Quick Seat: waitlist to booking — Help

What this covers

Turning a waiting party into a real booking on a real table, in one step. Needs permission to create bookings — Owner, Manager or Host.

What it does

You pick a table; Tabledoo does the rest at once:

Creates a confirmed booking on that table.
Carries across the guest, the pax, the time, the duration and the notes — you retype nothing.
Takes the party out of the queue and links the entry to the new booking, so the history stays joined up.

The party then behaves like any other booking: mark them arrived and seated as usual, and complete them when they leave. See Running service: advancing a booking.

Where to do it

Waitlist page — Quick Seat on the entry.
Live View — the more natural place during service. A table frees up, and you can seat the next party from the floor screen without navigating.

Either way you get a Seat from Waitlist window listing the tables actually available for that party at that time, so you are choosing from real options rather than guessing.

The guest gets a confirmation

Worth knowing, because they are usually standing in front of you: seating from the waitlist sends the normal booking confirmation by email and text, exactly as if you had taken the booking over the phone. Do not be surprised when their phone buzzes as you walk them to the table.

"No tables available right now."

Nothing free fits that party at that time. Your options:

Wait a few minutes — complete any table whose guests have actually left, and it will appear.
Merge two tables for a party too big for anything single. See Merging tables for a large party.
Edit the entry — a shorter duration or a slightly later time often opens something up.
Be straight with the guest about how long it will really be.

It is also worth checking Live View for a table showing as occupied that is actually empty — the usual cause is a booking nobody completed. See What each table status means.

Two people cannot seat the same party

If a colleague seats that party, or takes that table, a moment before you do, your attempt stops and tells you what happened — "This entry was just converted by another action", or that the table has gone. Nothing is double-booked and no guest ends up with two bookings.

So on a busy door, two staff can both work the queue safely.

Good to know

The booking is created as confirmed, not seated. Mark them seated when they are actually at the table, so your turnaround times stay honest.
Notes travel with them — "celebrating an anniversary" written at the door is on the booking the server opens.
You land on the new booking afterwards, so you can add anything else immediately.