Approve or decline pending reservations

A reservation with status Pending is a request that still needs a yes or no from you: for example a large-group request from your booking widget, or a booking a colleague saved as Pending. The Pending approvals page collects them across all dates.

Where to find it

Host App › Pending approvals in the menu. The item only appears while at least one reservation is Pending; the red badge shows how many.

What it does

• Header: "… pending reservations need your attention." with key figures: Awaiting approval, Total covers and Next reservation.
• A month calendar marking the days with pending requests ("… pending"); tap a day to jump to it.
• The Pending queue, grouped by date (soonest first), showing time, guest, party size, experience, table ("No table assigned yet"), special requests, additional information and internal notes.
• Tap a request (Open to edit reservation) to open it in the reservation form in edit mode.

How to approve a request

1. Open the request from the Pending queue.
2. Check date, time, party size and table; change them if needed.
3. At the top, switch the status from Pending to Confirmed.
4. Decide whether to email the guest (see Good to know), then tap Save changes.

How to decline a request

1. Open the request.
2. Tap Not accepted.
3. In "Cannot accept this request" choose Yes, send a polite message or No, do not send email under "Notify the guest by email".
4. Tap Decline request. The booking is cancelled and leaves the pending queue.

Good to know

• Large-group requests from the widget: when you approve them, the guest automatically receives the reservation confirmation email (with their code and manage link), unless you explicitly switch the confirmation email off.
• Other pending bookings (for example saved as Pending by staff): the guest is only emailed when you tick Send confirmation email to guest while approving. It is off by default in edit mode.
• Declining with an email sends a "request not accepted" message rather than a normal cancellation email.
• You can also approve by changing the status to Confirmed in the reservation's details pane.
• Pending requests from all dates are listed, including past dates that were never handled.

Troubleshooting

Pending approvals is not in the menu There are no pending reservations at the moment. The item appears automatically when one arrives.

"No guest email is on file, so we cannot send a notification." The request has no email address. Call the guest instead.

The guest says they never got a confirmation after I approved For a normal pending booking the confirmation is only sent if Send confirmation email to guest was ticked. Open the reservation and use Re-send the confirmation email in its Communication window.

A request still shows after approving The status was not changed to Confirmed, or saving failed. Open it again and check the status at the top.