Recording the bill and tip
What this covers
Entering what a table spent, and why it is worth the ten seconds.
How to do it
- Press Complete on the booking when the guests have left.
- Enter the Bill Amount — what the table spent in total, in your restaurant's currency.
- Enter the Tip Amount if you track tips.
- Save.
Both fields are optional — you can complete a booking without them — but see below for what you lose.
Why it matters
This is the only place revenue enters Tabledoo. Everything in the revenue report is built from completed bookings that have a bill recorded:
- Total revenue for any period.
- Average spend per booking, and per guest.
- Total tips.
- Revenue by table and by section — which tells you whether the terrace really earns its space.
A booking completed without a bill counts as a completed booking with no revenue. Do it for half your tables and the report will say you took half of what you actually did. That is worse than having no report, because it looks authoritative.
See Revenue report.
Adding it afterwards
Forgot at the time? Open the booking and edit it — you can add or correct the bill on an already-completed booking. Doing yesterday's missing bills the next morning is a perfectly good routine, as long as it actually happens.
Good to know
- Which currency? The one set in Property Settings → Restaurant. That is separate from the currency you pay Tabledoo in. See Time zone, currency and formats.
- Enter the total, not per head. Tabledoo works out the per-guest figure itself from the pax.
- Tabledoo is not a till. It does not take payment and does not need to match your till to the penny. A close figure gives you useful trends; leaving it blank gives you nothing.
- Who can do this? Anyone who can update bookings — including servers, which is usually who is standing there when the table pays.