How do I record a customer's preferences, tags and notes?

Open a customer's profile to record allergies, dietary needs, seating preferences, family details, tags, a birthday and staff notes.

There's one customer profile, and it opens wherever you are: click a customer on the Customers page, or their name on a booking, a message, a payment, a gift card or a loyalty member, and their whole profile fills the page — who they are and what the team needs at the door first, then everything they've done in one timeline. Opened from another record — a booking, a payment, an order — the button at the top left takes you back to it and names it ("Back to the booking"); the cross at the top right (or Escape) closes the profile and leaves the page underneath exactly as it was. On a phone, the back button at the top left is the way out and names where it takes you ("Back to Customers"). Anything you open from the profile — a booking, an order, a gift card — takes its place, with a way back to the customer. Profiles are on every plan, Free included; tags come with the customer tools (below).

What's on a profile

• Click Customers in the sidebar, then click the customer (or click their name anywhere else in the dashboard). The header shows their name, since when they've been a customer, their email and phone, their pills (VIP, a loyalty member, their tags, a birthday coming up this week) and four facts: Visits, No-shows, Avg party and Last visit (the day they last came — the same date their booking's History tab shows). A venue that doesn't take bookings sees its own facts there instead — Orders and Last order (Order & Pay), Gift cards, Loyalty (their balance) or Tickets paid — and none of the booking ones; its profile shows only the tabs it has something for, and its Details column leaves out seating, family and Their bookings. Edit sits beside them (and New booking too, at a venue that takes bookings), and the … button holds everything else. New booking opens the booking form over the profile with their name, email, phone, allergies and preferences already filled in; save it (or close it) and you're back on their profile, where the new booking shows.
• Above the tabs, the things the team needs at the door: any allergy saved on their profile ("On their profile — shown on each of their bookings."), and their next booking with Open the booking. Its day follows your service day, as the Bookings page does: while you're still open after midnight it's still that night's service, so a booking for the coming evening reads "Tomorrow" until you close, then "Today".
• The tabs tell their story. Everything is one timeline of every booking, event ticket, order, gift card, loyalty stamp or point and marketing email, newest first (a booking still to come sits at the top) — click one to open it. Bookings holds the Booking history list (and their regular booking, if they have one), Tickets their Event tickets (the ones still to come first, the next on top; the past ones folded behind a Show past button — "Show past tickets (5)" — until you open them; click a ticket to open it as the booking it is, where it names its event and offers Resend ticket and the ticket's cancel choices), Orders their Order & Pay orders (at the table, for collection or for delivery — tap a row for the itemised lines), Gift cards and loyalty their Gift cards, Loyalty history and Saved offers, Messages their conversations with you — on Pro and Complete the newest one to reply in (with a note for the team and your quick replies), the earlier ones opening on the Messages page (a back button at its top brings you straight back to this profile), and a button with their first name to start a new message; on Free and Plus a note says where their replies go — and the Communications list (marketing emails sent to them, with whether each was delivered — opens are never counted), and Record history the Identity history (past names and phone numbers, with where each came from — for example "Verified by customer" or "Staff entered") and every change made to the profile. The lists show the three most recent entries each, with a Load more button for the rest.
• The Details column beside the tabs (on a phone, tap Details to open it) holds At the door (allergies, dietary preferences, seating, family), Occasions (special occasions, what they wrote about themselves and — on Pro and above, or with the Loyalty product — their Birthday, the day and month only), Tags, What they agreed to (their marketing choice, and how they gave it), Loyalty and gift cards, Spend (Bookings paid, Orders paid once they've paid for an Order & Pay order — naming how many orders it covers — and Events paid once they've bought event tickets), Their bookings (Bookings, First booked, Last booked, Cancellations — under Bookings, how many were cancelled and how many were no-shows) and Staff notes.

Allergies and dietary needs: this booking, or this person

A booking's allergy and a customer's allergy are two different things. The booking page asks Any allergies in your party? (and Any dietary needs in your party?) — those words belong to that booking only, because they're often a friend's. They're never copied onto the booker's profile by themselves.

A profile's allergy (or dietary needs) is saved only on purpose:

• the customer ticks This is my own allergy — remember it (or These are my own dietary needs — remember them) when they book — signed in, it's added to what's already saved; not signed in, it only fills an empty profile;
• your team clicks Save to their profile on a booking (it adds the booking's words to what the profile already says — nothing is replaced), which needs the Edit notes and allergies permission;
• you edit it here with Edit, or the customer changes it in My account.

