You don’t always know where a party will sit when they book. You might want to see how the evening fills up first, or be waiting to hear whether they’d like the window. You can save the booking with no table — NomNom calls it unallocated — and seat it whenever you’re ready. It keeps its date, time and party size in the meantime.
Save a booking with no table
In NomNom Web: New reservation → leave Tables empty. In the phone app: the + button → New Reservation → don’t tap a table on Availability.
1. Take the booking as usual (see Taking a booking over the phone).
2. Leave Tables empty. Under the tables you’ll see No table selected — this booking will be unallocated. If a table is already ticked, because you started from the chart or from Availability, click it to untick it.
3. Click Save reservation. The Reservation confirmed window shows the table as Unallocated.
In the phone app, tap Next on Availability without tapping a table, then save as normal.
Working from the chart in NomNom Web? Click an empty spot on the Unallocated row at the time you want, and the New reservation form opens at that time with no table picked.
Find your unallocated bookings
- Chart: they sit in the Unallocated row at the top, each at its own time. In NomNom Web, click the word Unallocated to fold the row away; it then shows how many bookings it’s hiding. Click it again to open it.
- List: they’re in the day’s list as normal, with no table shown.
- Plan: they don’t appear on the floor plan until they have a table (see Seeing your room as a floor plan).
Give it a table
Drag it. In the chart, drag the booking from the Unallocated row onto a table; on the phone, touch and hold it first. You’ll see Seated Tom Evans at Table 5, with UNDO in case you picked the wrong one. If the table’s taken, Bump booking? offers to move the booking already there to Unallocated instead. See Moving bookings on the chart: drag, swap, bump and undo.
Or use the menu. Right-click the booking in NomNom Web and choose Move to table, or tap it in the phone app and tap Move to, then click a free table. See Moving, swapping or unallocating a table.
Or edit the booking. In NomNom Web, click the booking, then Edit reservation in the side panel. Pick a table under Tables and click Save changes. In the phone app, tap the booking, then View Details and Tables; pick a table, tap Confirm, then Save Reservation.
Making a table compulsory
If every booking should have a table from the start, an admin can switch on Table allocation required. A new booking, walk-ins included, then can’t be saved without one: you’ll see Please allocate a table. It only checks a booking when your team first saves it, so bookings already taken, bookings made online and a booking you unallocate later aren’t affected.
In NomNom Web: Settings → Reservation Editing → Required fields. In the phone app: Settings → Reservation Editing.
Good to know
- An unallocated booking doesn’t hold a table. Until you seat it, the table you have in mind can still be booked, by your team or online. The party does still count towards any guest limits for its time and meal (see Limiting how many guests can book online).
- Some event bookings arrive without a table. If an event’s Web booking capacity is Guest limit only, its online bookings aren’t given a table, so they wait in Unallocated too (see Setting up events and sharing their booking link).
- A deleted or renamed table. On the chart, in NomNom Web and the phone app, a booking whose tables no longer exist also lands in Unallocated, with a broken-link icon. In NomNom Web the bar along the bottom counts it on a removed table. Drag it onto a real table.
- Let NomNom suggest tables. Optimise tables finds tables for unallocated bookings as it tidies the rest of the day (see Optimising your table plan).
- Walk-ins can be seated without a table too (see Seating a walk-in).