The reservation lifecycle
What this covers
The seven states a booking can be in, what each one means on the floor, and who normally sets them. Everyone on the team should understand this page — the rest of Tabledoo is built on it.
The normal path
A booking moves forward in one direction, one step at a time:
Pending → Confirmed → Arrived → Seated → Completed
| Status | What it means | Usually set by |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | The booking exists but nobody has checked it yet. A new request, essentially. | Created this way automatically |
| Confirmed | You are happy with it and the table is being held. | Whoever checks the bookings |
| Arrived | The guests are here, in the building, but not yet at a table. | Host, at the door |
| Seated | They are at their table. | Host or server |
| Completed | They have finished and left. The table is yours again. | Server, at the end |
The two ways out
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Cancelled | The booking will not happen. You record a reason, and the guest is sent a cancellation message if those are switched on. |
| No Show | The guests never arrived and never told you. Tabledoo can also set this for you automatically — see Automatic no-shows and completion. |
Why keeping statuses up to date matters
It is tempting to treat these as paperwork. They are not — three things depend on them:
- Whether a table looks free. A booking left on Confirmed after the guests have gone home keeps its table looking busy on Live View, so you turn away a walk-in you could have seated.
- Your reports. Tabledoo records the exact moment a booking became Arrived, Seated and Completed, and the reports use those times to work out how long a table takes to turn and how full you really were. Statuses set hours late produce confident-looking nonsense.
- Your guests. Confirming and cancelling are what trigger the messages guests receive.
Which status a new booking starts in
You choose, separately for the two ways bookings arrive:
- Bookings your staff create — usually Confirmed, since you were on the phone to the guest.
- Bookings from your public page — Pending if you want to check each one, or Confirmed if you would rather guests get an instant answer.
Both are set in Property Settings → Restaurant. See Booking rules reference.
Where you see statuses
- On the Reservations list, as a coloured badge on each row.
- On the Timeline, as the colour of each block. There is a Status Legend on screen so you never have to remember which colour is which.
- On the Dashboard, as today's count for each status.
Cancelled is not the same as deleted
Cancelling keeps the booking in your history with its reason, which is what you want — it counts towards your cancellation rate and you can see it happened. Deleting removes it entirely and cannot be undone. Cancel by default; delete only for genuine mistakes, such as a double entry. Only Owners and Managers can delete.