When your restaurant has tables available for walk-ins, it is easy to just seat guests at the appropriate table.
If you need to use more than one table to accommodate the guests, you can either
- use the normal graphical table view to join the tables together and seat the guests at the main table, or
- use the Table Allocation panel to create a waiting list entry, allocate the necessary tables, and then seat the guests (the system can join the tables together for you if you want).
When your restaurant is full, you can either
- check the estimated waiting time by pressing the Statistics button,
- create a waiting list entry,
- when the waiting list entry is next in line and there is a free table with the appropriate capacity, seat the guests at this table,
or
- check the estimated waiting time by pressing the Statistics button and noting which table with appropriate capacity is next available,
- create a waiting list entry,
- allocate the next available table. If set up with overlapping prevention, the system changes the reservation time to the time the table should be available,
- if the guests want to leave and be notified when the table is free, you can reset the status of the waiting list entry (see below).
Waiting List status
Waiting list entries have a status:
- Open
- Late
- Arrived
- Seated
- No-Show
- Canceled
When you create a waiting list entry, it has the Arrived status.
You change the status manually by pressing the Status field in the relevant Waiting List Entry row. The drop-down list shows actions that can be applied to change the status.
The Waiting List shows only those entries that are Open, Late or Arrived. Once the status is changed to the other three options, the entry disappears from the list.
Note: The service flow can be set up to automatically set reservation and waiting list entries to Late after a certain time period has passed from the reservation time. It can also be set up to automatically change a Late entry to No-Show after a certain time period.
To reset the status of an ARRIVED entry
- Select the desired waiting list entry row and the Status column.
- Select Reset Status. The Status field is now blank (that is, Open), indicating that the guests are not present.