Run today's bookings

Confirm, seat and track tables through service using the list, floor and timeline views.

Open Reservations and it shows you today, because that is what you need nine times out of ten. Use the arrows at the top to move to another day, and Today to come straight back.

Across the top you also get the shape of the day in numbers: the count of Bookings, the total Covers, how many are Completed and how many are still Remaining. It is a quick way of knowing whether the hard part of the evening is behind you or still to come.

Three ways to look at the day

• List shows every booking in time order. It is the clearest view on a phone and it is where most people spend their service.
• Table View draws your floor plan and shows which tables are taken. It needs room to be readable, so use a tablet or a computer rather than a phone.
• Timeline puts every table down the side and the hours of the day across the top. You can drag a booking to a different time or a different table, which makes it the fastest way to rearrange the floor when a party changes its plans. If you try to drop a booking where there is already one, Dinerly stops you rather than quietly double-booking the table.

Confirm or decline

If you have chosen to approve bookings yourself, new ones arrive marked Pending. They also appear on the Home page so that they are in front of you even when you are not in the reservations section, because an unanswered booking request is a table you are holding for somebody who may have given up and gone elsewhere.

• Confirm accepts the booking and sends the customer a confirmation email.
• Decline cancels it and emails the customer to let them know, so they are not left waiting for an answer that never comes.

Statuses through service

Move each booking along as the evening goes on:

• Pending means it is waiting for you to approve it.
• Confirmed means it is booked in.
• Arrived means the guests are in the building.
• Seated means they are at their table.
• Delayed means they have been in touch to say they are running late.
• Completed means they have finished and left.
• No Show means they never turned up at all.
• Cancelled means the booking was called off.

Keeping these up to date is what makes the floor view worth looking at, because a screen that says a table is free when it is not will be ignored within a week. No Show deserves particular care: it is the only way you will be able to look back in six months and see which nights you are regularly losing tables you could have sold to somebody else.

Walk-ins

Somebody who has just turned up does not need a booking created for them. Seat them on the till and the table is automatically marked as a walk-in on the floor, which keeps the reservations screen honest without any extra work. See Tables, covers and walk-ins.

Last updated 20 September 2026