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 — on a wide screen, Waiting and Serving sit side by side with today’s activity underneath:
- Waiting — everybody in line, in the order they joined, with an estimated wait against each. The person at the top is next.
- Serving — everybody at the counter or in the chair right now. Somebody you have alerted but who has not reached you yet is still waiting.
- Today’s activity — everything already closed today: served, no-showed, cancelled and cleared.
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 waitlist opens a short form: which queue, the customer’s name, their 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 mobile number is optional. Without one they won’t get text or WhatsApp updates, so that person has to be called the old-fashioned way, out loud. A visit with no contact details on it can be flagged on the list, so your team can see who to look out for.
Working the list
Each row has its actions beside it. The same moves are available by dragging, below.
Call
On somebody waiting. Moves them to Serving once they are in front of you. Nothing is sent to them, and any message or call still waiting to go out to them is dropped. Telling somebody it is their turn is the alert’s job — see opening a single visit.
Cancel
On somebody waiting. Removes them — they changed their mind, or told you in person they are going. They are sent the cancellation message.
Mark served
On somebody being served. The visit moves to today’s activity, everybody behind them moves up a place, and the wait estimates recalculate.
No-show
On somebody being served. 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.
Needs the permission visits.serve (call and serve visits) and visits.cancel (cancel visits). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
Dragging between columns
You can also drag somebody from Waiting to Serving, from Serving to today’s activity, or straight from Waiting to today’s activity. On a tablet or phone, press and hold a row before dragging, so the list still scrolls normally. The buttons stay for anybody who would rather tap, and they are the way to do it from a keyboard.
Dragging somebody straight from Waiting to today’s activity marks them served without them ever being called — for the person who walked up and was dealt with before anybody pressed anything. No “your turn” message is sent, and because nobody recorded how long serving them took, the visit is left out of your average serve time rather than counted as zero.
Putting somebody back
Every move forward shows an Undo for five seconds. After that you can still drag somebody back: a served visit returns to Serving, or to Waiting if they were served straight from the waitlist, and somebody in Serving can go back to Waiting, where they keep the place they joined at. Moving somebody back sends them nothing.
No-show and cancelled are final. If you close the wrong person that way, add them again.
Clearing the waitlist
For the day you have to shut early or cannot get through everybody, Clear waitlist on this screen cancels everybody still waiting in one go. If you have a queue filter selected, it clears that queue only; on All queues it clears the whole location.
- Message the customers who are waiting — on by default. They are told the waitlist has closed for today. Each message counts towards your usage.
- Also clear the visits in Serving — off by default. Those people are not messaged, so mark anybody you did serve as served first.
- Stop new people joining until tomorrow — the join page says the waitlist has closed for today. A Joining is paused banner appears on this screen with a Reopen joining button, and the pause lifts by itself at the location’s midnight. Your team can still add walk-ins while it is on.
Cleared visits show as “cleared” in today’s activity. Clearing cannot be undone. Cleared visits are not counted as customer cancellations in analytics, because the customer did not give up — you closed. The waitlist can also be cleared automatically at closing time, under Location settingsWaitlist.
Clearing needs the permission visits.clear (clear the waitlist). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
Location managers have it by default too. Stopping new people joining also needs locations.update_open_close (update open/close).
Opening a single visit
Clicking a name opens that visit on its own: the details captured when they joined, a history of what happened and when, and every message sent to them with whether it was delivered. It keeps itself up to date while it is open.
The actions here go further than the list. For somebody waiting:
- Alert — sends the message that it is their turn and leaves them on the waitlist until they reach you. It goes out on whichever channel reaches them, falls back to another if the first does not land, and rings them too if phone calls are switched on and they have not seen it. Pressing it again replaces the previous alert rather than adding to it. The same bell is beside each waiting person on the location overview.
- Start serving — the same as Call on the list.
- Cancel, and Mark as fake for a visit nobody real is behind.
For somebody being served, Mark served and No-show. With a voice call pack, a Phone button rings somebody who left a mobile number, whether they are waiting or being served.
While the visit is still open you can also edit its details — a mistyped number, a party that grew, a note. 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
The screen is live, with a Live indicator showing how long ago it last updated. A second member of staff serving somebody from a tablet, a customer joining by QR code or a walk-in added on a phone all appear on the screen behind the counter without anybody refreshing. If two people move the same customer at the same moment, the second action finds the visit already moved on and leaves it where it is.