Getting started with Nice Work Reservations

Last updated: 11 September 2026 · Questions: hello@nicework.sg

This guide takes you from sign-up to your first live booking. Most venues are taking online bookings within an afternoon, and the sign-up itself takes about two minutes.

There are two addresses to know. Your team works in the book at reservations.nicework.sg/your-venue. Your guests book at book.nicework.sg/your-venue. Both use the booking address you choose at sign-up.

Contents

1. Before you start
2. Create your account
3. Your first screen
4. Set up your tables and sections
5. Service hours, turn times and booking policy
6. Branding, venue details and policies
7. Notifications and guest messaging
8. Card holds and deposits
9. Invite your team
10. Share your booking link
11. Make a test booking
12. Running service day to day
13. Moving from another system
14. Common questions

Before you start

Have these to hand and the whole setup goes quickly.

• A work email address for the owner account.
• Your venue name as guests know it.
• A booking address — the short name that goes on the end of both URLs, for example tanuki-raw. Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only. Choose carefully: it cannot be changed later.
• Your opening hours for bookings — the days and times you take reservations, not necessarily your full trading hours.
• A list of your tables and how many each seats (optional). A photo of your floor plan is enough; we can read it for you.
• A Stripe account (optional) if you want to take card holds or deposits. You can set one up during setup if you don't have one.
• Your logo (optional), as a PNG or JPG up to 2 MB.

Nothing else is needed. There is no card to enter, no contract and no trial period — Reservations is free, every feature, forever.

Create your account

Go to reservations.nicework.sg and choose Set up your venue. The sign-up has two short steps.

Step 1 — Create your account

Enter your name, your work email and a password of at least eight characters. This becomes the owner account for the venue. The owner is the only role that can connect payments, manage the team's managers, or delete the venue, so use an address you control.

Step 2 — Tell us about your venue

• Venue name — shown to guests on your booking page and in every email.
• Your booking address — the short name that ends both URLs. The form checks as you type whether it is available.
• Timezone and country — every booking time, opening hour and reminder is calculated in this timezone. The country sets how phone numbers are read and pre-fills your payment currency.
• Opening hours for bookings — toggle the days you take bookings and set an open and close time. The default is every day, 11:00 to 22:00. This becomes your first service period and you can refine it later.

Choose Create my venue and you are signed in and looking at your venue.

Already using Nice Work POS?

You already have an account and a venue. Sign in at reservations.nicework.sg/your-venue/login with your POS login. The book will show an Activate Reservations button; choose it and Reservations switches on for your venue. Your tables, sections and team come across as they are, with no re-entry.

Your first screen

After sign-up you land on the Tables page with a getting-started card at the top. It shows three things.

• Service hours — the hours you entered at sign-up. If none were saved, it says so and links to Settings, and your booking page stays closed until hours exist.
• Tables — a nudge to add your tables. This is not a blocker: with no tables defined, the system paces bookings by covers per time slot instead, and online booking works from day one.
• Your booking link — the address guests use, with a copy button.

Dismiss the card whenever you like. Everything on it lives in Settings and Tables permanently.

Set up your tables and sections

Open Tables in the left-hand navigation. This takes about ten minutes for a typical room.

Sections

Choose Add section and name each area of the venue, for example Main floor, Patio or Bar. Sections let you offer guests a choice of area when they book, close one area on a given date, and colour-code the book so hosts can see at a glance where a party is sitting.

Tables

Choose Add table, give it the name your team uses (12, Bar 3, Window), how many it seats, and which section it is in. Leave seats blank for a table with no cap.

Once tables exist, the system becomes table-aware: it knows which tables are free at a given time, assigns one to each booking, and warns a host who tries to double-book. Bookings from your website go onto real tables automatically.

Combinations

If you push tables together for larger parties, choose Add combination and pick the tables that join. The system then offers that combination to a party too big for any single table, and treats the joined tables as one while the party is seated.

Import from a photo or PDF

Rather than typing, choose Import from photo or PDF and upload a picture of your floor plan. The system reads the sections and tables from it, shows you a proposal to check and adjust, and then creates everything in one go. Tables that already exist are skipped, so it is safe to run more than once.

A note for POS venues

The Reservations table list is deliberately simple: names, seats and sections. Positioning tables on a floor-plan canvas is done in the POS. Both apps share the same tables, so a table added here appears in the POS ready to place, and a table placed in the POS is bookable here.

Service hours, turn times and booking policy

Open Settings. It is arranged as a hub of nine groups; open a group to see its cards. Most fields save through a single Save bar at the bottom of the screen, while things like adding a service period or a special date save immediately.

Service hours & turn times

• Service periods are your bookable shifts, for example Lunch, Monday to Saturday, 11:30 to 14:00 and Dinner, every day, 17:30 to 21:30. The one seeded at sign-up is here; edit it or add more. A service period can apply to one section only, and can run in fixed seatings mode (say, 18:00 and 20:30 only) rather than a continuous grid.
• Turn times control how long a table is held for a booking. Set a default, then add turn-time bands so a party of two turns faster than a party of eight.
• Special dates close the venue, or one section, on a given date, or give it different hours, or cap the number of covers. You can also leave a short note that guests see when they pick that date, for example Christmas Eve: set menu only.

