How do I get notified when a new reservation comes in?

Go to Settings, then Notifications. Turn on an alert email, browser push, or a webhook, or all three. They're free on every plan and only fire for reservations booked through your own booking page, not ones you enter yourself.

Why didn't a guest get a confirmation email?

Confirmation email is best-effort: if it fails to send, the booking still goes through and the confirmation screen shows the guest everything the email would have (date, time, party size, manage link, calendar file). Check Settings, Restaurant for a valid business email if this keeps happening.

Can I change what times are offered online?

Yes, from Settings, Booking policy: slot interval, turn times by party size, booking window, same-day cutoff, and a pacing cap per slot all live there.

How do I add or remove a table?

From Floor, add a table with a name, seat range, and area (dining, bar, patio, private). The availability engine and the host stand both read from the same floor plan.

Help center

Setting up and running TableHelm

Short, concrete answers for the host stand: getting your booking page live, running tonight's service, protecting against no-shows, and getting notified the instant a reservation comes in.

Your booking page

Set your booking URL and details. Settings, Restaurant: name, address, cuisine, price range, phone, and your booking page slug (tablehelm.com/r/your-slug).
Draw your floor. Floor: add each table with a name, seat range, and area. This is the same floor the availability engine and the host stand both use.
Set your service periods. Settings, Service periods: lunch, dinner, brunch windows per day of the week.
Set your booking rules. Settings, Booking policy: slot interval, turn times by party size, how far ahead guests can book, and the same-day cutoff.
Share the link, or embed it. Settings, Booking page has your direct link and an embeddable snippet for your own website.

Closing for a holiday or private event? Add a date override in Settings, Closures, it blocks online booking for that date without touching your regular hours.

Tonight's service

The Dashboard is tonight's timeline: every reservation for the selected date, booked through completed. Tap a reservation to seat it, mark it complete, or mark a no-show. Walk-ins and the waitlist live on the same screen, so you never juggle two lists.

Add a walk-in from the Waitlist panel: name, party size, and a quoted wait. Mark it notified when the table is close, then seat it.
Take a phone bookingfrom Reservations, New reservation, this is for phone calls and anything the online page can't take, including a phone-booking override to seat outside your normal rules when you know the room can take it.
Covers and pacing update live at the top of the dashboard as the night fills in.

Guest book

Every reservation builds a guest record automatically: visit history, no-shows, tags, dietary notes, and seating preferences. Open Guests to search, tag a regular, or add a note before their next visit. Export the whole guest book to CSV any time from Guests, it's free on every plan and it's yours to keep.

No-show protection

A Full House (Pro) feature. Turn it on from Settings, No-show protection:

Connect your own Stripe account, this is where card holds and charges land, we never touch it.
Set your no-show fee per guest.
Online bookings now require a card hold, disclosed to the guest at booking.
If a party never shows, mark the reservation as a no-show from the dashboard and charge the fee in one click. 100% goes to your Stripe account.

Notifications

Get told the second an online reservation comes in, instead of finding out next time you open the dashboard. All three channels are free on every plan, configured from Settings, Notifications, and only fire for reservations booked through your own booking page, not ones you or your staff enter directly.

Email alert.Set an alert email (defaults to your login email if you leave it blank) and you'll get a plain email with the guest's name, party size, date, and time.
Push notification.Click "Enable push notifications on this device" in a supported browser (Android or desktop Chrome), accept the permission prompt, and you'll get a real system notification, no app to install. Enable it on more than one device (your phone and the host-stand tablet, say) and both get notified.
Webhook. For piping reservations into Zapier, Make, Pushover, ntfy, Telegram, or your own server: set a URL, TableHelm generates a signing secret automatically, and you can send a test event before relying on it. The exact payload, headers, and how to verify the signature are documented at tablehelm.com/webhooks.

None of these are guaranteed delivery: there's no retry queue, so a webhook endpoint that's down or a push subscription that's expired simply misses that one event. The reservation itself, and the guest's own confirmation, never depend on any of this.

Billing & plan

House (free) is unlimited reservations and guests for one location, forever, not a trial. Full House ($29/month flat) adds no-show protection, custom branding, and reports. Manage or cancel from Settings, Billing & plan, month to month, no setup fee. TableHelm never charges a per-cover or per-reservation fee on either plan.

Common questions

Quick answers

How do I get notified when a new reservation comes in?: Go to Settings, then Notifications. Turn on an alert email, browser push, or a webhook, or all three. They're free on every plan and only fire for reservations booked through your own booking page, not ones you enter yourself.
Why didn't a guest get a confirmation email?: Confirmation email is best-effort: if it fails to send, the booking still goes through and the confirmation screen shows the guest everything the email would have (date, time, party size, manage link, calendar file). Check Settings, Restaurant for a valid business email if this keeps happening.
Can I change what times are offered online?: Yes, from Settings, Booking policy: slot interval, turn times by party size, booking window, same-day cutoff, and a pacing cap per slot all live there.
How do I add or remove a table?: From Floor, add a table with a name, seat range, and area (dining, bar, patio, private). The availability engine and the host stand both read from the same floor plan.