How to: Manage the Dining Reservation Desk

Within the Dining Reservation Desk panel you can manage the reservations made for the dining areas of your restaurants.

Note: The program creates a dining reservation entry for each activity reservation with activity product with Custom Availability DINING. The dining reservation entries are used within the hospitality - allocation and reservation desk. When information is changed in the activity reservation, confirming the activity reservation will update the dining reservation entry accordingly.

If the activity status CONFIRM is configured to allow edit, after you change the activity reservation (such as name, email and so on), you need to Confirm the activity reservation again to update the dining reservation entry.

The following table lists the operations possible.

Start a New Reservation	Click New to start a new reservation. Previous selection if any is cleared.
Select Dining Area	Click the dining area the reservation is for. If there is only one dining area to choose from, the dining area is already selected. You can have a button per dining area or you can have a button with a lookup to choose from the dining areas available.
Select Date	Click the desired date on the calendar.
Register Number of Guests	Click the desired number of guests. When you have selected a date, dining area and number of guests, the system shows the availability for this many guests in the dining area on the selected date. The period selected is either the first period that has not passed yet or the period that is marked as Selected by Default (see Time Schedules).
Select Time - Pre-reserve?	Click an interval in the Availability grid to select the time you want to reserve. There needs to be availability for this to be possible and the time cannot have passed. The Automatic Alloc. on Reserv. field in the dining area influences when the availability is sufficient. If it is No or Allocate if Possible, the Available Guests field needs to be greater or equal to the number of guests requested. Reservation capacity for the period and existing reservations are used to calculate this. If this field is Always Allocate, the Available Dining Tables field needs to be greater or equal to the number of guests requested. You can allow pre-reserving (reserving the place even though contact information is not filled in) to ensure that the place is reserved as soon as possible. By assigning the command DR-PRERESERVE to one or more columns in the Availability grid the program reserves the dining reservation that is being worked on when you click the column. You can then proceed with filling in the contact information and preferences and confirm the changes at the end.
Select Period	Click the desired period to view the availability. If you then click another date, the same period will be selected if the period exists for that date.
Filter Dining Tables by Section	Click Section Preference and select which dining area sections (one or many) you want to filter the dining tables by. Available Dining Tables shows how many dining tables are available in these dining area sections that have the capacity for the requested number of guests. Click X to delete the filtering.
Filter Dining Tables by Dining Table Attribute	Click Table Attributes and select which dining table attributes (one or many) you want to filter the dining tables by. Available Dining Tables shows how many dining tables that have the capacity for the requested number of guests have all of these dining table attributes assigned. Click X to delete the filtering.
Search for and Select Member	Enter criteria for member search in the Search for Member input. Select the correct member to assign to the reservation. The member info appears in the Member browser control on the panel.
Add/Edit Contact Info, Create New Member	Click Add Contact Info to add missing contact information. Click Edit Contact Info to edit the contact information already entered. In both cases, you can create a new member from within the Contact Info panel.
Allocate a Dining Table or Change Allocated Dining Table	Click Allocation to allocate a dining table to the reservation or view or change the allocation already made for the reservation (for example if the program has automatically allocated a dining table when reserving).
Register allergies, dietary preferences, occasion, comment, and more	Click Comments to open the Comments panel.
Confirm the Reservation and/or Changes Made	Click Confirm to save any changes to the dining reservation. If the dining reservation has not been reserved, the program verifies that there is availability and reserves the place if availability is enough.
Cancel the Reservation	Click Cancel Reservation to cancel the current dining reservation.
Change the Reservation	Make changes to the dining reservation as desired. Click Confirm to save the changes.
Search for Reservations	Click Search Reservations to open the Dining Reservation List panel. Here you can search for reservations via name, phone number, and email. You can see cancellations, no-shows, and waiting lists for specific dates and see the reservation history for a member or guest. You can select an active reservation for editing in the Dining Reservation Desk panel. You can confirm a waiting list reservation if there is enough availability.
Viewing availability in all dining areas for the selected time	By clicking a time interval in the Availability grid in any column other than the one with the DR-PRERESERVE command, the program automatically calculates availability for the same interval in other dining areas. The availability is displayed in the Dining Area menu via a tag in a glyph - <#DR-DINAREA-AVAIL%1> (availability in number of guests) and <#DR-DINAREA-AVAILT%1> (no. of available dining tables) where %1 should be replaced with the Key No. of the POS menu line. This applies only when the panel shows more than one dining area at a time.

Note: In version 21.5 the following operations are NOT possible:

Take reservations that require a deposit.
Store attributes for a registered member.

How to: Manage the Dining Reservation Desk

See also