When a customer doesn't arrive for their booking, it is best to mark them as a no show during the active service period as this will give you the best possibility of recouping some of the lost revenue from this booking.
By marking the booking as a no show, this will then release the allocated table to be available once again for another booking in the next time slot via telephone or the widget, which otherwise would not have been bookable if you just leave the booking live in the system.
As you can see from the screenshot below, in the individual booking place when you select the booking status drop-down box to "no show" and then save the booking, the system will automatically reduce the stay time to the set time slot increment.
Here you can see that the 15:00 booking did have a stay time of 60mins, however, when marked as a no show it reduced it to 30mins so that a new customer would be able to rebook for 15:30.
How can marking no-shows correctly in simpleERB help the restaurant?
By marking no show bookings correctly, it can help you in more ways than one.
Apart from being able to take another booking immediately in hopes to refill this table quickly as mentioned, simpleERB can also give you a report of what percentage of your customers no show.
This can give you the opportunity to monitor the figures and if you feel they are exceeding your normal average, you can then take appropriate actions and put steps in place to eradicate them.
You could also take another step in recording and marking individual bookings by creating a 'no show' quick info button here. When marking the booking status as a no-show you could also apply the quick info button at the same time when updating the booking. This 'no show' button would then be flagged again if the customer rebooks using the same details to allow you to monitor closely and take further precautions. This can also be surfaced in your customer export reports here.
Please see the link below on how simpleERB can assist you further with eradicating no shows.
http://help.simpleerb.com/en/articles/1629031-how-to-reduce-no-shows-in-your-resturant-to-near-zero
This article is also helpful to determine if you should begin charging no shows / cancellation fees in your restaurant.
http://help.simpleerb.com/en/articles/1646601-should-i-actually-charge-no-show-customers-a-deposit-or-cancellation-fee-the-maths
In your simpleERB reports, you can also see at a quick glance from a pie chart your Bookings vs. No Shows/Cancellations.
See our quick overview video here on more about simpleERB reports.
Don't lose out from a customer no show. Take advantage of keeping a waitlist on your peak days to refill the table quickly. See how to use simpleERB here to keep a waitlist record.