Cancel a reservation in the Host App

Cancelling frees the table and moves the booking to the Reservation bin. You decide each time whether the guest gets a cancellation email.

Where to find it

Open the reservation (tap it in any view) and either:

• tap Cancel in the header of the details pane, or
• tap the status button and choose Cancelled.

What it does

The Cancel Reservation dialog asks "Are you sure you want to cancel the reservation for …? This action cannot be undone."

• If the reservation has a guest email address, the dialog says "A cancellation email can be sent to …" and offers Cancel without email and Cancel with email.
• If there is no email address, it says so and offers Cancel reservation.
• Cancel (the grey button) closes the dialog and keeps the booking.

After confirming, the status becomes Cancelled, the tables are freed, and the booking disappears from the service views. It stays visible in the Reservation bin for that day.

How to cancel

1. Tap the reservation to open it.
2. Tap Cancel (or status › Cancelled).
3. Choose Cancel with email to notify the guest, or Cancel without email.

Good to know

• The email is sent in the reservation's language.
• Cancelling a Pending request with email sends the guest a "request not accepted" message rather than a normal cancellation. For pending requests you can also use Not accepted in the edit pane (see "Approve or decline pending reservations").
• A cancelled reservation can be brought back: open it from the Reservation bin and set the status back to Confirmed. Check the table, because it may have been given away in the meantime.
• When a guest cancels online, staff see a "… cancelled" item in Notifications. Cancellations made by staff do not create a notification.
• If Digital queuing is on, a table freed by a cancellation can be offered automatically to the next party in the queue.

Troubleshooting

There is no "Cancel with email" button The reservation has no guest email address. Add an email in the reservation details first if you want to notify the guest.

"Could not cancel reservation" The cancellation was not saved, usually because of a connection problem. Check the connection and try again.

A dialog says "Close the check in Lightspeed" The party is seated and their check is still open in Lightspeed. Close the check in the POS and the reservation follows automatically. Choose Do it anyway only if you really want to cancel here; the check then stays open in Lightspeed.

The guest says they did not receive the cancellation email Check the reservation's email log (Communication) or the Email delivery page for bounces, and check that the address is correct.

I cancelled by mistake Open the Reservation bin, select the booking, and change its status back to Confirmed.