How To - Working with the Wait List


The Wait List allows you to manage the customer experience from arriving on site to being seated. As soon as customers arrive, wait times are recorded so you can see at a glance how long each customer has been waiting.

The wait list includes the following key features:


  • When the wait time gets down to nine minutes, the time remaining is shown in orange. At four minutes, the time remaining turns red. At zero, it flashes.
  • When you’ve got several parties waiting, select the Overview button to see the total number of guests and parties, as well as average wait times.
  • You can sort the wait list by selecting the icons on the bar at the top of the wait list
    • The triangle shows which item you are currently sorting on and whether you are sorting the list ‘up’ or ‘down’.
    • By default the list is sorted by the order in which customers have been added to the list indicated by the # icon.
    • You can sort by:
      1. the order added to list
      2. Tables score
      3. name
      4. party size
      5. notes
      6. time remaining on wait.
  • You can perform actions on multiple rows at one time on both the Wait List and the Reservations tabs. Click or touch on the left above the footer, to give you an option to select All, None, or Selected guests, and do the same action to the selected guests.
  • The Filter option removes all Cancelled and No-Show customers from the wait list. (Select Filter and Show or Hide as appropriate.)
  • The Select option allows you to perform actions to more than one customer at a time.
  • Any reservations for tables within the next 2 hours are also displayed on the wait list, but instead of a customer number, an R is displayed in the # column.
  • Special requests are displayed in the Notes column
  • Deposits taken are displayed in a yellow box in the Notes column
  • Menus are displayed in the Notes column. The menu name can be read from Tables or the Events / Reservations applications. If a menu was chosen in Events, you cannot use the Menu Selection screen in Tables to make changes for that guest. Changes to these menu selections must be made in Events.


If pager buttons are enabled, the Pager column will contain green Pager buttons:



Adding a Returning Customer to the Wait List

The only differences when adding a returning customer to the wait list are that you start by searching for the customer as described above and when the Enter Guest Details window is displayed it will be pre-populated with the information retained within Tables, for example:



If that customer is a loyalty member, a Loyalty icon will be displayed .


Assigning a pager number to a Customer in the wait list

If configured by Site Admin, host users can assign pager numbers to walk-in customers to allow them to be called when their table is available.

If you plan to contact your customers on the wait list by pager, you can record the number of the pager given to each customer to ensure that you message the correct customer when their table is ready.


  1. To enter the pager number, select the required customer in the wait list.
  2. Select the Pager Number field.
  3. Enter the pager number.
  4. Click away if on a PC or press Enter / Go on a mobile device to save the new pager number.
  5. The customer record is updated and a message is displayed as confirmation.


Automatically assigned tables on the Wait List

If your site is configured to auto assign tables, as you add a customer, the system identifies a best-fit table in terms of table availability, cover size and turn time.

When adding a wait list customer, they are moved automatically to the Future Seating list on the table plan. If a suitable table cannot assigned automatically, the following prompt is displayed and the customer is added to the wait list.



Users can then enter a table number or use the Suggest button to allow Tables to suggest a suitable table once availability has changed.


Seating Customers from the Wait List

To seat customers from the wait list:


  1. Select the highlighted checkmark next to a customer’s name.


    2. The table icon is shown in red with a question mark if a seat has not yet been assigned to this customer, or in green if it has already been assigned:



  2. Select Seat.
  3. The Seat at a Table screen is displayed.


    4. The system displays the best-fit tables that can accommodate the size of the party exactly in green.

    Tables that are not currently free or have more seats than are required are highlighted in orange.

    Alongside the table number, the system shows the minimum and maximum capacity of the table and the turn time.

  4. Select the required table number from the list
    OR
    If you know the number of the table you plan to seat the customer
  5. Type the table number required in the Table field.


  6. Select Seat

Sending SMS messages to Customers

Staff can send SMS messages to customers to keep them updated.

If a customer has been allocated a pager, you can check the number of the pager on the Customer Information screen and send a message manually to that pager. This option will be disabled if the gateway is unavailable.

If you have recorded a customer’s mobile phone number:


  1. Select the required customer in the wait list.

  2. Select the Telephone icon.

  3. Select the required message from the drop-down list and select Send.



  4. The number of messages sent to a customer will be appended to the Telephone icon.

    5. The messages that can be sent to customers are defined at Site Admin level.


Message Failure

If an SMS message fails to be sent, the following failure announcement is displayed on the host app and a failure report is sent to the Zonal Helpcentre.



If the SMS gateway is down, the SMS OFFLINE message is also displayed on the header.



When the SMS gateway is down, no messages can be sent and automatic messages will be queued to be sent - if still relevant - when the SMS gateway comes back online. Messages that are now out-of-date are deleted.

The telephone icon is also disabled (as indicated by a red X on the telephone icon).



If an SMS button is selected, the following alert is displayed:



If the telephone number recorded in Tables is invalid, the message will not be sent and the following alert will be displayed.



Seat Suggestion/Assign a Table with Server Rotation enabled

If Server Rotation is enabled, the Seat suggestion box will show all servers currently on-duty.

The next server (on rotation) to be assigned a cover will be marked with a tick. (This server is said to be on-deck.). The on-deck server will be selected by default and the available tables assigned to that server will be displayed for you to choose a table.

Servers are automatically ordered by the date/time that they were marked as on-duty.



If the on-deck server does not have any available tables, all available tables on site will be displayed along with the following warning message:



You can also select Show all available tables to display all tables regardless of server. If you then select a table that assigns the cover to a different server, the next time you attempt to assign a table to a cover, the server that was supposed to be on-deck will remain in that state so that the next guest can be assigned to them.



You can check the available tables for each server by clicking on their name. As servers are marked as off-duty, they are removed automatically from the server rotation.

If there are no servers on-duty, Tables will suggest the best available table on site.

You can see which tables are assigned to servers by selecting the server on the left-hand side. The available tables will be updated accordingly.