How to stop double bookings in your restaurant

Two parties at the door for the same table is rarely one person's mistake. It happens when bookings live in more than one place, or change without everyone knowing. Fix those and double bookings mostly stop.

How double bookings happen

Two people take phone calls at the same time and both write in the same table.
Online bookings arrive by email or through a marketplace, and someone gives the same table away on the phone before they are written in.
The diary is at the other end of the room, so a booking is taken from memory.
A booking is moved to another time, and the old entry stays in the diary.
Bookings are counted by time slot rather than by table, so a 19:30 is taken on a table whose 18:00 party will still be eating.

Keep one booking record

Every booking needs to go into one place before it is confirmed, whether it came by phone, in person, through your website or through a marketplace. If online bookings reach you by email, write them in before you reply, not at the end of the shift.

Two diaries, one by the phone and one at the front desk, or a diary and a spreadsheet, will drift apart on a busy night. If several people take bookings, they all need to work from the same record, and see each other's changes straight away.

Check the table, not just the time

Counting covers for each time slot tells you whether the evening is full, not whether a particular table is free. Give each booking a table when you take it, and count how long it holds that table: the sitting plus the time to clear and reset.

For example, a party of four booked at 18:00 for an hour and a half, with five minutes to clear, holds their table until 19:35. A 19:15 can't go on that table, even if the 19:15 slot still has space elsewhere.

Make every change in one place, and tell the team

Decide who checks new online bookings and cancellations during each shift, and how often.
Go through the evening's bookings at the start of each shift, table by table.
When a cancellation comes in, free the table at once, so it can be offered to someone else.

If two parties do arrive for the same table

Seat whoever you can straight away, at another table if one is free, and be honest with the other party about how long they'll wait. Offering them a drink at the bar costs little. Afterwards, find out how it happened. It nearly always traces back to one of the causes above.

How Tables & Floors does it

Phone, walk-in and online bookings, and guests' own changes, all go into the same booking list and floor plan.
Every tablet and phone you use updates as soon as a booking changes. If one loses its signal, it shows a warning while it reconnects and catches up.
Each booking holds its tables for its sitting plus clearing time. When two people book the same table on different devices, only one can have it, unless a member of staff chooses to accept the overlap. An accepted overlap is flagged on the floor plan and in the list until it is sorted out. Online bookings and changes made by guests never create one.
New online bookings and guests' cancellations wait under one filter, Needs attention, until someone acknowledges them. Overlapping bookings stay there until the overlap is sorted out.

The service screen on a tablet: the evening's reservation list beside the dining room floor plan, showing free, reserved and walk-in tables, seated parties with their time left, late arrivals and overrunning tables in orange, two tables merged for a party of eight, and a table conflict flagged in red. — The service screen on a busy evening, with overlapping bookings flagged in red.

See how an overlap is handled when plans change during service on the features page.