Changelog

When you remove a language from your storefront, WhatsMenu now copies any text that only existed in that language across to your remaining default — your category names, item names, descriptions, summaries, and company info stay intact.

Before: if you'd added a second language but only typed translations for some fields, deleting your original language could leave the storefront showing empty names or descriptions on the other side.

Now:

• Removing a language fills any blanks in your new default from the language you're about to drop.
• Translations you've already written in the surviving language are kept exactly as they are — nothing is overwritten.
• Adding a new language also seeds it from your current language more completely, so you start with a full catalog to translate from instead of empty fields.

Nothing to enable. Applies to every storefront from this update onwards.

If you run your storefront in more than one language, your Custom Item Fields — the merchant-defined extra fields per item (size, vehicle make, service type, special instructions) — now translate alongside everything else customers see.

In the Fields Editor. Open any item, click Open Fields Editor, and you'll see a row of language tabs above the field list — one per menu language you've enabled. Click a tab to switch which language slot every input reads from and writes into. Type the translated label, placeholder, and select-option values; switch back to confirm. Your previous-language values are preserved when you switch tabs.

Single-language stores see the editor exactly as before — no language tabs appear.

AI auto-translate covers them too. When you tick AI auto-translate to other menu languages on item save, the AI now fans the custom-field titles, placeholders, and select options out into every enabled menu language alongside the item's name, summary, description, variant group names, and add-on names. Same credit cost as the other translatable fields. Hand-edited translations are preserved unless you also tick Force translate all.

Existing fields keep working. Whatever language you'd typed your custom fields in before now lives in that language's slot — customers in other languages see your original text until you (or AI auto-translate) fill in their language. No customer-facing breakage; the storefront resolves to whichever language is configured.

What's not in scope (yet). Order-level custom fields configured under Settings > Checkout > Custom Fields stay single-language for now — that surface uses a separate editor and ships in its own slice. The per-item custom fields covered here are the ones on the Custom Fields card on each item's edit page.

Every AI feature in the panel — AI Enhance on items, Draft with AI on orders, the three AI Insight advisors (Catalog, Timing, Restock Forecast) — now renders output as the AI generates it. Tokens appear as they're written rather than landing all at once after a 5-25 second wait.

The total wait time is the same as before; what changed is what you see during the wait. Same trick the big consumer chat tools use — output looks like it's being typed for you in real time, so you can start reading and judging the result well before generation finishes.

Three small bonuses that come with the change:

• Bail-out saves credits. Close the AI Enhance modal (or click Generate again) while it's still streaming, and we cancel the request before the full charge lands. Useful when the first sentence is clearly off-brand and you want a fresh take.
• Long-form output feels alive. The Catalog Advisor digest emits 3 paragraphs of analysis — about 1500 tokens. Watching that build paragraph by paragraph beats watching a spinner for 15 seconds.
• Re-renders cleanly. During streaming you see plain text (so half-formed Markdown markers don't flicker). When generation finishes, the description re-renders with proper bold, lists, and links — same visual as before.

What you don't need to do: nothing. The change applies automatically. Same credit cost per generation. Cache hits (re-saving without changing the source) are still free and now arrive instantly as one chunk.

One thing that hasn't changed: the AI auto-translate background pass on item save still runs silently after your save — no UI to stream into. Refresh the item page a few seconds later to see translations.

Two new AI tools sit on every item's edit page next to the image upload field: Generate image with AI (creates a fresh image from your item's name and description) and Enhance photo with AI (cleans up the photo you already uploaded — background removal, lighting fix, sharper focus).

When to use which:

• You have a real photo → Use Enhance. Photoroom-grade cleanup of your own snap. The result still depicts your real product, so no customer-facing AI label is added.
• You don't have a photo yet → Use Generate. Fills the slot with an AI-rendered image based on the item name and description you've typed. The storefront shows a small "AI-generated" badge on the item card so customers know upfront.
• You want to try a different style on an AI image → Use Generate again. Each click opens the preview modal and lets you refine the prompt ("warmer lighting", "outdoor setting") and try again.

How it works:

Click the button → a preview modal opens with your current photo on the left (if any) and an empty slot on the right. Click Generate or Enhance → the AI processes for a few seconds → the result appears in the right slot. Like it? Click Use this image to save. Want a different angle? Click Try again — each attempt is a fresh AI run.

