This article explains how the OctoTable Waiting List works, which allows you to manage booking requests without automatically confirming them until the restaurant approves them, or to collect requests when the dining room is full. When activated, the function sends notifications via email, SMS or WhatsApp, so customers always know if their booking is pending or confirmed. Everything is easily managed from the dashboard or app.
⚠️ If you want to include the Waiting List function in your subscription, you will need to purchase an EVO plan in Subscription > Version ⚠️
With OctoTable you can activate two types of Waiting List:
Waiting List for booking requests: ensure that received bookings are not automatically confirmed, but are placed on a Waiting List. You will confirm the booking. You can also choose to apply the Waiting List only to bookings that exceed a certain number of people.
Waiting List for sold out availability: you can decide to activate the Waiting List only when the dining room is full. As soon as you have a table available again, the customer will be informed and can confirm or cancel the booking.
Let's see in detail how these two options work!
🕐 Waiting List for booking requests
If you don't want to receive immediately confirmed bookings, you can change the confirmation type for each service. Go to Configuration > Services hours, click on the green edit pencil ✏️ corresponding to the service you want to update, and change the confirmation type from Immediate Confirmation to Waiting List.
📌 Please note: You can decide to automatically confirm only bookings for few people and accept only after your verification bookings starting from a certain number of covers. In this case, the Confirmation Type must remain on Immediate Confirmation to enable the Automatic Waiting List for groups option and set the value How many guests do you need to activate the Waiting List?.
For example, by setting 4 as the value, if a group of 4 or more people books, you can automatically put them on the Waiting List; only after your acceptance will the booking be confirmed (to avoid no-shows of many tables at your restaurant). A booking for 3 people or less will be directly confirmed.
The customer, after sending the booking request, will read a notice on the booking page that will inform them that the restaurant will confirm via email or SMS to the provided contacts.
As soon as you receive the booking on OctoTable, you will find the notification next to the clock icon 🕑, clicking on it you will find the list of bookings on the Waiting List.
Or alternatively you can manage the Waiting List directly from the Dashboard or the OctoTable App, clicking on the purple button ⌛ Manage:
At this point you can check and confirm only when you are sure you have availability.
🚫Reject booking: clicking this button you will reject the customer's booking
✅Confirm booking: clicking the green button, you automatically confirm the booking without the customer having to give you reconfirmation.
⏰Accept booking: clicking this button the customer will receive an automatic message and will have to confirm the booking within the time limit set in Configuration > General settings > Waiting List
Having included in the EVO subscription the customizable Template packages for email and SMS and automatic WhatsApp, every time you receive a booking request you can decide to activate or deactivate email, SMS or WhatsApp messages to inform the customer about the booking status. Go to Configuration > Emails/Instant SMS and, after selecting the template of your interest, set the template as in the photo.
If you want more information about automatic templates 👇
👥 Waiting List for sold out
The second option of the waiting list allows you to activate this feature only when the dining room is full but you still want to receive booking requests from customers. As soon as one or more tables become available, you can then manage these requests manually according to your availability.
Access the Configuration > Seating Areas/Tables section and click on the pencil corresponding to the room where you want to activate the Waiting List.
Under In case of No availability choose Waiting List and click save at the bottom of the page.
⚠️ Perform this operation in all rooms where you want the Waiting List for sold out to be active.
You will find the booking in the bookings list or by clicking on the clock symbol at the top right.
When you have a table available again, you can Accept the customer's booking by clicking on the blue button, who will have time to confirm or not the booking.
⚠️Remember to set a time limit within which the customer must let you know if they intend to confirm or not the booking in Configuration > General settings > Waiting List.
When the booking appears expired, you can set another automatic email/SMS sending and then manually delete the expired bookings.
This communication flow will be possible through the automatic messages available in the Configuration > Emails/Instant SMS section.
Finally, remember that even bookings you take manually can be placed on the Waiting List. Click on the quick button New booking at the top right and after entering the customer's data, select Waiting list, at the bottom right.
Once you click on Walk-in, the booking will follow the same procedure we showed you before.
Do you want to activate the Waiting List function also for Reserve with Google? Read the complete article 👇