Guests & lists: waiting list, alerts and tags

Change these settings

1. On an Office tablet, open Settings › Guests & lists.
2. Switch on what you want to use. The boxes that belong to a switch appear while it is on.
3. Change the numbers. Under each box, a sentence says what that number will do.
4. Press Save. It saves the waiting list, table alerts, unconfirmed bookings and the no-show ladder together; tags save on the spot.

Waiting list

Under Waiting list (tonight), Use the waiting list at the host stand puts the queue of tonight’s walk-ins on the service screen. With it on, three more settings appear:

• A switch that lets guests join the list from your booking page when tonight is full.
• Offer a table to the first party automatically when one frees: when a table frees, the first party in line is offered it without anyone pressing a button. It stays on until you turn it off.
• Hold the offered table for (minutes): how long that party has to take the table before the offer moves to the next one in line.

How the list runs during service is in the waiting list.

Table alerts

Under Table alerts (a future date), Offer table alerts on the booking page lets a guest who cannot get the time they want ask to be told if a table opens on that date. They confirm their email, then get an email when one does, first come, first served.

Head start for priority guests (minutes) is how many minutes before everyone else waiting for that date the guests who carry a priority tag hear about a freed table. More in table alerts.

Unconfirmed bookings

Nothing is cancelled unless you switch on Release unconfirmed tables automatically. Then a booking nobody confirmed goes back on sale before it starts, at the time set in Release how many hours before the sitting, and the guest is warned by email twelve hours before that.

• It only follows a delivered reminder, so Reminder must be ticked in Settings › Messaging.
• Bookings your staff typed in, and bookings made less than 24 hours ahead, are never released.
• Only bookings made at least (hours ahead) and Only parties of at least narrow it further, to bookings made far enough ahead and to larger parties.

The screen warns you, and it is right: releasing turns a possible no-show into a certain cancellation, so if most of your unconfirmed guests come anyway, it costs you covers.

The no-show ladder

The ladder is off until you switch on Arm the ladder for online bookings. It works on strikes: a strike is a no-show where it is certain the guest was reached, by a delivered reminder or a confirmation from their own link, on a contact they gave themselves.

Refuse online bookings at (strikes) sets how many strikes stop a guest from booking online. Two more boxes let a guest with fewer strikes still book online, but only up to a party size you choose.

A strike stays on a guest’s record for twelve months, and can be taken off from that record if the guest appeals. The ladder never applies to bookings your staff take by phone or at the door.

Tags

Three tags are set automatically, never by hand: First visit, Regular after three visits, and At risk after two strikes. Allergies are never tags: they live on the guest’s record.

1. Under Add a tag, type the tag’s name in Label and pick its colour in Colour.
2. Switch on Priority for table alerts to give these guests a head start on table alerts, and Show on the service screen to see the tag during service.
3. Press Create tag. Your staff can now put it on a guest.

Edit changes a tag’s label, colour and what it gives; the three automatic tags keep their names. Archive ends a tag for good: guests who carry it keep it, but nobody can be given it again.