The table plan

Bookings → Table plan shows every table you have, how many people it seats, and whether anyone is on it right now. It's the screen to glance at when someone walks in and asks for a table.

Two ways to look at it

At the top you'll see Floor plan and List, in that order — the first one is the one you land on.

• Floor plan is what you get by default: the same information drawn on your venue's actual layout, so you can read the room at a glance. It needs a floor plan built under Table Management → Floor plans — if your tables haven't been arranged yet, this view tells you so and sends you back to the list rather than drawing a room that would be missing tables. More about the floor plan view.
• List is one click away: every table, one tile each. It works whether or not you've ever built a floor plan, and it's what the floor plan itself offers you if it can't draw — see below.

Whichever you pick, it's the same tables and the same moment in time — switching doesn't change the answer, just the picture.

What each table can say

On the floor view, every table has its chairs drawn round it. Grey chairs are free; once a booking is seated, green chairs are the people in it and red chairs are seats that party has but isn't using — two at a table for four shows two green and two red. A seated table shows the guest's name in place of its own.

• Free — nobody on it, and it can take a booking.
• Occupied — there's an open tab on it at the till. Someone is sitting there now, including if they've asked for the bill but haven't paid yet.
• Seated — a booking has been marked arrived and sat down, and no tab has been opened yet.
• Held — the table is being kept for something, and nobody is on it yet. Under the label you'll see why: "Held for T5 · 12 covers" when it's been pushed together with another table for a big party, or the reason you gave when you took it out of service yourself.
• Not bookable — you've turned this table off for online bookings in table settings. It can still have walk-ups on it, and if it does you'll see Occupied instead — a real party always beats a setting.

A table can also carry a second, separate label: Section closed.

Tables held for a bigger party

When a party is too big for any one table, the booking is seated on a main table and the others are held for the same window. That happens when the tables are a group, and when you've kept several tables for one booking with Book tables. Only one of them shows the booking — the held ones show Held, and name the table the party is actually on.

Before this, a held table read Free. It wasn't: seating a walk-up there put them in the middle of a party of twelve.

The count under the heading keeps them separate — "3 of 12 tables in use · 2 held". A held table isn't in use, but it isn't available either, and rolling it into the first number would make the room look fuller than it is.

Held tables are let go automatically: when the bill is settled, when the booking is cancelled, and when you move the party to a different table. More about pushing tables together.

When a section is closed to bookings

If you've closed a section for the day, every table in it is marked Section closed, and the sections that are shut are named in a banner at the top.

That's a second fact, not a replacement for the first. A table can be Occupied and Section closed at the same time — closing a section stops new bookings being taken for it, it doesn't empty the room or move anyone out. You'll still see who's sitting there.

The banner also links straight to where you can reopen the section. If everything that's closed is at one site it takes you to that site's page; if you've closed sections at more than one, it takes you to the list of them.

Taking a table out of use

At the bottom of the page there's Tables out of use. Use it when a table can't be sold for a while — a boiler leak under it, a private event in the corner, a wobbly leg waiting on a part.

1. Choose Take a table out.
2. Pick the table, say why, and pick the date.
3. Leave Out all day ticked, or untick it and give a start and an end time.
4. Add a note if it helps whoever reads it later.

From then on your booking page stops offering times that would need that table, and the booking system seats people somewhere else. The table shows as Held in the list above with your reason under it.

When it's fixed, press Give it back on its row and it's on sale again straight away.

Tables held for a bigger party are not in this list and have no Give it back button. Those belong to a booking, and they're let go on their own when the bill is settled — giving one back by hand would free a table people are sitting at. More about pushing tables together.

"As of" and the Refresh button

Under the heading you'll see something like "4 of 12 tables in use · as of 19:42:10".

That time is when the page was loaded, not the time now. The table plan doesn't update by itself — press Refresh to pull the latest. We show the time deliberately so you can see how old the picture is rather than having to guess.

"We can't match this tab to a table"

Occasionally you'll see a warning naming one or more open tabs we couldn't place on any table — for example "3 open tabs we can't match to a table · 12 ×2, T4".

The names are the table each tab is looking for. When more than one tab is looking for the same name we say so once with a count, so 12 ×2 means two open tabs are both after table 12.

The usual cause is a table being renamed while someone was sitting on it. A tab remembers the table name it was opened against, so if table 12 becomes 12a mid-service, the tab is still looking for 12.

Those tables really are in use, even though they'll show as Free in the grid below. Two ways to clear it:

• Close the tab as normal when the party leaves — the warning goes with it.
• Or rename the table back to what it was while the tab is open.

If you can, rename tables between services rather than during one.

If you have more than one site

The table plan is one room, so when you run more than one site it asks you to pick a site first (under the Tillable logo). After that every table, open bill, seated booking, closed section and held table on it is that site's own. Another site's "Table 4" bill can never make this site's Table 4 look busy.

Related

• The parties list — who's booked in, by stage of service.
• Tables — adding tables, seat counts, and turning a table off for bookings.