The preview-then-commit flow means an attempt you don't like never lands on your storefront. You see the result first, then decide.

What it costs:

5 credits per attempt. Each click on Generate or Enhance charges your credit balance, whether or not you save the result. The platform pays OpenAI / Photoroom for every generation; the credit covers that cost. The modal shows a running count: "Attempt 3 — 15 credits spent so far."

If you'd rather not spend platform credits, you can plug in your own OpenAI API key and (for enhancement) your own Photoroom API key in Settings → Apps → AI Kit. With either key on file, the calls route through your account, your provider bills you directly, and platform credits aren't deducted. See the BYOK update for details.

The customer-facing badge — and why it matters:

Items whose photo was created by Generate (not photographed) show a small "AI-generated" label in the corner of the item card on your storefront. This badge:

• Protects you from "not as described" customer disputes. Stripe and PayPal both accept this as a chargeback reason. A visible AI label on the storefront establishes that the photo is illustrative — Stripe's dispute reviewers see it and side with you.
• Sets customer expectations up front. Fewer surprises when the dish or product arrives = fewer disputes at the source.

Items enhanced from a real photo show NO badge. Enhancement just cleans up your phone snap — the product depicted is still your real item, so no disclosure is needed.

The badge appears on the catalog grid and on the item detail page. It's small, sits in the top-right corner of the image, and includes a tooltip on hover ("This image was generated by AI from the item description, not photographed.").

Tips for better results:

• Generate: write a clear, descriptive item name and a short description before clicking. The AI builds the image from what you've typed. "Beef burger with cheddar, lettuce, tomato on a brioche bun, side of fries" produces a sharper image than "Burger."
• Enhance: shoot from above on a plain surface for catalog-grid uses; a busy background is harder to clean up perfectly. The AI works best when your phone snap is already in focus and well-lit — Enhance polishes, it doesn't rescue.
• Try again is cheap. Each attempt costs 5 credits; if the first result misses the mark, refine the prompt and try once more. A soft cap of 10 attempts per modal session protects your balance from accidental click-spam.

What's NOT supported yet:

• Bulk Generate / Enhance for the whole catalog. Single-item only for now. Reach out via the Helpbot if this would unblock a catalog rebuild.
• Faces and people. OpenAI's image policy declines portrait-style outputs for safety reasons. Stick to product photography use cases (food, retail, services) — a salon merchant who wants "haircut model" images is better off using real photos with consent.

You can now plug in your own OpenAI API key so AI calls from your company route through your own OpenAI account directly. Your tokens get billed to OpenAI; platform credits aren't deducted for those calls.

Where to set it. Open Settings → Apps → AI Kit (or https://whatsmenu.page/getapp/aikit). A new Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) section sits at the top of the form. Paste your OpenAI key (the one that starts with sk-, created at platform.openai.com/api-keys), click Save Settings.

The key is encrypted at rest and the panel never displays it back to you — the field always renders blank after saving.

To replace your key. Paste the new value and save. It overwrites the previous one.

To remove your key. Tick Remove my stored OpenAI key on next save and click Save Settings. Platform credits resume on the next AI call. (Leaving the field blank without ticking the remove box keeps your current key — no accidental wipe.)

Cached results stay free. When another merchant on the platform has already run the same prompt, your call returns from cache instantly — same as before. Neither your OpenAI account nor platform credits are charged for cache hits. Only fresh generations bill your OpenAI account.

If your key gets rejected by OpenAI (wrong, expired, revoked) the AI feature you triggered surfaces a clear error pointing you back to AI Kit settings to update the key. There's no silent fallback to platform credits — your bill stays predictable.

Covered AI features. Every AI Kit surface that uses chat completions — AI Enhance, photo-to-description, Reply Assist, AI Insight advisors (Catalog, Timing, Restock), AI auto-translate. All of them honour your BYOK key automatically when one is on file.

If you picked Landscape or Portrait under Settings > Apps > Item image, your storefront catalog now shows item cards in that shape — instead of cropping every photo back to a square.

• A clothing-on-hanger shot stays tall.
• A long platter or banner-style image keeps its width.
• Square remains the default and is unchanged.

The shape applies to the whole storefront — every card uses the same aspect so the grid stays tidy. Items uploaded under an earlier setting are cropped (not stretched) into the new shape, so your catalog still looks uniform without re-uploading anything.

