How do I control dashboard alerts and sounds?

Set your team's notification sounds, which alerts appear where, the rules that trigger them, and email copies of key events to staff.

How your team's in-app alerts look and sound — sounds, which notifications show where, how each alert is displayed, and email copies to your team — lives in Settings → Notifications → Alerts and sounds. Whether the late arrival and overstay alerts are on at all is set beside their timings, on Settings → Bookings → During service. Only Owners and Admins see this page; each staff member can still override the sound and notification defaults for themselves in their own profile.

Sound

Hear nothing when you test? The device itself has the final say, and on an iPhone or iPad that is by design: ResoFlow's sounds follow the silent switch (or Silent Mode in Control Centre) and the volume buttons, exactly like any other app's sounds — a phone on silent stays silent, and ResoFlow never appears as "playing" on the lock screen. Flip the switch to ring and the alerts play. Reduce Motion controls animation and does not change your sound preference. Your existing sound settings apply, including any personal or device mute. If the browser has blocked sound instead, ResoFlow tells you: a test button shows a warning, and when a real alert can't play you'll see a small Enable sounds button near the bottom of the screen — one tap turns sounds back on.

Using ResoFlow added to an iPad/iPhone home screen? Apple requires one tap on the screen after you open the app before any website may play sound. ResoFlow shows a small "Tap anywhere to enable sounds" note when you open it — your first tap on anything turns sounds on for that session, and alerts ring on their own from then on.

Notification defaults

The Notification defaults section is a grid: a master switch per category, then a Bell / Toast / Sound / Push mini-toggle per notification type — bell means it appears in the notification centre, toast is the transient pop-up, sound plays a tone, and Push sends a lock-screen alert to the devices that have turned alerts on (Settings → Notifications → Devices and push). These are the defaults your whole team inherits; anyone can override their own in their profile (How does the notification bell work?). Thirteen alerts push out of the box (new bookings and tickets, the floor alerts, orders); everything else is one switch away. "Booking cancelled" stays quiet unless you switch its Push on — and it has a Booking cancelled (same day) twin that only fires for a booking on today's service, so you can push just the cancellations that free a table tonight (its Bell is off by default too, because the plain row already shows every cancellation). System notifications (billing, security, staff, support and platform) always appear in the bell for owners and admins and can't be switched off there — the grid shows them as one line each, with no push switches, because System push is not a venue setting: each owner has a single Money and security alerts on my devices switch in their own profile (on by default), and those alerts go to owners' own devices only. Venue tablets always follow these defaults and never receive System alerts. Full guide: How do I get ResoFlow on my phone and turn on alerts?.

If you use Order & Pay, there's a New order (Order & Pay) type in that grid — a customer has placed and paid for an order, at their table or (with collection and delivery on) for collection or delivery. It arrives with all three channels on (bell, toast and sound) for everyone, since a paid order nobody notices is a customer sitting waiting. Separately from this grid, the Orders board rings on the screen itself, and how it rings is set per screen — tap the bell icon on the board for Ring until seen (the default, so a board across the room can't be missed), Ring once, or Off. The same dialog carries a separate toggle for the alert when an order becomes ready. Both choices belong to that physical screen, not to whoever is signed in, so a pass screen keeps its setting as staff come and go. The venue-wide default lives in Orders → Settings.

Email copies to staff

Available on Plus plan and above, and with any paid ResoFlow product. Enter a Venue notification email, then tick which events get a copy — there are 13, including New bookings, Cancellations, Modifications, No-shows, Booking payments, Event ticket purchased, Waitlist promotions, Event sold out, Event almost sold out, Event ticket cancelled, No-show fee scheduled, No-show fee charged and No-show fee failed. All are off by default.

The Booking payments copy covers every payment on a booking — deposits, pay-in-full payments, extras, pre-orders, additional payments and no-show fees collected by payment link — and the email's subject and receipt always state exactly what was paid (for example "Deposit + extras received" with the deposit and each extra listed line by line). Pre-order payment copies also break down the VAT included in the dish prices (from each dish's VAT rate on the menu) and show your VAT number — but only when you've entered one on Settings → Payouts and Stripe; deposit and other payment copies never show VAT.

Late arrival and overstay alerts: on or off

The on/off switches — Late arrival alerts and Overstay alerts (both on by default) — sit on Settings → Bookings → During service, beside the timings they fire on: when a customer counts as late, how long you hold their table, when a no-show is marked and when a finished table clears itself. See What happens during service?. Alerts and sounds keeps how they look.

Alert display style

Choose Full screen or Toast for each alert — Late arrival alerts, Overstay alerts, No-show alerts, Table ready (waitlist) and Unassigned large party. Full screen takes over the screen on the Bookings, Timeline and Floor plan pages until somebody deals with it (anywhere else it shows as a toast); toast shows a dismissible banner (the default). The No-show alerts row is greyed while late arrival alerts are on, because a missing customer is then shown through the late arrival alert. In Just take bookings both are switched off — nobody marks customers in, so ResoFlow can't tell whether a customer is missing.

Related: How does the notification bell work? · How do staff set their own theme and notification preferences? · How do I mark a no-show (and charge the fee)?