There are a few ways you can add a booking with simpleERB. Customers can book online or staff can add telephone bookings and walk-ins using the bookings and grid views.
This article will show you how to make a telephone booking for a customer through simpleERB.
When you open simpleERB you will be greeted with the diary view (you can change this in settings to which view you would prefer under “default view”).
Making a booking on the booking view
When making a booking on the 'booking view' you are presented with time slots to select the customers preferred time they have requested. See below the image of the booking view.
Choose the time slot and select “make booking”.
You will then be taken to the individual booking page (IBP) to begin making the customers booking (see image below). Here you will type in the amount of covers the customer requires for the booking and according to the advance settings and table ranking settings, the system will then allocate a table to the booking.
You can then add in the customers contact details for the bookings. For all telephone bookings, you will be unable to confirm a booking without a contact number, unless you are taking a walkin. (see link here for how to make a walkin booking)
After adding their contact details, you can then add an email address if provided by the customer and verbally confirm with the customer if they consent to opting in to your marketing emails by selecting the opt box. This allows you to then pull in customer export report these customers to use for your email marketing promotions.
You also have the option to select the quick info buttons to mark against a customers booking so you can easily identify a certain specification for the customer; example gluten free. These quick info buttons once selected and save to a booking will then be pulled again when the customer rebooks with you in the future.
You can add on to the bookings a "booking offer" or "promotion" you have set up within the advanced settings.
There is also a section to add in manual notes against the customers booking for that specific date. These are also recorded for to the customers booking history.
Booking in a returning customer
If the customer you are booking in is a returning customer, when you type in the customers name the system you will find on the right hand side of the IBP will appear a possible customer match according to the name you have entered.
If the customer prompted is correct, you can then auto fill in the contact details by clicking the << buttons on each field.
If this isn't the customer you are booking, you can click the "not this customer?" button until the system correctly finds the customer match.
As you can see in the images below, the customer match for Kate has also provided all the customers booking history.
Making a booking on the grid view
Another way to add and manage bookings is via the Grid view. By using the Grid view, you are able to add the customers booking by you choosing a table, rather than the system predicting the best table according to your settings.
From the above screen shot, you can see that the view shows you all the table and a booking is marked out in yellow and spread over time slots according to their allocated "table turn time".
When booking a customer, see the below image that shows the booking buttons highlighted in green, that appear once you select the grid square pertaining to the customers time time slot and table you are looking to book.
You will be given two button options; a book and an add a walk in button. For further information on how to book using the Grid view, please visit this article.
To find out how to add a walkin, please see this article or check out our video here.