In simpleERB, you can create a new table layout for customers, however, there are a few steps to take to ensure this is done efficiently and smoothly.
The most important thing is DO NOT delete your tables in your layout until you have moved over all the past and future bookings you wish to keep in your diary to a new date and table on your new layout.
When you delete tables that have a booking on them, these bookings are moved to a "non existent" table which can cause problems when moving these on the grid layout view. When attempting to delete tables, the system will warn you prior with a notification if there is a future booking on that table. Past bookings will always be affected but cause no problem if don't need to move them. You can view our article here on how to correctly delete tables in simpleERB.
Image shows what a booking on a 'non-existent' table will appear as in your diary.
The most efficient way to re-create your restaurant table layout in simpleERB is to create a new restaurant area and table layout and to still keep the existing restaurant area open. This will be extremely helpful for those larger party/function bookings you have in the system that may be rescheduled.
You can close off the current area to prevent customer booking and you will still be able to move bookings about. You just need to remember to move them from the old area to the new area so tables are not being double booked.
Example image below is re-creating a new area for post COVID19 to ensure social distancing measures are considered.
Remember: When adding tables to your new layout, you can only have one Table 1 in your account. In your new restaurant area, you will need to list the tables as 101, 102. Once all bookings you wish to keep have been moved onto tables in the new area, you can then delete the old restaurant area/table layout and then edit your new tables back to your original numbers if you prefer to have singular table numbers.
To move over all the past bookings (that were not attended but may be rescheduled) you wish to keep in the future system, you need to change the date of the booking and click save. This will then move the booking to the new date but keep it on the same table. You will then need to locate the booking and move the booking to a new table in your new table layout via Grid View or using the 'quick move' feature in the booking place.
For future bookings in the diary, you can change the date and table number ( using quick move or table layout clickable button) at the same time when moving to another date. We are looking at having this same action on past booking and hope you can bear with us in the meantime until we have this fix in place.
After moving and rescheduling all your past and future bookings in your diary, you can then close the old area here to stop any future bookings being allocated to this. We suggest keeping the old layout for a bit until you are happy with the new one and to ensure no bookings have been missed that still need to be transferred. Once you are happy with the new layout, you can then delete this and edit tables numbers back to the original number. You can view our article on how to close an area here.
Important: You will also need to edit your advanced features that affect table numbers. For example; table joins, table ranking and closed tables.