If a venue has no service periods and no booking window at all, guests see Online booking isn't open yet instead of a time grid, and the book shows a warning to owners and managers. This is a safety net so a brand-new venue is never accidentally wide open around the clock.

Booking policy

• Booking window and interval — the earliest and latest bookable times each day and how far apart the offered slots are, for example every 15 minutes.
• Minimum lead time — how close to the time a guest can book online, for example no less than two hours ahead.
• Max covers per slot — the pacing cap. If four bookings of four have already been taken at 19:30 and the cap is 16, the next guest is offered 19:45 instead. Staff can override this with a reason; guests booking online cannot.
• Maximum party size — the largest group that can book online. Larger groups see a message asking them to contact the venue, with your phone number.
• Section booking — whether guests choose a section (off, optional or required), plus per-section caps, notes and whether tables in that section may be auto-combined.
• Experiences — named offers such as a tasting menu, brunch or an event night, each with its own valid days, date range and party-size limits. Guests choose one on the booking page, or you send them a direct link to it.

Branding, venue details and policies

In Settings → Branding & policies:

• Logo — appears on your booking page, in the booking widget and at the top of every guest email.
• Venue details — cuisine, address and a short hours note. These appear on your public booking page and in search results.
• Business info — a venue-wide booking notice (for example a temporary closure or a busy-period heads-up), dress code, parking, accepted payment methods and anything else guests should know before they arrive. Shown on the booking page and in the confirmation email.
• Cancellation policy and venue policies — free-text rules guests accept when they book. Keep them short and specific.

Notifications and guest messaging

Notifications

In Settings → Notifications, add the email addresses that should hear about new bookings, meaningful changes and cancellations. Most venues use a shared front-of-house inbox.

Guest messaging

In Settings → Guest messaging:

• Email customisation — change the subject line and opening lines of the confirmation and reminder emails. You can use placeholders such as {guest_name}, {venue_name}, {date}, {time} and {party_size}, and include links. A live preview shows the result.
• Reply-to address — replies to guest emails go here, so a guest who answers a confirmation reaches your team rather than a no-reply inbox.
• Reminders — a reminder email goes to every guest 24 hours before their booking. Nothing to switch on.
• Marketing automation — optional win-back, post-visit and welcome emails, each off until you enable it, with your own subject and message. Only guests who opted in to marketing when booking receive them.

Every email is sent under your venue's name, with your logo and your policies.

Card holds and deposits

Optional, and worth setting up if no-shows cost you. Only the owner can connect payments.

Connect Stripe

In Settings → Card holds & deposits, choose Connect Stripe. If you already have a Stripe account, sign in and authorise it. If not, choose to set one up; the form runs inside Nice Work and takes a few minutes. Money goes directly to your Stripe account. Nice Work takes no cut; Stripe's standard processing fees apply.

Choose a policy

• Require a card — off, for all online bookings, for parties above a size you set, or only during certain service periods.
• Card policy — a hold saves the guest's card at booking and charges a no-show fee only if they fail to arrive; a deposit charges an amount per guest up front.
• No-show fee and deposit amount per guest, in your payment currency.
• Late-cancel window — how many hours before the booking a guest can still cancel without being charged.

A section or an Experience can carry its own card rule that overrides the venue default, so you can, for example, require a deposit for the private room only.

Charging a no-show

When a guest with a saved card is marked as a no-show, a manager or owner can charge the fee from the booking on the book. Charges are never automatic.

Invite your team

In Settings → Team, enter a teammate's name, email and role, and choose Send invite. They receive an email to create their own login.

Managers can invite hosts and other managers, and promote a host to manager. Only the owner can change a manager's role. Deactivate anyone who leaves; their bookings and notes stay in the record.

Each teammate signs in at reservations.nicework.sg/your-venue/login with their email and password, or by requesting a one-time sign-in link by email. It is worth bookmarking that page on the host stand's tablet.

Share your booking link

Your guests book at book.nicework.sg/your-venue. Put that link everywhere a guest might look.

• Google Business Profile — add it as your reservations link so it appears on Search and Maps.
• Instagram and Facebook — in your bio and as the action button.
• Your website — as a Book a table button, or embed the booking form itself (below).
• Email signature and menus — anywhere you print or send.

Embed on your website

Paste this once where you want a Book a table button, replacing your-venue with your booking address:

<script src="https://book.nicework.sg/widget.js" data-slug="your-venue" async></script>

The button opens your booking page in a popup. To show the booking form directly in the page instead, add data-mode="iframe" to the script tag and place an empty <div data-nw-reserve></div> where the form should appear.

Reserve with Google

Bookings can also come straight from Google Search and Maps. The connection lives in Settings → Integrations → Google Reserve; email hello@nicework.sg and we will walk you through switching it on.

