The live floor plan — board view and table journeys

Your floor plan already colours each table by what stage of service it's at — sat down, ordered, food in the kitchen, and so on. This page covers the Board view, an alternative way to see the same information laid out like a whiteboard, and the journey panel that opens when staff tap a table.

The Floor / Board toggle

Two small icons let staff switch views. Where they sit depends on the screen:

• On a tablet till, they sit inside the Floor plan tab in the bar at the top, just after the words "Floor plan", whenever that tab is open. Tap an icon to switch view; tapping the words "Floor plan" does what it always did. This leaves the whole floor free for your tables.
• On a phone, or a mode that only shows the floor plan (no tabs along the top), they sit in a small row just above the floor plan instead.

The two views are:

• Floor (the default) — your room, drawn to scale, tables where you placed them. This is what staff have always seen.
• Board — the same tables laid out as rows in a list, one column per stage of your table journey (Sat down, Ordered, In kitchen, and so on — whatever stages and colours you've set up). A filled dot marks a stage that's done, a filled coloured pill with a label marks where the table is now, and a hollow dot marks what's still ahead. Tables with more than one section get a heading row per section.

Pick whichever reads faster on your floor — the room shape for a small venue where staff know every table by eye, the board for a big room or a quick glance from the pass. Each till remembers its own choice.

Where the colours come from

Every colour on both views comes from your Table journey — the stages you define and the colour you pick for each one. Nothing here is hard-coded: rename a stage, recolour it, or add and remove stages, and both the room view and the board pick it up. Set your table journey up under Floor plans → Table journey in the portal.

The last stage you can configure is Bill asked. The instant a table pays, it goes straight back to looking exactly like an empty table — free, no colour, no label — even for the minute or two before someone's actually wiped it down. There's nothing to set up for that: it isn't a stage you choose a colour for.

If your venue uses Table Studio

Table Studio is a separate setting (Floor plans → Table Studio in the portal). When it is switched on for your venue, the floor plan works a little differently from everything above:

• Every mode gets the live floor plan. You don't need the board view turned on for a mode: the colours and the Floor / Board toggle appear in every mode that shows the floor plan.

• Tables move through their stages by themselves. Sat down, Ordered, In kitchen, Eating, Bill printed, Paid and Needs reset. Nobody taps anything to move a table on. The names and colours of these stages are fixed.

• Every table shows its name, plus at most one more thing that you choose under Table look in Table Studio:

  • Nothing else: just the name. The colour tells you the stage; tap the table for the rest.
  • Time since they sat down: for example "42m", counted from when the first order on the table was opened.
  • Bill so far: what the table still owes, for example "£38.50". It comes from the orders already on the till, so it updates as soon as a round goes on.
  • Stage: where the table is up to, for example "Mains in kitchen".

  Whichever you pick, the table fills with its stage colour.

• If it does not fit, it is left off. On a small table (a round two-top on a busy floor plan, for example) the extra line is hidden rather than made smaller, so what you can see is always readable. The table name always shows.

• A venue that has not picked yet keeps the look it already had. Before this choice existed there were four looks (number only, number and timer, stage colour, colour and timer); a venue that chose one of those keeps it until it picks one of the options above. The too-small rule applies to those looks too.

• Kitchen and eating name the course when your menu uses courses: "Starters in kitchen", "On mains".

• A round rung on this till shows straight away. The table moves to Ordered without waiting for the next refresh, and to In kitchen as soon as a course is sent. A round with no course on it (drinks, for example) stays at Ordered until the kitchen screen confirms it.

• The Board view has one column per Table Studio stage, and the pill marking where a table is now shows the stage and its minutes.

A free table shows its seats, unless you picked Nothing else. A paid table, or one that needs resetting, has no bill and no time to show, so it shows just its name and colour. A change to the look in the portal reaches the tills within about a minute.

If a till loses its connection, the minutes at a stage stop counting and the table shows how long ago it was last updated (for example "3m ago"). They start again as soon as the till is back online. Time since they sat down and the bill keep going, because the till already has those orders. A table that was already seated before Table Studio was switched on shows its stage without minutes.

Rules: when a table has waited too long

Under Rules in Table Studio you can flag a table that has sat at one stage for too long, for example "In kitchen for more than 20 minutes". When a rule applies to a table, the till shows whatever you chose for that rule:

• A badge: the emoji you picked, in the top-right corner of the table, on a small white circle so it stands out on any colour. On a round table it sits just inside the edge.
• A colour: the table changes to the rule's colour, with a thicker border. This replaces the stage colour, whatever the table shows.
• A flash: the table's border fades slowly in and out.

The flag goes away by itself when the table moves to its next stage. If several rules could apply to a table, the first one in your list wins.

A few things worth knowing:

• At most 12 tables flash at once. If more than 12 are flagged, the 12 that have waited longest flash; the others still show their badge and colour.
• No flashing while the till is offline or out of date. Flags that were already showing stay, nothing new appears, and nothing flashes until the till is back in touch. A till that cannot hear from the kitchen should not raise alarms by itself.
• If animations are switched off on the device, a flagged table shows a steady thick border instead of a flash.
• A table that needs resetting can be flagged too, like any other stage.

