Close a day and cancel its bookings

Close the day

1. On an office tablet, open Settings › Special days.
2. Find the day under Days already set and press Close the day & cancel on its row. A day that is not listed yet is added first, under Add a day or a range.
3. Read the preview that opens at the foot of the page. Nothing is written until you press the red button.
4. Under Why the day is closing, write the reason, and choose what the guests are told (see below).
5. Press the red button, which says how many bookings it cancels. Keep them leaves everything as it is.

The day is closed first, so no new booking can land on it while the cancelling runs.

What the preview shows

• Three numbers at the top: the bookings it cancels, the guests on them, and how many of those guests cannot be emailed.
• The guests who cannot be emailed, by name, with their phone numbers: someone has to ring them.
• The whole list, folded under a button, with each booking’s time, guest, party and how they can be reached.
• What is left alone: parties already at their table, and bookings already cancelled. Tables held for someone booking at that moment are let go, and the day’s waiting list and table alerts are closed.

What the guests are told

Why the day is closing is always required. When the guests are emailed, it has to be a real sentence: At least 10 characters — this is what the guests read.

Two boxes decide what the guests get. The first puts your reason in their email and on the closed day; unticked, the reason stays in the closing’s own record. The second emails the guests: untick it only if you are ringing every one of them yourself.

Show the message the guests get shows the email as the first guest will get it, in their language. Just above the red button, one line says what this press will do: how many are cancelled, and whether they are emailed.

If Cancellation is switched off in Settings › Messaging, the preview says so: nobody is emailed, and everyone on the list has to be rung.

While it runs

The bookings are cancelled in batches, and the screen shows the progress: worked through, cancelled, told by email. Leave it running closes the screen and the closing carries on; open the day again to see where it stands.

The emails go out over a minute or two, not all at once. A booking that could not be cancelled is listed with the reason and stays live: deal with it from its own booking.

Ten minutes to undo

When it is done, press Undo — 10 minutes left, then Put the day back: the closure is lifted and each cancelled booking is given its table again, one at a time. Emails not yet sent are stopped, and guests already told are sent an apology.

A booking whose table was taken in the meantime stays cancelled and is listed. After ten minutes the day stays closed, and a booking can still be brought back from its own popup with Restore.