Importing your existing data

Switching to TableStack doesn't mean starting from scratch. You can bring your guest book and your reservations across from OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms or a plain spreadsheet, and they'll land as real guests, live bookings, and past-visit history. There are two importers — one for guests, one for reservations — and both work the same way: upload a CSV, check the preview, confirm.

Before you start: export to CSV

TableStack imports CSV files (comma-separated spreadsheets), so first get your data out of your current system:

• From OpenTable — open the Guest Center and export your guest list, and export your reservation reports for upcoming and recent bookings. These come out as CSV.
• From Resy, SevenRooms, or similar — use their guest/reservation export to a CSV or spreadsheet.
• From a spreadsheet — save it as CSV.

A couple of things worth knowing: other platforms don't hand over your data through a direct connection, so you export the files from your own account and upload them here. Their export steps and column names are theirs and can change, so if an export button has moved, check their current help docs. Each file can be up to 5 MB.

Importing your guests

Open the guest book and choose Import guests. Then:

1. Upload your guest CSV. TableStack reads the column headers straight away.
2. Match your columns. It auto-detects which column is the name, email, phone, tags, dietary notes, VIP flag, and notes — you can override any of them, or map a single "Full name" column instead of separate first/last names.
3. Review the preview. Nothing is saved yet. You'll see how many guests are new, how many are duplicates of guests you already have, how many will be skipped, and how many allergies were picked out.
4. Confirm. Only then are the guests added to your book.

What the guest import does for you

• De-duplication. Guests are matched by phone and email against your existing book, so importing twice — or importing a guest who's already a regular at another venue — won't create a second record. Duplicates are flagged in the preview and skipped.
• Structured allergies from free text. Dietary notes like "shellfish, nuts" are converted into structured allergens that show on the seat card during service — this is a safety feature, not just a note. Imported allergies are set to a moderate severity to start; review the flagged ones on each profile and adjust. Anything the importer doesn't recognise is kept for you to review rather than dropped. More on why this matters in Allergies and safety.
• Tags, notes, and VIP come across as-is.
• Rows without a name, email, or phone are skipped automatically.

Because guests belong to your whole organization, an imported guest is instantly available at every venue in your group. See The guest book for what you can do with them next.

Importing your reservations

Open the reservation book and choose Import reservations. It works the same way — upload, map, preview, confirm — with a couple of reservation-specific touches:

• Upcoming bookings become live reservations you can see and manage in the reservation book.
• Past bookings become visit history, so your reports have real covers, turn times, and no-show rates from day one rather than starting empty.
• Map either a single combined "Date & time" column, or separate Date and Time columns.
• If your export has a Status column (Completed / No Show / Cancelled), map it — it makes your imported history far more accurate, and completed past bookings also create a visit so they feed your reporting.

As with guests, the preview shows exactly what will be imported — upcoming versus past, how many guests will be created along the way, and anything skipped — before you commit.

A good order to do this in

1. Build your floor first, so imported bookings have tables to live on — see Build your floor.
2. Import your guests, so reservations can link to guest records that already exist.
3. Import your reservations.
4. Turn on online booking and start taking new reservations on your own page.

What this affects

• Your guest book — imported guests, with structured allergies and tags, ready across every venue.
• Your reservation book — upcoming bookings appear as live reservations.
• Your reports — imported past visits give you real covers, turn times, and no-show history immediately.

What affects this

• Your export from the old system — the cleaner the CSV, the cleaner the import. A Status column especially improves accuracy.
• Permissions — importing guests needs guest-management access, and importing reservations needs reservation-management access. See Your team and their roles.