.
• Guest declined — they've told you they can't make it. The table is yours to give away.
• No reply (dashed) — you asked and they haven't come back to you. These are the ones worth a phone call before service.

Finding the ones nobody has answered

The Guest answer filter is the quick way to ask "who still hasn't come back to me?" before service. Pick one of:

• Guest confirmed / Guest declined — they've told you either way.
• Asked, no reply — you asked and they haven't answered. This is the list worth a phone call.
• Never asked — nobody has been asked at all.

It's a separate filter from the tabs, on purpose. The tabs are where a booking is up to in service; the answer is a different thing about it. A booking can be Upcoming and have had no reply, so you can combine the two — pick the Upcoming tab and Asked, no reply to get exactly tonight's chase list.

The tab counts follow the filter, so what the tabs say and what the list shows always agree. The filter also survives sorting and paging — it stays on until you set it back to Any answer.

A booking with no chip at all simply hasn't been asked. That's not a warning, and it's why nothing is shown: if every unasked booking carried a marker, the markers would stop meaning anything.

"Reminded" — we sent them their reminder

A booking shows a solid Reminded chip once their booking reminder has gone out. It sits under the status, next to the answer chip, and it means something different from all of them:

• the answer chips are about the guest — did they tell you either way;
• Reminded is about you — did the reminder go out.

They're independent. A booking can be Reminded with no answer chip at all, and that is not the same as No reply: nobody asked that guest to confirm anything, so there is nothing for them to have not replied to. Chasing them would be chasing a guest who was never asked a question.

A booking with no reminder shows nothing at all — no chip, no "not reminded". Reminders are opt-in, so a venue that doesn't run them would otherwise have a negative marker on every booking in the book. To set reminders up, see automations.

To have these asked automatically, see chasing confirmations.

"Card pending" — a booking that isn't finished yet

If your venue takes card details at booking, you may occasionally see a dashed Card pending chip in the Status column. It means the guest reached the card step but we haven't had the card confirmation back yet — usually they're still mid-payment on a slow connection, or they closed the page and walked away.

Treat it as a maybe, not a booking. If the guest abandoned, the system releases the table automatically within about 40 minutes, the booking moves to Cancelled, and the slot opens back up — you don't need to do anything. If the confirmation arrives, the chip simply disappears and it's a normal booking.

"Card on file" — the guest's card is stored

Where Card pending means no card is held, a solid Card on file chip means the opposite: a card really is stored for that booking. Nobody at your venue can see the number. Our payment provider holds it and gives us only a reference.

We start removing the card on its own about a day after the guest's table time, once the booking is finished with. To remove it sooner — a guest asks, or you no longer need it — click Remove card under the chip.

If our payment provider keeps refusing, we stop asking, and the chip changes to Removal stuck. That chip means the card is still stored. Press Try again under it once the cause is fixed. If it sticks a second time, tell us and we will chase our payment provider for you. You can see all of them in one place under Card at booking.

You'll also see Card on file on bookings that were cancelled or marked no-show. That is deliberate, and it's the one case worth looking at: those cards are not removed automatically, so Remove card is the only way to clear them.

On Bookings Pro

With the Bookings Pro add-on, the list also gains a column for each of your own custom booking questions, so you can see the answers without opening each booking. The tabs and everything above work on standard Bookings.

What's next

• The diary — the timeline view of the same day.
• Booking details panel — click a row to open its details.

Charging a no-show fee

If a guest saved a card when they booked and then didn't turn up, you can charge them a no-show fee.

1. Mark the booking as a No-show.
2. Open the booking. Under the Card on file chip you'll now see Charge no-show fee.
3. Type the amount and press the button. It repeats the amount back to you before it charges, so you can check it.

Two things worth knowing:

• The box shows the exact terms that guest agreed to when they booked, right next to the amount. If you've changed your terms since, you'll still see the old wording — because that's what they actually agreed to, and it's what matters if they ever dispute the charge.
• If the booking didn't come through your booking page (you took it over the phone, or it was a walk-in), there are no saved terms to show. The box says so. Check what the guest was told before you charge them.

If you press it twice, the guest is only charged once. We work out a single reference for each charge, so a double-click, a slow connection or a second try all land on the same one. If we ever can't tell whether a charge went through, we say so and ask you not to try again — we'll confirm it for you.

You can only charge a booking that's marked as a no-show, and only while the card is still stored. Once you've charged it, or removed the card, the button goes.

When you've charged a booking

Once a charge has gone through, the row shows a small Charged chip in the Status column with the amount on it.

Click the chip to open it. Underneath you get what the charge was for, the date, and the payment reference. Click it again to close it.

The reference is the one to quote if the guest ever queries the charge — it's what our payment provider and your statement both carry for it.

The chip is deliberately small. On a busy evening you can have several charged bookings in this list, and printing the whole record on every row pushed the rest of your service off the screen.

Opening the booking itself still shows the whole record at once, without any clicking — see Booking details panel.

The stored card disappears from the booking at the same moment, and that's correct: the card was used, so there's nothing left to hold or to remove. The Charged record is what stays, and it stays for good.