Ad tracking

If you run Google or Meta ads, you can see which campaigns produce bookings in Reports → Campaign performance: bookings, covers and no-show rate per campaign. There is no pixel or code to install on your booking page, but the report only knows which campaign a booking came from if the ad's link says so.

Add UTM parameters to the destination URL of each ad, for example:

https://book.nicework.sg/your-venue?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=valentines

In Google Ads, put the utm_… part in the campaign's Final URL suffix. In Meta Ads Manager, use the URL parameters field on the ad. The link can point at your booking page directly or at your own website; the booking widget carries the parameters through. A click that arrives from an ad without UTM parameters still shows in the report as Google (auto-tagged) or Meta (auto-tagged), so you can see that ads are working, but not which campaign. Add the parameters to get the breakdown.

Make a test booking

Before you go live, be your own guest.

1. Open book.nicework.sg/your-venue on your phone. Check the name, logo, hours and policies read the way you want.
2. Book a table for tomorrow using your own name, phone and email.
3. Check your inbox for the confirmation, and the notification inbox you set up for the venue copy.
4. Open Book in the staff app. The booking is on tomorrow's page. Choose Seat now, then Complete.
5. Back in the confirmation email, follow the manage your booking link and try changing the time, then cancelling. Both work without a login.

If you book again with the same phone or email on the same day, the booking page will point out that you already have a booking and ask whether you meant to add another. That is the duplicate guard doing its job, not an error.

Running service day to day

A short tour of the screens your team will use every shift.

The book

Book shows one day at a time, grouped by status, with covers totals in each band. Use the arrows or the date heading to move between days. Search finds a guest, an upcoming booking or a past visit. Each row has the actions a host needs: Seat now, Complete, No-show, Cancel and Edit.

Marking parties seated and completed matters. A table stays held until its booking is completed or its turn time runs out, so a party that leaves early and isn't completed can show a false conflict for the next booking.

Taking a booking by phone

Choose New booking. Start typing the guest's name or number and existing guests are suggested, so a regular's notes and preferences come with them. Pick the date, time and party size; the time picker shows the day's real seatings. Choose a table or let the system assign one.

Special requests are visible to the guest and go into their confirmation. Staff notes are internal and never shown to guests.

If the time is full or the table is taken, the form warns you. Staff can override with a reason, and the override is recorded. Guests booking online never see an override option.

The waitlist

Waitlist holds guests who wanted a time you couldn't offer. When a table frees up, choose Convert to booking and the form is pre-filled. When a booking is cancelled, guests on the waitlist for that time can be notified automatically.

Guests

Guests is your guest book. Every profile shows contact details, visit history, no-shows, tags, notes, dietary needs and allergens, and seating preferences. Guests are tagged VIP, Regular or Lapsed automatically based on their visits. If your venue runs Nice Work POS, a guest's spend history and what they usually order appear here too.

Reports

Reports (owners and managers) gives you reservations, customers and campaign performance for any date range, on screen and as a CSV you can open in a spreadsheet. Your data is yours to export at any time.

Moving from another system

If you are coming from another reservations system, work through this list before your first live shift.

In advance

• Export your upcoming bookings from the old system, as far ahead as it lets you.
• Export your guest list, if the old system allows it. Even names and phone numbers are useful.
• Set up your sections and tables here (or import them from a floor-plan photo).
• Set your service periods, default turn time and any special dates over the coming months.
• Add your notification emails.
• Re-enter upcoming bookings, starting with the next two weeks. Guest profiles are created as you go.
• Make a test booking end to end, as described above.
• Invite each teammate and have them sign in once before go-live.

On go-live day

• Stop taking new bookings in the old system.
• Walk the team through the book before service: seat, complete, no-show.
• Keep the old system open read-only for a week or two, for looking up past notes.

After go-live

• Update your booking link on Google, social media, your website and anywhere else it appears.
• Remove or redirect the old booking button on your website.

Common questions

Can I change my booking address later? No. It is part of every link and email you have ever sent. Choose it carefully at sign-up, and email us if you have a genuine need to change it.

Do I have to add tables? No. Without tables, bookings are paced by covers per time slot and everything else works. Add tables when you want table-aware availability and table assignment on the book.

Why does my booking page say online booking isn't open yet? The venue has no service periods and no booking window. Open Settings → Service hours & turn times and add one.

What is the difference between special requests and staff notes? Special requests come from or are shown to the guest. Staff notes are internal and never leave the team.

A guest wants a time that is full. Can we fit them in? Yes, if you decide to. Staff can override a pacing cap or a table conflict with a reason, and the override is recorded. Guests booking online cannot.

Can I delete a booking? No. Cancel it instead, so the record and the guest's history stay intact.

Does any of this cost money? No. Reservations is free forever, with no limits on bookings or covers. If you take card holds or deposits, Stripe charges its standard processing fee on money you collect; Nice Work takes nothing.

Who owns my guest data? You do. Export it as CSV at any time from Reports, and delete your account or your whole venue from Your account in Settings.

How do I get help? Email hello@nicework.sg. It reaches the people who built the product and run restaurants on it.