Normally NomNom gives every online booking a table the moment the guest picks a time, and only offers times when a suitable table is free. That suits most restaurants. But for a bar, a terrace with loose seating or a busy carvery, you may prefer to take online bookings by headcount and seat people yourself. Don’t assign tables online does exactly that, for one meal in one area.
How it works
- Online bookings for the meal arrive with no table. Your tables don’t hold them back at all, so a time stays on offer even when every table is taken.
- Your guest limits decide instead: the meal’s Online maximum guests for the day, the MAX on each time and any venue limits. Your notice, cut-off and party-size settings still apply too.
- Bookings your team takes don’t change: you still pick a table, or leave it unallocated, as usual.
If every guest limit is left unlimited, nothing stops online bookings for that meal, so always set at least one.
Turn it on
1. Open the meal. In NomNom Web, open Configuration, choose Meals, pick the area in the ROOM row if you have more than one, then click the meal.
2. Check Bookable online is on. On the Details tab, Don’t assign tables online is greyed out until it is.
3. Turn on Don’t assign tables online.
4. Set Online maximum guests. This is the most online guests the meal takes in a day in this area, across all its times. It starts at Unlimited. Your team’s bookings count towards it but are never stopped by it. To limit particular times as well, set their MAX under Times.
There’s no Save button: each change saves as you make it, and All changes saved shows once it has.
In NomNom Web: Configuration → Meals → pick the area → click the meal → Details. In the phone app: Configuration → Meals → pick the area → tap the meal → Don’t assign tables online.
Seating the bookings
On the Chart in NomNom Web, bookings without a table sit in the Unallocated row at the top. Drag each one onto a table, or open the booking and pick one. Optimise tables doesn’t seat them for you: it leaves bookings for this meal alone until someone on your team has put them on a table.
Until a booking has a table, it doesn’t hold one. A table can look free on the chart while guests are still waiting in Unallocated, so seat them before you give tables away to walk-ins.
Why did an online booking arrive without a table?
- The meal is set to Don’t assign tables online in that area. → Seat it yourself, or switch the setting off so NomNom chooses tables again.
- It’s for an event set to Guest limit only. New events start that way. → Seat it yourself, or change the event’s Web booking capacity to Assign a table. See Setting up events and sharing their booking link.
- Its table has since been deleted. Deleting a table leaves its future bookings with no table at all. → Seat them at another table.
- Someone moved it off its table, for example by dragging it to Unallocated on the chart. → Drag it back.
Otherwise, NomNom gives an online booking its table when the guest books — see How NomNom picks a table for an online booking.
Good to know
- It’s set per area. Meals belong to an area, so turn it on in each area that needs it.
- Table settings don’t apply online. For this meal, a table’s Online booking, Smallest party online and Dog friendly settings don’t affect online bookings, because no table is chosen. Seat dog owners at a dog-friendly table yourself.
- Turn lengths still count once seated. Each booking still gets the meal’s turn length, so the table you seat it at is held for that long.
- Table allocation required only applies to bookings your team takes. It doesn’t stop online bookings arriving without a table.
- The area doesn’t need tables for this to work, so it suits a space with no fixed table plan.