Settings - Tables

A phantom table in essence is a spare manager table that you might keep in a back room that you can pull out when needed.

For example, a table of 4 has booked, and when they arrive, they are actually a table of 6 ( we have all been there!). You would pull out your spare table and extend the table of 4 to accommodate the table of 6 in a pinch.

Therefore, a phantom table can never be booked on its own and you will never see a phatom table show on your tables list in the grid view. It can only ever be used as part of a join to extend a table if you need to.

Phantoms can also be helpful if you have a few conditional table joins. For example, if you have 2 tables of 2 in a tight corner, lets say table 1 and table 2. If you extend table 1 to accommodate 4 people on that table, then you would not have enough room to also extend table 2 as the area is too small.

You could then create a phantom table, lets call it P1.

You can then make table joins of table 1 + P1 = 4 and table 2 + P1 = 4. Therefore as the same phantom table is used in both combinations, only one join can be used at a time, ensuring you do not get over booked.

Note- Phantom tables are not automatically bookable online. if you want phantom tables to be able to be booked online please contact our support team at support@resdiary.com. If you say that phantom tables can be bookable online, this applies to all phantom tables

To set up a Phantom table simply go to Settings - Tables and add new table.  When creating the new table, change the dropdown at the op to Phantom.

Fill out the details of the table and put a description in so that future users will know the purpose, as the Phantom will not appear on the diary.

When you have created this table you then need to go in and create a join between the two tables we are wanting to effect.  In this example I am simply adding an extra chair to table 10 so that internal bookings by a manager can squeeze an extra seat on, but not online. To create a table join  please follow this guide 

Now when we go to make a booking on the diary for 5 people, this option will be the first choice, but only bookable by a manager.

When we add in the booking, it will show as a booking of 5 on a table of 4.

If you did want to make this phantom available to book for general users you can add this priviledge in the User Group Settings.