Skip to main content
EatNow collects before the meal (deposits, prepayments, card imprints). NowOS collects during and after (the bill). The integration bridges the two so your guest never pays twice, and your numbers stay right.
This page assumes you’ve already set up payments on your shifts. See Deposits and Prepayment.

​
Deposits and prepayments

​
What the floor sees

When a reservation arrives with an amount already collected by EatNow, the till shows it in two places:
  • In the Reservations panel — a prepaid badge on the guest’s line.
  • On the bill — a green prepaid banner, with the amount.

​
How to apply it

1

Open the order's payment sheet

On the till, cash out the table as usual.
2

Tap Apply on the green banner

The prepaid balance is deducted from the amount due. It’s recorded as a payment method in its own right.
3

Take the rest as usual

Cash, card, as normal.
Applying the deposit is not automatic: it’s a gesture your team makes on the payment sheet. If the server forgets, the guest pays the full bill even though they already paid a deposit. Train your floor to spot the green banner.
Prepaid money never went through your cash drawer, so NowOS keeps it separate in the close-of-day totals — which keeps your drawer count accurate.

​
What EatNow records back

When the bill is cashed on the till, EatNow receives the breakdown of tenders used and records:
  • The amount actually collected at the table, i.e. the bill minus the deposit EatNow had already booked. No double counting.
  • The order total, for display and statistics.
Those amounts automatically feed the customer’s average spend and total spent. That’s what finally makes your CRM accurate: until now, EatNow only knew about the money it had collected itself.

​
Card imprints

The card imprint (the pre-authorisation held on the guest’s card to guarantee they show up) stays entirely managed by EatNow. NowOS only displays it as an informational badge for the floor.
The till never charges and never releases an imprint. It tells EatNow what happened on the floor, and EatNow acts.
“Released” here means EatNow sent the release to your payment provider. How long the amount stays visible on the guest’s account after that is up to their bank — count on a few days, sometimes more than a week. Warn guests upfront: see Customer friction in practice.

​
The automatic behaviour

Why do nothing on an order voided mid-meal? Because it’s ambiguous: it could be a goodwill gesture (the meal is on the house) or a guest who walked out. Auto-releasing would lose a legitimate charge; auto-charging would bill a guest you comped. So EatNow leaves the imprint alone and lets you decide.

​
Forcing from EatNow

If you mark a no-show from EatNow while the guest is seated on the till, EatNow warns you (the Open bill on the NowOS POS dialog) and then — if you confirm — asks explicitly whether to charge or release the imprint. See Day to day with NowOS.

​
Extras

Extras (a bottle of champagne, a birthday cake… sold online at booking time) are excluded from the prepaid amount sent to the till. That’s deliberate: an extra is a product already sold and delivered separately, not a credit to deduct from the meal’s bill. It stays visible in EatNow, on the reservation. See Extras.

​
Checking a payment

To see exactly what happened on a reservation:
  1. Open the reservation in EatNow.
  2. History tab.
  3. Look for the Exchange with NowOS line for the payment.
You’ll find the bill total, the currency, the tenders used, and the amount of deposit consumed.

​
Frequently asked

Check that the payment is at status Paid in EatNow (payments tab of the reservation). A pending payment isn’t sent to the till. Also check that the till’s order is actually linked to the reservation — a party mistakenly seated as a walk-in has no deposit attached.
Yes. As soon as the till links the order to the reservation, the deposit becomes applicable on that bill.
Every partial payment comes back to EatNow and adds to the total. EatNow never shrinks a total already recorded: the reservation’s final amount is the sum of all payments.
Check the reservation’s History tab: you should see an Exchange with NowOS line about the imprint. If it failed, the problem is on the payment provider’s side (expired card, authorisation too old), not the integration. You can release the imprint manually from the reservation.
The amount is only attached to a customer if the reservation is linked to a customer file. An anonymous walk-in seated on the till has no file: its bill counts towards the shift’s revenue, but not towards any particular customer’s average.