How do I use the timeline?

Run service from the per-table timeline — drag to move, resize to extend, zoom, quick actions, touch gestures and tap-to-place for unassigned bookings.

The timeline shows every table as a row across the day, with each booking as a coloured bar — the fastest place to move bookings and spot gaps. Switch between List, Timeline and Floor plan with the view toggle.

The essentials

• Click a bar to open the booking's detail panel with its status actions.
• Click an empty space on a table's row to start a new booking pre-filled with that table and time (snapped to 5 minutes).
• Drag a bar to a new time or table. Drag its left edge to shift the start, or its right edge to lengthen or shorten the booking. Availability checks include your turnaround (cleaning) time.
• After a drag or resize, you may be asked whether to notify the customer, and moving into the past or extending past closing asks you to confirm first. A move is checked against your booking rules like the edit form: outside your opening hours it's refused, a pacing rule set to Block staff too stops it, and any other limit it goes over is named on the confirm card (Save anyway goes ahead).

A table blocked for part of the day stays on the timeline with its blocked times shown, and a blocked table that still has bookings keeps showing them.

Use the zoom control — Zoom out, Fit and Zoom in — to stretch or compress the day; Fit sizes your current time range to the screen, which is also how the timeline opens by default. Your zoom level is remembered on that device once you change it.

If you have more than one floor plan, tabs above the timeline switch between them, with a Manage floor plans → shortcut.

Moving a booking to a different table

To move a booking to another table, drag its bar onto the other table's row (drag it along the row to change the time instead, or both at once). Availability is checked as you drop, turnaround (cleaning) time included: a slot that only clashes with a table's cleaning gap asks you to confirm first, and a slot that overlaps another booking asks "Book it anyway?" — Book it anyway puts both bookings on that table on purpose (each then wears a Shares table chip), Pick another table leaves the booking where it was. A pinned waitlist entry is the one thing you can't drop onto — unpin it first. If you'd rather not drag, open the booking and click Edit to pick the table from a list — see How do I change a booking — time, table, party or length?. A booking that has no table yet isn't on the grid at all: it sits behind the Unassigned button in the toolbar, where you tap the booking and then tap a table row to seat it (next section).

Placing unassigned bookings (tap, then tap)

If Auto-assign tables is off — or a booking is above your "Don't auto-assign parties larger than" size — bookings can sit without a table, so they don't appear on the grid. When that happens, an Unassigned button with a live count appears in the timeline toolbar:

• Click Unassigned to enter assign mode. The table-less bookings appear as tappable chips in a strip above the grid, with the hint "Tap a booking, then tap a table row to seat it."
• Tap a booking chip, then tap a table's row — free rows are tinted so you can see where it fits. The same availability checks as a drag apply: a table that already has a booking at that time asks "Book it anyway?" (confirm to seat both on purpose), while one that only clashes with cleaning time — or is undersized, or misses a seating preference — asks you to confirm first. Only a pinned waitlist entry is refused outright — unpin it first.
• A party bigger than any single table can't be placed this way — the message tells you to open the booking and link tables instead.

Leave assign mode with the ✕ on the strip, the toolbar button, the Escape key, or by tapping anywhere else. There's no dragging involved, so it works nicely on tablets and touch screens. (If the day's only bookings are table-less ones, the timeline's empty state says so — "3 bookings awaiting a table" — with an Assign tables button that opens the same mode.)

On a phone

The timeline's toolbar becomes one compact row, and the Bookings page header above it is one row too (see How do I find bookings — filters, tabs, search and export?). Held sideways, the side menu folds away behind the menu button and the page title and its buttons move up into the top bar, so the grid gets the screen's height; the date bar folds its time range under the date.

Keyboard and touch

• Arrow keys move the selection between nearby bookings — left/right along the row, up/down between tables.
• On touch screens, press and hold a bar for a moment to pick it up and drag (a gentle vibration confirms it); a short tap opens the detail panel, and swiping scrolls.

Mouse shortcuts (double- and triple-click)

You can give each booking state a double-click and triple-click shortcut — for example, double-click a seated bar to mark it cleared. Set these up in Settings → Display and layout → Mouse shortcuts; the section is plan-gated: Available on Complete plan. Actions include options like Mark as seated, Mark as cleared, Unseat customer, Extend by 15 mins, Hold for 15 mins, Mark as no-show and more; everything defaults to No action. Mouse shortcuts are desktop-only — they don't fire on touch screens.

Related: How do I change a booking — time, table, party or length? · How do I customise the dashboard display and quick actions? · How do I run service from the floor plan?