No setup needed. If you haven't picked an image size yet, your storefront keeps its current square layout.

A new Draft with AI button sits inside the WhatsApp Customer card on every order. Click it, and the AI writes a short, ready-to-send message right into the same textarea you'd use for a saved template — no copy/paste, no tab switching. You still pick when to send and what to send.

Reply Assist reads the order in front of you and picks the right tone:

• A heads-up that the order is being prepared, or that it's on the way
• An out-of-stock note asking the customer about a substitution
• A warm "thanks for ordering again" for returning customers
• A polite ETA-update for orders running long

You don't pick the scenario — the AI does it from the order data. Each draft costs 1 credit. Read the draft in the textarea, edit if you want, then click Send Whatsapp message as usual.

This is meaningfully different from the "AI" customer messaging you'll see on most other platforms. Most of them are mail-merge in disguise — pick a canned template, fill in {customer_name}, send. Reply Assist generates a new message every time, tuned to your specific order:

• The wording for a returning customer's substitution is different from a brand-new customer's first-order substitution.
• A 50-minute-old "preparing" order gets a more apologetic ETA tone than a 15-minute-old one.
• If you run your panel in Bahasa Malaysia or Chinese, your draft comes back in that language too — same quality of natural, polite copy.

The AI is strictly forbidden from inventing things it doesn't know: it won't claim an item is in stock when stock tracking says it isn't, won't quote prices the system didn't give it, won't promise specific delivery times. If you spot it making any of those up, that's a bug — let us know.

Nothing leaves your account until you send it. Reply Assist is a writing helper, not a chatbot. No autonomous sends, no inbox watching, no bulk broadcasts.

The button shows up automatically inside the WhatsApp Customer card for Owners, Staff, and Managers. Drivers don't see it — dispatching is their concern, customer messaging isn't. The WhatsApp Customer card must be turned on (Settings → Apps → SendStatus) — without it, there's no send button to go with the draft.

If your credits run low, an inline Top Up button appears instead of a draft. If your platform isn't set up for AI yet, your administrator can enable it in settings.

With Reply Assist, all three of this season's AI advisors are now live: Catalog Advisor, Timing Advisor, Restock Forecast, and Reply Assist. They're independent — use whichever one matches the question you have.

Upload an item photo, click one button, get a draft name, summary, and description in your panel language. Useful when you have a folder of product shots but no copy yet — or when "good chair, $30" is all the spreadsheet import left you with.

Where to find it. Open any item edit page. Once a main image is uploaded, Generate from image sits in the top-right corner of the Basic Information card — right next to the name, summary, and description fields it fills in. Click it.

What you'll see. A modal opens with your photo on the left and three suggested fields on the right — Name, Summary, Description. Click Insert into all three fields to fill the form. Nothing saves until you press the item's own Save button, so you can edit any of the three suggestions first.

Re-roll if it's off. Click Generate again for a fresh draft from the same photo. Each generation is 3 credits; the first cached response on the same photo is free if you re-open the modal later.

It only describes what it can see. The AI looks at ingredients, materials, finish, colours, distinguishing features — and writes catalog copy from that. It doesn't invent prices, brand names, or specs that aren't visible. Clear product-on-clean-background photos give noticeably better results than dim or cluttered ones.

Industry-aware framing. The AI pays attention to the right visual cues for your business:

• Food & beverage photos — ingredients, plating, portion size, packaging
• Retail photos — material, finish, colour, dimensions, distinguishing features
• Specialty / handmade photos — materials, craftsmanship details, finish, scale

Hidden when it wouldn't help. The button doesn't appear on service-industry stores (haircuts, lessons, repairs, consulting), where a photo of a storefront or staff portrait wouldn't produce useful catalog copy. Set your Business industry under Settings → General to a product industry and the button shows up.

Works alongside auto-translate. Generate first in the language you're editing in, then turn on AI auto-translate to other menu languages when you save. The same content fans out to every other configured menu language for the price of one auto-translate run.

If you run your storefront in more than one language, you've probably spent more evenings than you want re-translating items. Auto-translate is the fix: tick a checkbox on an item, save, and AI Kit fills in the name, summary, and description in every other language you've enabled — automatically, in the background.

