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Your Dashboard is the home page of EatNow. It gathers your restaurant’s key figures in one place so you can see, at a glance, how a day, a week or a season went — and how it compares to the period before.
EatNow performance dashboard showing the KPI cards

The Dashboard — your restaurant's key figures for the selected period.

This guide explains what each statistic means and, for the trickier ones, exactly how it is calculated and which reservations count towards it.
Some numbers can look surprising until you know the rules behind them (for example, why a cancelled booking still affects your no-show rate, or why average duration only counts finished meals). This page is here to remove that doubt.

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Before you read the numbers

A few controls at the top of the dashboard change every statistic below them. Always check these first.

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Date range and comparison

Pick a period from the date selector (Today, This week, Last month, a custom range…). Every figure is computed for that period. Most cards also show a comparison against another period. By default this is the period immediately before of the same length — for example, if you select Last week, each card compares it to the week before that. The comparison range is always shown next to the date selector so you know exactly what you are comparing against. You can change the comparison with the Compared to selector:
Services that run past midnight count towards the day they started on. A cover served at 00:30 during the service of the 12th is counted on the 12th, not the 13th — the same way your reservations list works.A day therefore rolls over at 6am, not at midnight. Between midnight and 6am, Today still means the service in progress, and the date picker spells the date out (for example Today · 12 Jul) so there is no ambiguity.
The small coloured badge on a card is the percentage change versus the comparison period:
For some metrics, higher is worse — no-shows, cancellations, lost payments and arrival delay. On those cards the colours are inverted: an increase shows red, a decrease shows green. The number always tells you the direction; the colour tells you whether that direction is good for you.

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By covers vs. by reservations

A switch lets you count either:
  • By covers — the number of guests (the sum of every party size).
  • By reservations — the number of bookings, regardless of party size.
A single booking for a table of 6 counts as 6 covers or 1 reservation depending on this switch.

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Shift and room filters

You can narrow the whole dashboard to a single shift (e.g. only Dinner) or a single room. Leave them on All to see the full picture.

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The three tabs

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A quick word on reservation statuses

Several metrics depend on a reservation’s status, so it helps to know what each one means.
Throughout this guide, “attended” means any reservation that was honoured — i.e. confirmed and not cancelled: Confirmed, Manually confirmed, Double confirmed, Showed up, Seated, Seated for drinks, Done. These are the bookings that represent real guests in your dining room.

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Restaurant performance

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Total covers

The total number of covers (or reservations) that were attended in the period. Cancellations and no-shows are not included — this is what you actually served.

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Cancellations

Two separate cards:
  • Cancelled by restaurant — bookings you cancelled.
  • Cancelled by user — bookings the guest cancelled.
These are inverted metrics: an increase is shown in red.

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Total no-shows

Covers from confirmed bookings whose guests never arrived (status No-show). Inverted metric.

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Occupancy rate

What it tells you: how full your restaurant was over the period. How it’s calculated:
  • Attended guests — the sum of party sizes for all attended reservations (Confirmed, Manually/Double confirmed, Showed up, Seated, Seated for drinks, Partially seated, Done).
  • Total capacity — your restaurant’s real capacity added up day by day across the period, based on your shifts and rooms (how many guests you can physically seat).
Your restaurant can seat 100 guests per day. Over a 5-day week, total capacity is 100 × 5 = 500.If you served 375 guests that week:
Because capacity is computed from your shifts and rooms, keeping those accurate keeps your occupancy rate accurate. Filtering by a single shift or room recalculates both the guests and the capacity for that selection.

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No-show rate

What it tells you: the share of expected guests who didn’t turn up. How it’s calculated:
The denominator is everyone who was expected — those who came plus those who didn’t. Pending requests, cancellations and rejected bookings are excluded, because they were never expected to show up.
In the period you had 200 attended covers and 10 no-show covers.
This is an inverted metric — a rising no-show rate is shown in red.

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Average group size

The average number of guests per attended booking, rounded to one decimal.

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Most used table

The table that hosted the most covers (or reservations) in the period.

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Average duration

The average time guests spend at the table.
  • Only reservations marked Done with a recorded departure time are counted (i.e. meals that actually finished and were closed out).
  • Duration is measured from the booking time to the moment the table was freed.
Average duration relies on your team marking tables as Seated and Done during service. If meals aren’t closed out, they don’t count — so a thin number here usually means the workflow isn’t being followed, not that meals were short.

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Average arrival delay

The average lateness of guests, in minutes.
  • Counted from reservations that were Seated or Done and have a recorded seating time.
  • Measured from the booking time to the actual seating time.
  • Guests who arrive early or on time count as 0 — early arrivals never make the delay negative.
This is an inverted metric — a longer delay is shown in red.

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Payments

If you have a payment integration active (Stripe, Payzone or CMI) and the right permission, a Payments section appears. Depending on whether your shifts take a deposit, you’ll see either: Revenue and captured amounts are normal metrics; refunded, voided and lost are inverted.

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Long-term performance

Below the headline cards, a set of charts shows how things evolve over time and how your bookings break down:

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Returning clients (repetition rate)

What it tells you: how loyal your guests are. Among the customers who dined with you during the selected period, it’s the share who had already dined with you before the period started.
This month, 120 different customers dined with you. Of those, 42 had already visited at least once before this month.
Because this looks before the selected period, it only makes sense with a start date — choosing a single open-ended range will show 0%.

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Exporting

You can download the dashboard as a PDF using the Download PDF button at the top. The export uses the same period, comparison, filters and by covers / by reservations setting you currently have on screen.

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FAQ

Why is my occupancy rate low even though service felt full? Occupancy compares guests against your whole configured capacity for the period. If you have more shifts or rooms configured than you actually ran, capacity is higher than reality and the rate looks low. Filter by the shift or room you actually used, or review your shift capacity settings. Why does average duration look empty or too short? Only meals marked Done with a recorded departure are counted. If your team doesn’t close tables out during service, those meals are skipped. A cancelled booking — does it hurt my no-show rate? No. Cancellations are excluded from the no-show rate entirely. Only confirmed guests who never came (status No-show) count. Why do some cards turn red when the number goes up? Those are metrics where higher is worse — no-shows, cancellations, lost payments and arrival delay. Their colours are inverted on purpose, so red always means “moving the wrong way”. Covers or reservations — which should I read? Use covers to reason about how many people you served (capacity, kitchen, staffing). Use reservations to reason about booking volume (how many parties you handled). The switch at the top changes every count-based card at once.