Reservation Check-in

Booking platforms tell you who reserved a table. They rarely tell your marketing tools who actually walked through the door. CaptiFi closes that gap: import or add your reservations, and when a guest with a matching email or phone number connects to your venue WiFi, their reservation is automatically marked as attended. Anyone who never shows up is resolved as a no-show.

Reservation Check-in is available on the Growth plan and above.

Switching it on

Reservation Check-in is an optional feature and is switched off by default, so you will not see it in your sidebar until you enable it:

1. In the dashboard, go to Integrations
2. Under Dashboard features, switch on Reservations

Reservations then appears in your sidebar. Switching it off later hides the page again; your reservation data is kept either way.

Getting your reservations in

There are three ways to add reservations:

1. Import your OpenTable export (recommended)

OpenTable lets you export your reservation list as a CSV file. CaptiFi understands that format directly:

1. Export your reservations from OpenTable as CSV
2. In the dashboard, go to Reservations and click Import CSV
3. Pick the venue, keep the source as OpenTable export, and upload the file

The import recognises the usual columns: confirmation number, guest name (or first and last name), email, phone, party size, date and time, and status. Reservation times are read in your venue's timezone, and phone numbers are converted to international format so they match your WiFi guest data.

Re-importing an updated export is safe: rows are matched on their confirmation number and updated in place, never duplicated. Statuses from OpenTable carry over too, so a reservation already marked as seated or done arrives as attended, and cancellations arrive as cancelled.

Other spreadsheets work as well. Choose Other spreadsheet as the source; the file just needs a date/time column plus at least one of name, email or phone.

2. Add reservations manually

Click Add reservation and fill in the guest details and the reservation time. A reservation needs at least a name, an email or a phone number.

3. OpenTable sync (coming later)

A direct OpenTable connection is planned. OpenTable only offers its API through a partner programme, and our application is in progress. The good news: everything you set up now carries over, because the data model is already built for it.

How automatic check-in works

Every 15 minutes CaptiFi compares your booked reservations against WiFi connections at the venue:

• A guest counts as attended when someone with the reservation's email or phone number connects to the venue WiFi between 30 minutes before the reservation time and 3 hours after it.
• A reservation with contact details that sees no matching connection in that window resolves to no-show once the window has passed.
• Reservations with only a name (no email or phone) are never resolved automatically. Use the Mark attended or Mark no-show actions on the row.

You can always override the automatic result manually; the check-in source column shows whether a reservation was resolved by WiFi presence, by the booking platform's own status, or by hand.

Late imports are fine. If you import yesterday's export today, CaptiFi still matches it against yesterday's WiFi connections (up to 7 days back) before marking anything as a no-show.

Using attendance in your marketing

• Attendance stats: the Reservations page shows booked, attended and no-show counts plus your attendance rate over the last 30 days.
• Review requests for real visitors only: on the Google Reviews settings there is a new toggle, Only ask guests with an attended reservation. With it on, review requests are held back unless the guest matched an attended reservation, so no-shows are never asked to review a meal they did not have.
• SMS follow-up: SMS automations can use the reservation attended trigger to message guests after a confirmed visit (requires SMS Marketing and guest SMS consent).

Privacy notes

Reservation data you import stays scoped to your venues, like all other guest data. Automatic check-in only ever links reservations to WiFi sign-ins at the same venue.