Per-save action, not a persistent setting. The checkbox always starts unticked when you open an item. Tick it for this save if you want translations to fan out — every subsequent save where you leave it unticked is just a normal save with zero AI calls and zero credit spend. No surprise translations, no accidental re-overwrites.

Translates the whole item, not just the description. When you tick it, the AI fans these fields out to every other menu language:

• Item name, summary, description
• The custom title you set for the add-ons group (e.g. "Choose your sides")
• Variant group names (e.g. "Size", "Colour")
• Add-on names (e.g. "Extra cheese", "Side salad")

So the storefront stays fully consistent in every language — not just the long-form description but every label the customer sees on the item modal.

Two modes, on the same form. Tick the main checkbox and a sub-option appears: Force translate all (overwrite manual edits).

• Default mode — empty target-language fields get filled, fields that haven't been hand-edited stay in sync with the source on every save, and hand-edited target fields are preserved. To force a re-translate of a single manual edit, clear it and save again.
• Force mode — every save replaces every target-language field with a fresh AI translation, including hand-edited ones. Useful when a merchant trusts the AI more than past manual edits, or wants a bulk re-translate run (tick force, save, untick force).

The contract is honest about cost. Each translated field is 1 credit. Three menu languages (e.g. English / Bahasa Malaysia / Chinese), one full item save with all three fields needing two non-source translations each — that's 6 credits. But here's where it earns its keep: re-saving the same item without changing the source content costs zero, because the same source text already gave us the same translation, cached. Edits that don't touch the translatable fields = free.

Nothing slows down your save. The translation work happens after your save response is sent back, so the editor still feels instant. Refresh the item page a few seconds later to see the newly-filled languages.

This is different from the AI Enhance button sitting on the same form. AI Enhance rewrites your draft in one language (the panel language). Auto-translate copies your exact content into every other language. Both can run on the same item — write English with AI Enhance, then save with Auto-translate ticked, and Bahasa Malaysia + Chinese fill in to match.

Heads up if your menu is single-language. The checkbox doesn't appear unless your store has more than one enabled menu language. Add another language under Settings → General → Menu Languages first, and the checkbox shows up on every item edit page.

Three new AI-powered reports under Reports → AI Insights. Each one takes your existing sales data and tells you, in plain words, what's worth your attention this week:

• AI Catalog Advisor surfaces slow movers, items where revenue and volume disagree, and quiet hits with strong repeat customers. Period-over-period comparison shows you whether each bucket is growing or shrinking.
• AI Timing Advisor finds your busiest and quietest hours of the week, and flags time windows where activity is trending up or down compared to the prior month. Useful for staffing, off-peak promotions, and noticing when patterns shift.
• AI Restock Forecast predicts which stock-tracked items will run out in the next 14 days, sorted by urgency. Refreshed once a day in the background so you can plan your next purchase order before things hit zero.

Each advisor shows the raw numbers immediately when you open the page. To get the AI-written narrative — three short paragraphs explaining what stands out and what to do — click Generate weekly digest. That part costs 3 credits per generation; re-reads of the same week are free.

The reports adapt to your business. Set your industry under Settings → General → Business profile so the advice fits how your business actually works — whether you sell food, run a salon, manage a workshop, or anything else.

If the Generate button isn't there, the page tells you why: you might be a brand-new merchant without enough order history yet, or the restock forecast might be waiting for you to turn on stock tracking. Once those gates clear, the button appears.

No customer details ever leave your account. The AI only sees aggregated counts and item names — no phone numbers, no addresses, no personal data.

We rebuilt the way your storefront serves products to a customer's browser. On a typical mobile network, pages now appear roughly twice as fast as before:

• Product catalogue is served from a fresh cache that rebuilds the moment you edit an item, category, or page — so customers always see your latest menu without paying the cost of rebuilding it on every visit.
• The first carousel slide loads in parallel with the rest of the page. Previously the browser would only start fetching it after parsing the entire product list, which added noticeable delay on slow connections.
• Uploaded images go through a proper resize step so a 2,400-pixel cover photo gets served as a properly-sized 1,200-pixel image to the customer, not full resolution.

The effect is most visible on storefronts with many items and on slower mobile connections. Customers spend less time staring at a blank screen and more time on your menu.

No setup needed — the speedup applies to every storefront automatically.

