Running your day
The waitlist
The waitlist is the screen your team lives on. It shows who is waiting, who is being served, and what happened already today — and every action on it tells the customer where they stand.
How the screen is laid out
Open a location and choose Waitlist. It is only available in the location view: there is no combined list of every branch, because nobody works through several branches' queues at once.
Three areas, top to bottom:
- Waiting — everybody in line, in the order they joined, with an estimated wait against each. The person at the top is next.
- Serving — everybody who has been called and is at the counter, in the chair, or on their way over.
- Today's activity — everything already closed today: served, no-showed and cancelled.
Where a location has more than one queue, a row of filters appears at the top. Each filter is a real web address, so a screen behind the counter can be left showing one queue permanently.
Adding a walk-in
Most people add themselves by scanning your code, but somebody who has walked up to the counter without a phone still needs a place in line. Add to waitlistopens a short form: which queue, the customer's name and mobile number, the service if you use them, and party size or notes.
Needs the permission visits.create (create visits). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
A walk-in added this way is identical to one that joined by QR code. They get the same messages — so if you take their mobile number, they get told when it is their turn and can walk away from the shop in the meantime.
Say what they are getting before you type the number in
Typing somebody's number in is a verbal opt-in, and it only counts as one if they were told what will be sent. Ask for the number, say they will get a message or a call from you when it is their turn, and mention that replying STOP ends it. The form shows you the exact wording beneath the number field, and it is the same wording published on our SMS opt-in policy — which is what mobile networks are shown when they ask how your customers opted in. Never enter a number the person has not just given you for this.
Somebody who won't give a number
The form asks for one, because the number is what makes the waitlist useful — it is how that person gets told it is their turn without standing in your shop. A visit that ends up with no contact details on it is flagged on the list, and that person has to be called the old-fashioned way, out loud.
Working the list
Call
Moves somebody from waiting to serving and sends them the message that it is their turn. This is the one that matters: it goes out on whichever channel reaches them, and falls back to another if the first does not land.
Mark served
Closes the visit as dealt with. The person leaves the serving column, everybody behind them moves up a place, and the wait estimates recalculate.
No-show
Closes the visit as called-but-never-appeared. Recorded separately from served so your no-show rate is a real number you can act on.
Cancel
Removes somebody who is still waiting — they changed their mind, or told you in person they are going.
Needs the permission visits.update (update visits) and visits.delete (delete visits). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
Closing a visit is final
Served, no-show and cancelled all end the visit, and there is no reopening it. If you close the wrong person, add them again — and put them back in the position they had, since the list is ordered by when somebody joined.
Opening a single visit
Clicking a name opens that visit on its own. From there you can edit the details captured when they joined — a mistyped number, a party that grew, a service they got wrong — and see everything recorded against them.
Correcting a mobile number here matters more than it looks: it is the number the next message goes to.
Choosing what each row shows
Which details appear against each person — position, service, how long they have waited, when they were called, their email, their notes — is configurable under Location settingsDisplay settings, separately for the waiting columns and today's activity list. A busy counter usually wants less on screen, not more. See display settings.
Where the wait estimate comes from
The estimate against each person is the same figure the customer sees on their own status page, so “how long will I be?” has one answer wherever it is asked. It is calculated per queue, from either the recent gap between calls or your service durations and capacity, depending on which model you have chosen — see wait time estimation.
It updates by itself
Counts update live, so a second member of staff calling somebody from a tablet is reflected on the screen behind the counter without anybody refreshing. If two people call the same customer at the same moment, the second action finds the visit already moved on and does not send a duplicate message.