VIP alerts and watch lists

Great hospitality starts with knowing who just walked in. TableStack rings the alerts bell — visible on the floor, the guest book, and every staff page — the moment a guest worth knowing about books or is seated.

Who rings the bell

Two kinds of guests:

• VIPs — anyone flagged VIP in the guest book.
• Watch lists — any smart list you check in venue settings. Watch "Big spenders" and every guest matching that list gets the VIP treatment, automatically, as their history qualifies them.

What an alert carries

The alert names the guest and the moment — "Nia Laurent (VIP) booked Fri Sep 4, 7:00 PM · 4 covers", "just seated at Table 12 · party of 2". Where AI guest briefings are enabled, the host briefing rides along, so the person answering the bell already knows the story: "Third visit, anniversary last time, shellfish allergy."

Alerts are guest data, so they follow guest permissions: the bell only appears for staff whose role can view the guest book. Bussers and other roles without guest access never see alert contents.

Alerts arrive live over your venue's real-time sync — a toast on whatever page staff are on, and a badge on the bell until someone acknowledges it. The same alert never rings twice, and alerts tidy themselves away after 30 days.

Manager email, if you want it

By default alerts stay in the app. Venue settings has a second switch to also email managers each alert — useful for owners who aren't on the floor.

For integrators

Alerts also fire the guest.vip_booked and guest.vip_arrived webhooks, and the full alert feed is available over the API.

What this affects

• Seating a party — the floor's visit panel also remembers company: when a seated party has dined together before, it says so.

What affects this

• The guest book — the VIP flag and smart lists decide who rates an alert.
• Venue settings — the alerts switch, the manager-email switch, and your watch lists.