Book from your menu and register

Qaema Book has three doors: book.qaema.ai on its own, your menu, and your register. This page is about the last two. Everything is one Book — turning it on from a second door links what you already have; nothing is duplicated.

The Reserve button on your menu

Open Links in the dashboard (/app/links) and, under Reserve a table, pick Qaema Book. Saving turns Book on for this venue if it was not on already, and republishes your menu, so the button is live on the public page straight away. A Booking settings link appears next to the option and takes you to /app/bookings. Turning Book on this way starts it on the Restaurant preset, which is the table shape — so Setup asks for sections and covers rather than for people; see Tables and large parties.

What a guest sees: the same Reserve a table button the other methods use, in the header and the footer of your menu. Tapping it opens your own booking page at book.qaema.ai/your-venue, in the language they were reading the menu in. From there it is the ordinary booking flow — party size, day, time, phone, a six-character code.

Two things to know:

• The Reserve button is hidden at the table, exactly as it is for the other Reserve methods — a guest sitting down with a QR code is not offered a booking.
• The Add to home screen shortcut is switched off for this method. A home-screen shortcut has to point inside your menu, and your booking page is on another address.

If you have not set your booking page up yet, do that first: the button will still be there, but a guest who taps it reaches a page that is not published. The card on Links says so until you publish.

Services from your menu

A venue with a menu does not need to retype what it already sells. In Setup (/app/bookings), under Services, open Import from menu: every item in your menu is listed under its section, with a duration to choose. Pick the minutes and press Import.

Importing copies the item’s name (both languages) and its price into a new service, once. After that the two are separate: editing the menu item later does not change the service, and editing the service does not change the menu. An item that has already been imported shows Imported instead of the button, so you cannot make the same service twice.

Nothing is moved. The item stays in your menu, keeps its place in its section, and does not count twice against your plan.

Bookings on the register

Registers connected to a venue with Book show a Bookings column, on the right of the register on a wide screen and behind a Bookings button on a narrow one. It lists the bookings around now — for each one the time, the guest’s name, the code, the services, the person or table, and a state badge: Unconfirmed, Confirmed, Arrived, In service or Done ✓. It refreshes itself about once a minute; you never reload anything. On a table venue each row also carries the party size, since a table booking is a party rather than a service.

Start order → on a row opens a new sale already carrying that booking: the cart’s header shows the code, the resource and which visit this is, and each booked service is on the order as an ordinary line marked Booked service. From there it is a normal order — add anything else, discount it, split it, take payment however you take payment. A service that is not yet activated in the register’s catalog is left off the order with a note naming it.

Two messages worth recognising:

• Reconnect this register to see bookings — the register was connected before bookings existed and its connection does not carry permission to read them. Reconnect it from the register’s setup screen and the column fills in. Nothing else about the register changes.
• Could not update the booking — mark it Done on Today — the payment went through and the sale is finished, but the register could not tell Book about it. The order is safe; just open Today (/app/reservations) and mark that booking Done yourself.

Walk-in with no booking? New sale at the bottom of the column starts an ordinary sale with no booking attached.

You can reach Setup from the register too: Settings → Bookings opens /app/bookings in the dashboard.

What paying does

When an order that carries a booking is paid in full, the register tells Book, and Book does two things: it marks the booking Done, and it sends the guest a receipt message in the same WhatsApp thread as their confirmation — their name, the total and their booking link. A booking that was already Done, or that had been cancelled, is left exactly as it is.

A booking is never a sale of its own. Nothing is charged when a guest books, no deposit is taken, and your Z report counts only what the register rang up.

Services as tiles on the register

Your services can also be sold directly, without a booking. They arrive at the register the same way every menu item does: as candidates in the catalog, under a Services section, each with its duration on the tile. Like every other tile, they only appear after you approve them in the register’s catalog screen — approving is what decides the tax category and puts them on sale.

Turning bookings off

Setup → Remove bookings stops guests booking. Before it does anything, download the CSV the card offers: every booking the venue ever took, with code, time, status, source, services, resource, guest name and phone. Then type your venue’s address to confirm.

After that, your booking page is unpublished, and Today and Setup stay readable — but not editable — for 90 days, with a banner saying when bookings were removed. Setup keeps a Turn bookings back on button for the whole 90 days. After 90 days both screens are gone.

The Reserve button on your menu is not changed for you: it still points at the booking page, which now answers as not published. If you want the button gone, go back to Links and pick another Reserve method, or None.

Your services and your team are never deleted, so turning bookings back on gives you your Setup as you left it.