Tapping a table with Table Studio on

Tapping a table that has an order on it opens a pop-up over the floor plan. It is the same Quick Actions pop-up described in Quick Actions, with the same buttons your mode allows, and it now always opens for a table in use:

• If Quick Actions is switched off for the mode, or nothing has been ordered on the table yet, the pop-up still opens, with Checkout and Add items only.
• Above the buttons is an information block. Under Pop-up in Table Studio you choose which parts of it to show:
  • Status: the table's stage and colour, how many minutes it has been at that stage, the covers and the bill so far. This part also shows when the till is offline, and it updates while the pop-up is open.
  • Journey: what has happened at the table and when, for example "Sat down 19:14", "Starters served 19:52". The pop-up shows the 6 most recent steps; if there are more, tap See all to open the whole journey in its own pop-up (tap outside it to go back).
  • Kitchen: one line per course: "22 min in kitchen", "Served 19:52" or "Not sent".
• Status and Journey show straight away. The till keeps what it knows about each table, shows that at once, then checks for anything newer in the background and updates the pop-up in place. Offline, it still opens and shows what the till already knows.
• Kitchen has to ask the kitchen, so it says Checking the kitchen… for a moment while it loads. The rest of the pop-up does not wait for it. If the till is offline, Kitchen is left out.
• The buttons are never cut off. When a table has a long journey or your mode has lots of buttons, the buttons get smaller and sit closer together so they all fit. If even that is not enough, you can scroll the buttons. Each button still does exactly what it did before.
• The journey panel on the left (described below) is not used when Table Studio is on.
• Under Pop-up in Table Studio you also choose where it opens:
  • Centre: in the middle of the screen.
  • Bottom: it slides up from the bottom of the screen. On a wide till the information sits on the left and the buttons on the right, in no more than two rows; on a narrow till they are stacked.
  • Side: it opens as a panel down one side of the screen, lying over the floor plan. It opens on the side away from the table you tapped, so the table stays in view (a table on the right puts the panel on the left). On a till it takes about a third of the screen. The floor plan underneath does not move or shrink. From the Board view, or a till showing tables as a list, the panel opens on the right.
• Tap anywhere outside the pop-up to close it, whichever style you use.

A free table still asks how many guests, and a table with a guest's own phone order still asks which order you mean first.

A table that needs resetting

After a table has paid, it shows Paid for five minutes and then Needs reset until someone clears it (or for fifteen minutes, after which it frees itself). Tapping a table that says Needs reset opens the pop-up with two buttons:

• Table cleared: marks the table as reset, and it goes back to free.
• Seat guests: seats the next party straight away, as normal. You don't need to press Table cleared first; seating guests counts as clearing it.

A table still showing Paid behaves like a free table: tapping it asks how many guests.

Marking a flag as seen

When one of your rules is flagging a table, the pop-up's status part shows the rule's badge and a Seen button. Press it once you have dealt with the table. The flag then clears from every till at the next refresh (a few seconds). If the rule is set to repeat, it comes back after the time you chose.

Table cleared and Seen need a connection. When the till is offline the buttons are greyed out and say "Offline — connect to update"; nothing is saved up to send later. If one of them cannot be saved, a short message appears under the button and you can try again.

Switching Table Studio off puts every till back to the floor plan described in the rest of this page. A till showing the floor plan with tables in use picks the change up within about a minute (otherwise within 15 minutes). While it catches up, tables in use keep showing as in use (their stage, without minutes), never as free.

A table that says "still syncing"

If a table was opened while the till had no connection, and the app was restarted before the connection came back, the table shows as occupied and tapping it says "… is still syncing — its order hasn't reached us yet."

That is the till protecting the order, not a fault. The order is safely on the device and on its way to us; until it arrives there is no bill to open yet, so the till holds the table rather than letting anyone start a second one on top of it. Don't seat it again or open a new tab for it — the table clears itself and behaves normally within seconds of the connection returning.

If a table stays like that long after the till is back online, send the device ID to support — see Till troubleshooting.

Tap a table to see its journey

Tap any table — on the room view or a row on the board — and a panel opens on the left showing:

• The table, how many covers, and how long they've been seated.
• Every stage in your journey, in order: a tick for stages already passed, the current one shown bold in its colour, the rest greyed out ahead.
• A Mark: <next stage> button and a Back button.

The right-hand side of the screen is kept clear — that's reserved for upcoming bookings.

"Mark" paints the board — it does not send food to the kitchen

This is the one thing worth being deliberate with your team about: tapping "Mark: …" only updates what the room LOOKS like. It does not fire anything to the kitchen, and it does not touch the bill.

If the table has food waiting to go, the panel also shows the existing kitchen-fire control — the same "Send to the kitchen" action described in Sending to the kitchen — sitting underneath, separated from the Mark/Back buttons. The two are deliberately worded differently for a reason:

• "Send mains to the kitchen" fires food. Use it when the kitchen needs to start cooking.
• "Mark: Dessert check" (or whichever stage is next) only paints the board. Use it to keep the room's status honest for the rest of the team — it changes nothing the guest is charged or served.

Back undoes the most recent manual stage you ticked, in case of a mis-tap. It's only available while there's something to undo.

Marking a stage needs a live connection — offline, the board still shows whatever it last knew, but the Mark/Back buttons are replaced with a note that you're offline. Reconnect to update the stage.

What's next

• Table-service sale walkthrough — the tables grid and opening a tab.
• Sending to the kitchen — the fire control this panel embeds.
• Floor plans — build the room your till shows.