What happens during service? (late arrivals, no-shows and freeing tables)

How your team tracks a service, when a customer counts as late, how long their table is held, when a no-show is marked and everything it sets off, and when a finished table frees itself.

Everything that happens to a booking while it is under way is on one page: Settings → Bookings → During service (/dashboard/settings/during-service). Owners, Admins and Managers can open this page. It replaced the old Service and timings page (its address opens here), and the on/off switches for late arrival and overstay alerts now sit beside their timings here — how an alert looks and sounds is still set on Settings → Notifications → Alerts and sounds → Alert display style.

How your team runs a service

How your team tracks a service decides which buttons your team uses on a booking, and therefore which of the settings below can ever fire:

• Track the whole visit (the default) — arrivals, seating and clearing are all recorded as service runs, so ResoFlow knows how each visit ended.
• Mark customers as arrived — someone ticks customers off as they arrive; nobody seats parties or clears tables in ResoFlow.
• Just take bookings — you use ResoFlow to see who is booked in; nobody marks customers as arrived, seats them or clears their table.

Under the choice, What this means for you lists exactly what it changes. In Just take bookings, two settings are managed by the choice and can't be changed while it applies: automatic no-shows and late arrival alerts are both switched off, because nobody marks customers in, so ResoFlow can't tell who is missing. See Running ResoFlow as a booking diary.

Average party size (once called "Visit counting") decides which bookings feed a customer's average party size: Attended bookings only (the default) counts a booking once your team has recorded that the customer turned up, and All confirmed bookings counts every confirmed booking. If nobody marks visits the way you run a service, choose All confirmed bookings. Changing it doesn't recalculate existing customers — only future bookings use the new setting.

When someone is late

• When a customer counts as late (default 15 minutes, 1–240) — how long after their booking time a customer nobody has marked as arrived is flagged to your team. Nothing is cancelled; it is a prompt to ring them. It needs your team to mark customers as arrived (Mark customers as arrived or Track the whole visit).
• Late arrival alerts — an alert when a confirmed booking still hasn't been marked as arrived after the late time. Its actions include holding the table, adjusting the time or releasing it. Switched off, late customers are only highlighted on the bookings list.
• Hold their table for (default 15 minutes, 0–240) — how long a late customer's table stays theirs. Your team sees it held until then (the late alert shows the time the hold ends), an automatic no-show never comes before it ends, and it is the number your emails quote when they mention holding a table. 0 means the table can be given away as soon as they are late.

Which wins: "An automatic no-show always waits until the table hold has ended." If Hold their table for is longer than Mark them after, the page says so and offers to line them up.

No-shows

• Mark no-shows automatically (on by default) — a booking nobody has marked as arrived is set to no-show once the time below has passed. When off, a booking stays booked until someone on your team changes it.
• Mark them after (default 30 minutes, 5–240) — measured from the booking time, not from when the customer was flagged late. Set it comfortably longer than your late time.
• Everything a no-show sets off — one list of every consequence of a no-show (the customer's history, the alert, the email copy to your team, the follow-up to the customer, the "your deposit was kept" notice, the no-show fee, review requests and the timeline), each with its live state and a Change link to the one place it is switched.

Marking a no-show never charges anything on its own: a fee is only ever armed by someone on your team, where you have set one up in Card to hold on What guests pay. Which bookings are marked automatically, and how to switch each part off, is explained in How do I turn off no-show tracking?.

When a table is finished

These only work while your team seats and clears tables (Track the whole visit):

• Clear finished tables automatically (on by default) — a seated booking is marked finished once its length plus the extra time below has passed, and the table goes back into the pool. When off, a table stays occupied until someone clears it.
• Give them an extra (default 15 minutes, 0–240) — added to the booking's own length before the table clears itself, so a party lingering over coffee doesn't lose their table while they're still at it.
• Overstay alerts — an alert when a seated booking runs past its end time, prompting your team to clear the table or extend the booking.

The gap a table needs before the next party is Turnaround time, on Settings → Bookings → How long a booking lasts. The last time each way of booking can start before you close is on Settings → Bookings → When people can book (Last booking before you close).

Click Save changes when you're done.

Related: How do I turn off no-show tracking? · How do I mark a no-show (and charge the fee)? · What do the booking statuses mean? · Running ResoFlow as a booking diary · Where are my booking rules? (Booking rules at a glance)