A saved allergy is never added to a booking by itself — the person who books isn't always the one with the allergy. When a signed-in customer books, the booking page asks "Your saved allergy: Sesame. Is it for this booking?" and they must answer Yes or No to go on. Yes puts it on that booking, so the kitchen pre-order copy, the kitchen tickets, the Orders screen and your new-booking email all show it; No leaves it off. A party pre-order link and an Order & Pay checkout ask the same ("Is it for this order?"), and so do your waitlist join page and the event ticket page. Remove it from your profile under the question takes it off their profile. Allergies already saved on profiles are kept as they are.

On a booking, the Overview tab opens with one allergies box that names where each word came from — This booking and Their profile — and the booking rows, the Timeline and the Floor plan show a profile-only allergy too, labelled "On their profile: …".

Tags, notes and changes

• To tag them, tap a pill under Tags to add or remove it. The built-in tags are VIP, Regular and Difficult; your own custom tags appear alongside. Adding a tag needs the customer tools — Available on Plus plan and above, and included with a paid Gift Cards, Loyalty, Tickets or Order & Pay product; on Free the section says so, and you can still take a tag off (a venue that moved down a plan keeps its old tags until it does). The VIP pill needs VIP flagging — Available on Pro plan and above. Changing tags needs the Edit profile (name, email, phone) permission — without it the tags they have show as plain pills, and a line says so.
• To create custom tags, go to Settings → Bookings → Customers (the page comes with the customer tools — Plus and above) and find the Custom tags section. Type a label (up to 30 characters), pick one of the eight colour swatches, click Add, then Save changes in the header bar. You can have up to 20 custom tags. Renaming a tag later won't change it on customers who already carry the old label.
• To add a private note, type in the Staff notes box. It saves automatically when you click away. Changing the notes needs the Edit notes and allergies permission — without it the box is read-only and says so. A birthday saves as soon as you pick both the day and the month (clear either to remove it) — it powers the automatic birthday messages. Changing it needs the same Edit profile (name, email, phone) permission; without it the birthday shows as words ("26 September").
• To edit the main details, click Edit — it opens as steps: Contact (first and last name, phone and email — changing the email asks you to confirm your password; see the merge guide), At the door (allergies, dietary preferences, preferred seating, Number of children, Requires highchair, Children's menu requested) and Occasions (special occasions, comma-separated, and About me — text the customer wrote themselves), then a review. Click Save changes. Closing with changes asks before throwing them away.

Loyalty, visit history and who can edit

If you run a loyalty scheme and the customer is a member, Loyalty and gift cards shows their loyalty strip — balance (for example "7 of 9 stamps"), an Active member or Awaiting confirmation badge, and when they joined — and any member groups they're in (for example "Student discount — confirmed at the venue by Jo on 12 Sep 2026 · until 12 Sep 2027", the same words as on the Loyalty page; an ended one says so and asks for it to be confirmed again); a non-member shows an Enrol in loyalty button instead (when they've agreed to join).

You can change a member's balance from their profile, just as from the Loyalty page: under the strip, click Adjust points (Adjust stamps on a stamp card) on an active member. It opens the same Add/Remove pad as the Loyalty page and the Scanner — the amount, a reason of at least 10 characters, and a manager's approval (your password, or a manager's PIN) — and it's recorded in the activity log; the new balance shows straight away. It needs the Adjust a member's balance permission and is hidden while your loyalty scheme is suspended. For someone still awaiting confirmation, Send the confirmation again emails them a fresh link (staff who can award stamps and points can send it) — it never makes them a member by itself, and it's hidden while your loyalty scheme is paused or suspended.

The … menu holds Print visit history and Download visit history (CSV) — the customer's full visit history (their bookings, event tickets and Order & Pay orders, including no-shows and cancellations). Print works on every plan; the CSV needs Plus plan or above or a paid Gift Cards, Loyalty, Tickets or Order & Pay product (locked, it reads Available on Plus plan and above). Both cover exactly what the profile shows — dates, times, party sizes, tables and statuses (plus event, tier and ticket code for tickets, and items, totals and any refunds for orders) — and turn on once the full history has loaded. For Owners and Admins on the main dashboard it also holds the marketing choice (Confirm marketing consent or Mark as opted out) and the data tools (Merge with another profile, Download their data, Delete customer) — see the data request guide.

Editing the profile — Edit (which holds allergies and the rest), the tags and the birthday — needs the Edit profile (name, email, phone) permission; staff notes need Edit notes and allergies. By default Hosts can write staff notes but not the rest.

Related: How do I find and manage my customer list? · How do I flag VIPs (automatically)? · How do I send birthday messages (with an offer)?