Allergen and occasion custom fields

Some custom fields can be flagged so they stand out where it matters — allergies as a prominent safety alert, occasions as a celebration badge. When a field is flagged, the Custom fields list shows a small tag next to its label so you can see at a glance which fields surface this way.

For the basics of custom fields — how to add one, the field types, filling one in — see Custom fields.

Allergen alerts

An Allergen alert field shows as a prominent safety alert wherever staff see a booking — the diary timeline, the booking detail and the list view. Use it for an allergies note you never want a server to miss.

Occasion badges

An Occasion field shows as a celebration badge on the diary, so your team knows a guest is in for an anniversary or birthday. Its value is also saved to the guest's customer profile, so it's there next time they book.

Bookings Pro accounts

On Bookings Pro accounts an Occasion field (Birthday / Anniversary / Engagement / Special event / Business) and an Anniversary date field are set up for you, already flagged.

Why the Dogs and High chairs fields carry neither flag

If you add the Dogs or High chairs widget to a booking flow it creates a field called Dogs or High chairs, and you'll notice it has neither switch turned on. That's deliberate. A dog or a high chair changes which table a party needs, not what they can safely eat — so it shows on the booking and in your diary, and it never turns red and never reaches a kitchen ticket. Safety alerts only stay useful while everything wearing one is genuinely a safety matter.

You can flag either yourself if you really want to, with the same caveat as any other field below.

Flagging one of your own fields

You can now do this yourself, on a field you already have:

1. 1

   Open the field

   Go to Customers → Custom fields and click the pencil next to the field you want to flag.

2. 2

   Tick Safety alert

   Tick Safety alert (allergen / dietary), then save. The Allergen alert tag appears next to the field straight away.

Untick it the same way if you flagged the wrong field.

Where an allergen answer shows up

Flagging a field as a safety alert is what sends its answer to the people handling the food. Once flagged, a booking's answer appears on:

• the kitchen ticket — on screen and on the printed chit;
• the till's table banner, once the guest is seated;
• the bookings diary and list, so front of house sees it before they arrive.

On the allergen list, milk shows as Dairy in all of these places. It's also Dairy on the booking page and on the guest's customer profile, because that's how guests describe it. It's still the same allergen underneath, so nothing changes about how it reaches the kitchen. Your menus keep the allergen's legal name, Milk.

When you change the guest's customer profile

A change to an allergy or dietary answer on a guest's customer profile reaches their upcoming bookings (today onwards, not cancelled) — but only ever as an addition:

• Add an allergy to the profile, and it's added to every upcoming booking.
• Take an allergy off the profile, and their upcoming bookings keep it. Telling the kitchen about an allergy that's no longer there is safe; quietly dropping one that is isn't.
• A written dietary note is copied onto an upcoming booking only if that booking doesn't have one yet. It never replaces what the booking already says.

Past bookings never change — they're a record of what you were told at the time.

Only flag fields that really are allergies or dietary needs. Everything else is better as a plain custom field.

What's next

• Custom fields — add, types, filling in
• Edit or delete a custom field
• The diary — where allergen alerts and occasion badges show

Safety alerts are never sent to your marketing CRM

Allergy and dietary answers are health information. They stay in Tillable — reaching your kitchen ticket, the till's table banner and the bookings diary — and they are never included in a sync to HubSpot or Salesforce.

That is enforced, not a setting: on a field marked as a safety alert, the Send to my marketing CRM switch is greyed out, and the sync refuses the field even if it was switched on before the safety flag was added.