Switching to Slotora
Switching your restaurant's booking system: bookings and guests move across in five steps
Pick the system you use now. Follow the export steps the screen shows you for it. Upload the file it gives you. Check the columns Slotora suggests. Import. Your bookings and your guests are across, and if anything looks wrong, you undo it and go again.
The trial runs for 3 days, long enough to import your book and run a few services before paying.
The import, step by step
It runs in the browser and in the restaurant mode of Slotora's app. The list names OpenTable, ResDiary, SevenRooms, TheFork Manager, Access Collins, Tablein, resOS, Dojo Bookings and Quandoo; anything else comes in as a CSV or Excel file, a spreadsheet of your own included.
- 1
Pick the system you use now
The import screen asks first where your bookings live today. Choose your system from the list, or "another file" for a spreadsheet or anything not on it.
- 2
Follow its export steps on screen
The screen shows that system's own way out: where the export is in its menus, what to press, and whether the file comes straight away or by e-mail. Do it for your bookings, your guest list, or both.
- 3
Upload the file
CSV or Excel, as the system gives it to you; Dojo Bookings' ZIP goes in just as it arrives. A large book can go in as several files.
- 4
Check the columns Slotora suggests
From the header row, the screen suggests which column is the date, the time, the party size, the name, the phone and the notes. You confirm each match or change it. A marketing-consent column is named and left out. The one exception is OpenTable's own Marketing Opt-In: it comes across only if you tick that these guests agreed to receive marketing from your restaurant.
- 5
Look at the preview, then import
The preview shows what will come in before anything is saved. Bookings still to come arrive confirmed and waiting for a table; past ones become each guest's visit history, with their no-shows and cancellations.
Why it is safe to try
- Nothing is doubled. Import the same file twice and the second time adds nothing.
- Guests already on file are matched by e-mail or phone, so a regular keeps one card. What your team has written on it is never overwritten; the import only fills what is empty.
- It can be undone. Each import has its own entry in the history, and undoing it removes what it brought in, never a booking someone has changed since.
- Nobody arrives subscribed to your marketing just for being in an old system's file. The only consent that comes across is OpenTable's own Marketing Opt-In, and only with your tick; each card records the export it came from, and undoing the import takes it back.
Then, the rest of the move
- 1
Draw your rooms and set your rules
Each dining room, terrace or bar gets its own plan, drawn to scale, with the tables where they stand and the combinations you push together. Then lunch and dinner, how long a table is held, how many covers the kitchen can take in each quarter hour and the largest party you take online.
- 2
Seat the bookings you imported
They are waiting without a table, so you place each one on the plan and see straight away where an evening is tight.
- 3
Pick a changeover day and swap the links
From a quiet day, every new booking goes into Slotora only, online, by phone or at the door. Replace the old booking link wherever you listed it with your own booking page, and print its QR card for the menu and the door. Guests book without creating an account, and you pay no commission on what it brings in.
- 4
Brief the team
Send each person their own login from the Team screen and open Slotora on every tablet and phone at the door and on the floor: they all show the same evening. Slotora's app for iPad, Android tablets and phones runs the same host stand in its restaurant mode. The pre-service briefing gives the team tonight's large parties and first visits before doors open, and every visit, no-show and late cancellation from then on goes on the guest's card, beside the allergy or anniversary your team adds.
Where you are starting from
Another booking system
Export your bookings and your guest list while you still have access, and check your notice period before you cancel. Leaving Quandoo? Its export closes on 31 December 2026: what to do before then and how to export your data.
A spreadsheet
You already have the file. Give it a header row naming the date, time, party size, name and phone, delete the rows you do not need, and import it as "another file".
A paper diary
Paper has no export, so the weeks ahead are typed in at the host stand, the way you take a booking by phone. Keep the book on the stand for the first few services. From the paper diary to online bookings.
Two things people forget
- The booking link on your Google profile. Guests use it more than your website, and an old link there sends them to a page that no longer works. How to change the booking link on Google.
- The guest list you exported is personal data. Keep it where only your team can open it, keep what you need to serve those guests, and delete the rest.
Not sure what your current system can export? Write to hello@slotora.iowith the system's name and we will tell you before you commit to anything, or go through the import with you.