What happens when someone is late or doesn't turn up?

One page for the whole chain — how your team tracks a service, when a customer counts as late, when a no-show is marked, when a table clears itself, and the gap before the next party.

Everything that happens to a booking after it is made lives on one page: Settings → Bookings → Service and timings. Owners, Admins and Managers can open it.

These settings used to be spread across three pages — some of them filed under "Alert rules" on Alerts and sounds, where they were not alerts at all. Nothing changed about how they work; they are just in one place now, in the order a service actually happens.

How your team runs a service

How your team tracks a service decides which buttons your team gets on a booking, and therefore which of the settings below can ever fire:

• Track the whole visit (the default) — the full picture. You know who is here, where they are sitting, and when a table is free.
• Mark customers as arrived — faster on the door. Tables still free themselves, but you do not know where anyone is sitting.
• Just take bookings — no arrival marking at all. Nothing further down the page can fire, and the page says so.

The page lists exactly what each choice changes before you pick it, and greys out any setting the choice takes out of your hands, with the reason.

Visit counting sits beside it, because it is the same question: which bookings count as a visit. Attended bookings only (the default) counts a booking once you mark it Cleared; All confirmed bookings counts it as soon as it is confirmed. It feeds a customer's average party size and the automatic VIP rules. Changing it is not retroactive.

When someone is late

• When a customer counts as late (default 15 minutes) — how long after their booking time an un-arrived customer is flagged to your team. Nothing is cancelled; it is a prompt to ring them. Whether that flag also rings or pops up is set in Settings → Alerts and sounds.
• Hold their table for (default 15 minutes) — how long the table stays theirs before your team can give it away. This is the number customers are quoted in their confirmation email, so it is a promise as well as a setting.

When someone never turns up

• Mark no-shows automatically — applies to bookings made online or by your team; walk-ins, waitlist parties and other types are never marked automatically. When on, a booking nobody has marked as arrived is set to no-show once the time below has passed. When off, it stays booked until someone changes it by hand.
• Mark them after (default 30 minutes) — measured from the booking time, not from when they were flagged late. Set it comfortably longer than your late window, or a customer stuck in traffic is a no-show before anyone has rung them.

Marking a no-show never charges anything on its own. A fee is only taken where you have set one up on Settings → No-show protection, and only when a member of your team triggers it.

Freeing the table for the next party

• Clear finished tables automatically — when on, a seated booking is marked finished once its length plus the grace period has passed, and the table goes back into the pool.
• Give them an extra (default 15 minutes) — added to the booking's own length before the table clears itself, so a party lingering over coffee does not lose their table while they are still at it.
• Turnaround time (default off) — how long a table needs between one party leaving and the next sitting down. This gap applies everywhere: the times customers see online, the checks when your team moves a booking, how soon a cleared table goes to the next waitlist customer, and when their "table ready" text is sent.

Cut-offs, set elsewhere

Three different things stop bookings before you close, and they live on their own pages — the foot of Service and timings links to all three so you can see them together: the scheduled-booking cut-off (Booking rules), the walk-in cut-off (Walk-ins) and the waitlist joining cut-off (Waitlist).

Related: What do the booking statuses mean? · How do I mark a no-show? · Ways to run ResoFlow — reference-only