Everything you need to take and manage bookings

Who took that booking? If you've ever asked that across a busy restaurant, this one's for you. In the next couple of minutes, I'll show you how the Tablez staff app puts every booking on every phone, how your team gets an alert the second someone books, and how Live Check lets you say yes while the customer waits. First, give your team their own logins. In your dashboard, open staff logins. Type a name, an email and a temporary password and press Add staff member. They'll be asked to change the password the first time they log in. If someone's a manager, tick extra access for events and menus, venue settings or reports. Billing and staff logins always stay with you, the owner. The free plan includes you plus one staff login. Standard at £9.99 a month gives you as many as you like. Next, your team opens the staff app on their phone, at tablez.uk/staff. On Android, Chrome offers to install it. On an iPhone, open it in Safari, tap share, then add to home screen. It then opens like a normal app, with no app store needed. The staff app shows today's bookings in time order, with the covers booked, the table and the things that matter. A new customer, a regular, a birthday, an allergy in red so nobody misses it. When people turn up, tap arrived. If they don't, tap no show. You can flick to other days, add a phone booking and see who's on the wait list. Now the alerts. On standard and above tap enable notifications and each phone gets a push alert for every new booking or request, even when the app is closed. On the free plan you still get an email and the app beeps while it's open. Then choose how bookings are accepted under booking rules. Instant means if a table's free the booking is confirmed straight away. Staff approved means each Each booking comes in as a request, and your team accepts or declines it, and live check is the clever one. With live check, the customer waits on the page with a short countdown, usually three minutes while your staff get an alert. Tap accept, and the customer sees their table is booked right there and then. If nobody answers in time, it simply becomes a request, and the customer is told you'll email them shortly. It switches itself on while someone's logged in to the staff app so nobody is left waiting when you're closed. If you can't fit them in tap decline, pick a reason like fully booked and add a message if you like the customer gets a polite email straight away.

A floor plan isn't just a nice picture. Done right, it tells your whole team who's sat where, who's due next, and which table can take a walk in right now. In the next couple of minutes, I'll show you how to set one up in Tablez and how to use it on a busy night. Open Edit Floor Plan. Press Add Several. Choose how many tables, how many seats and the shape. Round, square, rectangle or booth. They all appear at once. Then add the room itself. The bar, doors, windows, a fireplace, the toilets. They're just drawings so they're never booked. Now drag everything to where it really is and pull the corner to resize. Click a table to set its name, its seats and a fill order, so online bookings fill your best tables first. You can add more rooms too, like a garden or a function room, each with its own tab. Then press save layout. Online bookings go straight onto a table for you, using your fill order, then the smallest table that fits. that fits and if you like you can let customers pick their own table on the booking page. Now the live view. Open floor plan and it updates by itself every 20 seconds. Dark green means seated. Amber means reserved or booked soon and a dotted table needs cleaning. Each table shows who's on it, how many and when it's free. Someone walks in tap a free table put in how many and press seat walk in now. Done! When a booking arrives tap their table and press seat them. When they leave press finished free the table. It's marked as needing cleaning and anyone on the waitlist here is that a table's come free. Once it's wiped down, tap markers clean. You can also move a booking to another table or join two tables for a big party. The floor plan comes with standard at £9.99 a month and every member of staff can use it on a tablet behind the bar or from the staff app.

Once bookings start coming in, here's where to find them and how to stay on top of a busy week. Today, the bookings list, the calendar, the table list and the kitchen screen. Today is your home page. It shows how many are booked today, anything waiting for a reply and what's coming up. Tap open on any booking to see the details. Inside a booking you'll see the time, the party, the table, allergies and their history with you. From here you can accept it, mark them as arrived, edit the time, the party size or the table or cancel it. Bookings is the full list. Search by name, phone or reference and filter by date and status. Need it in a spreadsheet? Export the list, all your bookings or your customers. The calendar shows the whole month at a glance. Each day is coloured by how full it is, from quiet to filling up to nearly full, and events are marked. Tap a day to see its bookings service by service and which tables are in use. The table list is your backup, print it, download it or email it to yourself, so you still have the day's bookings if the internet goes down. on pro the kitchen screen shows what's coming in the next hour or two with covers and pre-orders full screen on a tablet in the kitchen or behind the bar.