Running a walk-in-first venue

Switch on walk-ins and run service from the floor plan — with online table bookings closed or limited if you barely take bookings.

If most of your trade walks through the door, ResoFlow works well as a live walk-in board: see which tables are free, seat walk-ups in a couple of taps, and let turnaround timings keep the room honest.

1. Switch on walk-ins

Walk-ins are off by default. Go to Settings → Walk-ins and switch on Enable Walk-Ins — a walk-in button then joins the creation options across the dashboard. While you're there, set the Default Walk-In Duration and default party size to match your service. Full detail (including Smart Walk-Ins auto-placement, a Complete feature): How do I set up and seat walk-ins?.

2. Walk-ins skip the lateness automation — by design

Walk-ins are seated from the moment you add them, so they're never flagged Late and never touched by Automatically mark no-shows (that automation only looks at online and staff-created bookings — walk-ins and waitlist entries are excluded). You can seat walk-ups all night without any alert noise. See What do the booking statuses mean?.

3. Decide what happens to online table bookings

Three ways to run it:

• Keep them — plenty of walk-in-first venues still take online bookings for weekends. Nothing to change.
• Limit them — narrow the Online booking hours in Settings → Hours so slots are only offered when you want them (How do I set my opening hours?).
• Close them completely — switch off Accept online table bookings in Settings → Booking rules → Booking channels. Your booking page and widget then say you're not taking online bookings (customers still see your phone number and address), while ticketed events — and bookings you add yourself — carry on as normal (Selling event tickets without table bookings).

4. On busy nights, the waitlist

When the room fills, the waitlist takes names and tells customers when their table is ready — including a self-service join page customers can reach from a QR code. It's Available on Complete plan. If a walk-up can't be seated, the Smart Walk-In flow offers Add to Waitlist on the spot.

Everything else — deposits on the bookings you do take, confirmations and reminders, events — works exactly the same in a walk-in-first setup.

Related: Ways to run ResoFlow · How do I run service from the floor plan? · How do I control dashboard alerts and sounds?