Unallocated bookings are reservations that have been completed and placed in your diary but no longer have a table assigned to them. There are various reasons why this may happen:
Changes to your diary
ResDiary has a built-in fail-safe to stop your diary from being overbooked if you make changes. So, if you change service times, disable an area or a table and the booking has nowhere to go, the diary will put them into the sidebar so you can reallocate them. This alerts you to the fact the reservation needs to be re-seated. A temporary closeout will be added to pro you from being overbooked, once the bookings have been allocated the temporary closeout will be removed.
Un-allocation tool used
You can unallocate your bookings and re-allocate them so the diary’s algorithm can improve your table optimisation. This is useful if you’ve had reservations cancelled, change the size, or move to a different time.
See this article on using the unallocate tool
Moving bookings around
Moving bookings around can cause other bookings to become displaced, you will receive a notification that the bookings will be displaced and will ask you to confirm first.
How to re-allocate these bookings
Ensure the sidebar is expanded by pressing this button
at the edge of the screen.
Then press the
button. This will then reallocate the booking, optimising your space according to your rules.
Rather than sifting through each day to locate any unallocated booking you can use the unallocated booking report
Unable to Reseat?
Some bookings will get stuck because there isn’t a suitable place for them to go.
Click the booking on the sidebar - this then opens the booking screen.
Pay attention to:
Any error messages as these will tell you why the booking can’t be re-allocated.
- Try changing your areas in the booking process to all areas as this will provide more availability.
- Check your tables: is this table still enabled in the diary? Do you need to create a join to accommodate the booking size?
- Time: is this time still available in your diary? Ensure that no one has removed this time slot.
- Rules: do you need to temporarily remove a rule to accommodate this reservation?
- Service: does this service still exist in your diary?
Those are some of the reasons a booking cannot be reallocated, it is important to look through your settings to check everything is in place to accommodate the booking.