The reservation book

The reservations page is your book: every booking for the venue, in whichever view suits the moment. It has three views — Timeline, List and Calendar — and they share the same underlying bookings, so a change in one shows everywhere.

Shifts and the day header

If your venue runs more than one service period (say lunch and dinner), the book grows shift tabs — All day plus one per period. Picking a shift narrows the timeline, the list and the header totals to that period. The header reads out the day (or shift) at a glance: bookings, covers, VIPs, parties with an allergy on file, and large parties.

The pacing strip

Above the book, a small bar for each pacing window (15 minutes by default) shows the covers already booked into that window. With a pacing cap set, each bar is measured against the cap — a dashed line marks the cap, the bar turns amber as the window nears it and red at or past it. No cap? The bars simply compare windows against each other.

Where the covers forecast is enabled for the venue, a hatched extension on each bar adds the walk-in covers that window usually brings on this weekday — so the strip shows the load you should expect, not only the bookings you've taken.

Not sure what a bar means? Tap the ? on the strip's header for a plain-language legend. Prefer a cleaner book? Hide collapses the strip to a single header line — the choice is remembered on that device, and Show brings it back any time.

Month calendar

The calendar shows a whole month at a glance, colour-coded so you can read demand instantly:

• Orange — the day has bookings. The count is shown, along with the day's covers and how full the room is — a small bar fills as reserved covers approach your total seats, turning amber as the day fills and red past capacity (a day with multiple turns can healthily exceed 100%).
• Green — the day is open for booking but has none yet.
• Grey — the venue is closed that day.
• Past days are never tinted — they stay plain so your eye goes to what's ahead, and today is ringed.

Tap any day to drill straight into that day's bookings.

Day list

The List view groups the day's bookings the way a host triages them — Upcoming, Seated, Finished, Cancelled and No-show — with count chips to jump to one group and a party-size filter for hunting the big tables. Each row carries the guest's story at a glance: a VIP badge, a first visit badge for guests with no completed booking anywhere in your group, structured allergy dots, and the booking's source (phone, web, walk-in, API). Bookings can also carry a no-show risk badge and, where enabled, a short guest briefing.

Focus on one floor

Above the timeline, a chip per floor shows how many of the day's bookings sit on it ("Patio · 12 — Main Dining · 0"). Tap a chip to hide that floor's rows — when the whole night is on the patio, one tap collapses the empty main-room lanes instead of scrolling past them. The choice sticks on that device; Show all brings everything back.

In the List view, the small eye button beside the filters hides the informational labels (status, first visit, occasion) for a denser read — safety and identity marks (allergies, VIP, and the booking's source) always stay visible.

Timeline and conflicts

The Timeline view lays bookings out against your tables across the service, so you can see the shape of the night and spot pressure points. It's also where you rearrange the night by hand:

• drag a booking sideways to retime it (snapped to 15 minutes) — on a tablet, press and hold the booking for a moment first, then drag (a quick swipe scrolls the timeline instead),
• drag it to another table row to reassign it,
• drag its right edge to stretch or shrink the expected duration.

Every move offers a one-tap Undo that restores the exact old time, table and duration. TableStack checks each move for you and blocks it with a clear message if:

• the target table is too small for the party,
• the booking would overlap another reservation already on that table (it tells you which booking, and when),
• the new time falls in a blocked window (clear the block from the pacing strip first), or
• the window is already at its pacing cap — dragging never overbooks; use the booking form with the overbook passcode when you mean to.

That means you catch a double-booked table while you're arranging the night, not when both parties are standing at the door.

During service a red now line tracks the current time across the grid, so the shape of the night always reads relative to where you are in it.

Everything stays in sync

The book reflects bookings from every source — your public booking page, the embeddable widget, phone reservations your team enters, and walk-ins. Because updates broadcast live, a booking made online appears in your book without a refresh. See real-time sync.

What this affects

• Seating a party — reservations flow to the floor to be seated.
• Availability — bookings consume the slots the engine offers.

What affects this

• Your scheduling settings — service hours and closures decide which days are open, closed, or full.
• Overbooking rules — how your team books past a full slot.

Find the next table

For phone bookings, the Find next control in the book's toolbar answers "party of six — when can I take them?" in one tap: it scans forward up to two weeks for the first open slot, jumps the book to that day, and Book it opens the form prefilled.

Large parties on the timeline

A booking that spans several tables shows a block in each table's row. Dragging one block to a new row swaps just that table — the rest of the set stays put — and dragging along its own row retimes the whole party together. The capacity check always counts the combined seats.

Who changed this booking?

Open any booking and expand History at the bottom of the form: every change is listed with who made it, when, and exactly what moved ("Time: 6:30 PM → 7:00 PM", "Party: 2 → 4"). Cancellations show their reason. The same trail feeds the organization-wide activity log.

Booking a brand-new guest

Type any name into the booking form's guest search: if nobody matches, the dropdown itself offers "No guests found — create «name»" (and a create row rides under real matches too). One tap opens the new-guest form with the name already split into first and last — duplicate detection still runs before anything is saved (by phone or email when entered, and by matching name when neither is). Common party sizes (2/4/6/8) are one-tap chips beside the size field, and on a phone the whole form uses full-width buttons sized for thumbs.