Timezone, currency and formats
What this covers
The settings that decide how times, dates and money are interpreted and displayed. Requires the
manage-settings permission. All on Property Settings → Restaurant.
Timezone
The most consequential setting in Tabledoo. It is not a display preference — it is how your restaurant's clock is defined, and almost everything time-related is calculated from it.
It affects:
- Which times are offered as bookable, on both staff and guest sides
- When reminders go out
- When the automatic no-show and completion sweeps decide a booking is overdue
- Which bookings count as "today" on your Dashboard, Timeline and Live View
- Which day a booking falls into on every report
- Event dates and the times shown on your public pages
The default is America/New_York, which is almost certainly not you. Set it correctly on your first day and then leave it alone.
Changing it later is not cosmetic
Booking times are stored as a wall-clock time — 19:30 means half past seven in your restaurant. Change the timezone and those times do not move, but everything calculated around them shifts: what counts as today, when reminders fire, which day a late booking lands in on a report.
So if you must change it — you genuinely moved, or it was set wrong from the start — do it when the diary is as empty as you can manage, and check the next day's bookings and the reminder timing afterwards.
Currency
Two fields, both used for display of money inside your restaurant:
- Currency code — exactly three letters, such as
EURorGBP - Currency symbol — up to 10 characters, such as
€or£
They drive menu prices, the bill and tip you record on a booking, every figure on the revenue report, and prices on your public menu.
This is not your billing currency
Worth being clear, because the two are unrelated and easy to confuse:
| This setting | Your billing currency |
|---|---|
| What your guests pay you in | What you pay Tabledoo in |
| Changeable here whenever you like | Locked when you subscribed |
| Menu prices, bills, revenue reports | Your subscription, invoices, SMS credit packs |
See Currency and pricing for the billing side.
Changing the currency does not convert anything. It relabels. A menu priced at 12.50 becomes 12.50 in the new currency, not the converted amount — so a genuine currency change means repricing your menu by hand.
Date format
Five presets, applied across the app and your guest emails:
| Preset | Looks like |
|---|---|
| Day/Month/Year | 21/08/2026 |
| Month/Day/Year | 08/21/2026 |
| Year-Month-Day | 2026-08-21 |
| Day Month Year, written | 21 Aug 2026 |
| Month Day, Year, written | Aug 21, 2026 |
The written forms are worth considering for a mixed international team, because 08/21
versus 21/08 is the classic misreading and a written month cannot be got wrong.
Time format
12-hour (7:30 PM) or 24-hour (19:30), applied across the app and emails. The default is 12-hour.
Times are always stored in 24-hour form; this only changes how they are shown.
The one exception: text messages
Every time in an SMS is written in 24-hour form regardless of this setting. That is deliberate and not a fault to report: a text has no layout and no context, so "7:30" glanced at in a notification can be read as morning. "19:30" cannot (link SMS: what's different).
Default phone country
A two-letter country code that sets which country phone-number fields assume when a number is typed without an international code.
It matters more than it looks in two places:
- Guest phone numbers, which need a country code to be textable at all
- Caller screen-pop, if you use phone integration — incoming numbers without a country code are interpreted against this setting, so getting it wrong stops local callers matching your guests (link Connecting your phone system)
Restaurant language
Sets the language of guest-facing messages — emails and texts. It is your restaurant's language, not the guest's: everyone receives messages in it.
Twelve languages are supported, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.
Your own interface language is a separate, personal setting — yours does not change your colleagues' (link Your profile and preferences).
Good to know
Everything on this page saves together. One Save button covers the profile, these settings and your operating hours.
Format changes are immediate and retrospective. They change how existing data is displayed, not the data itself, so nothing is at risk in trying one.