Cashiers can now record an order without taking payment immediately, then collect payment when the customer is ready. Works for dine-in, takeaway, and delivery.

Two ways to finalize an order:

The cart now has two buttons:

• Pay now — opens the payment screen so the customer pays before they leave the counter or table. Same flow you've always had.
• Save & continue (new) — records the order, fires the kitchen ticket, and saves it for payment later. The customer hasn't paid yet, but the kitchen is already cooking.

Where saved orders live:

Saved orders show up in the Orders list with a Saved badge. When the customer is ready to pay, tap the Pay button on that row — the payment screen opens preloaded with the order. Once paid, the row flips to Paid.

Common flows this unlocks:

• Dine-in: customer sits down, orders, eats, and pays at the counter on the way out.
• Takeaway: customer orders at counter, browses the shop while food cooks, pays when called.
• Delivery (cash on delivery): cashier records a phone or walk-in delivery order. Driver collects payment at the door.

Cancelling a saved order:

Tap the trash icon next to a Saved row to cancel. The kitchen is notified so they stop preparing it. (You can't cancel a paid order from this list — that's a refund flow, separate.)

Reprinting a paid receipt:

Paid orders now stay on the orders list for the rest of the day with a Reprint button — useful if the customer asks for another copy of the receipt.

What's required:

If your Force Customer Information setting is on, the same fields that gate Pay now also gate Save & continue:

• Dine-in: optional (the table is the identifier).
• Takeaway: customer name + phone (so you can call them when food is ready).
• Delivery: address + phone (so the order is actually deliverable).

No setup needed beyond that.

A small round of POS hardening based on real-world feedback:

• Settings propagate faster. Changes to your POS settings (initial view, show-completed-orders, order-completed-once-paid) now take effect within minutes. Previously the cache held them for up to a day, which made it look like a setting toggle "didn't work."
• More resilient orders queue. If a table referenced by an old order has been deleted from your floor plan, the orders refresh skips it gracefully instead of breaking the list.
• Safer move-order action. Moving an active order between tables now goes through a protected POST request. No functional change for you — just better protection against cross-site request forgery.

No setup needed.

After last week's Tables-as-an-app launch, Reservations gets two changes that complete the multi-industry picture: it works without any resource at all, and the "Seated" status — a restaurant idiom that didn't fit anywhere else — gets renamed everywhere.

Simple booking mode (no Tables required):

If your business doesn't assign customers to a physical spot — consultants, coaches, lawyers, online therapists, freelancers, anyone whose "resource" is just their own time — you can now leave Settings → Apps → Tables off and Reservations adapts:

• The Floor Plan / Tables tab in the panel disappears.
• The confirm flow skips the resource picker entirely — one click confirms the booking with date/time only.
• Bookings don't carry a table assignment, no fake "Zoom" or "Slot 1" placeholder needed.

If you do have tables, chairs, rooms, vehicles or whatever you call them, enable Tables and the existing flow works exactly the same as before — picker included.

Date and time editable on confirm:

The confirm modal now shows the requested date and time as editable fields, pre-filled with what the customer asked for. You can adjust before confirming — "we're full at 7 p.m. but can fit you at 7:30" — and the customer notification reflects the new time. Works in both simple mode and tables mode.

"Seated" → "In session":

The status that means the customer is here, being served used to read as "Seated". That made sense for restaurants but read as odd for salons (a stylist's chair isn't really "seating"), clinics (a patient isn't "seated" — they're in consultation), and impossible for online consultations where there's no seat at all.

The new universal label is In session — natural for restaurants (a seated diner is in their dining session), salons (client in session), clinics (in consultation), coaches and online consultations (call in session). Translated across every supported language: pt "Em sessão", es "En sesión", fr "En session", de "In Sitzung", zh "进行中", ar "في جلسة", and the rest.

What changes:

• The third tab in the Reservations panel: "Seated" → "In session"
• Status badge on every reservation card and in the legacy reservation list
• Action button on confirmed reservations: "Seated" → "Start session"
• Empty-state copy: "Mark a confirmed reservation as in session when the customer arrives or the call begins."
• Toast messages after confirming a status change

Internally the database value stays as seated — only what you see changes — so historical reports, exports and any external integrations that read the status field continue to work unchanged.

Restaurants don't need to do anything:

The new wording reads naturally for restaurants too. Tables stays enabled, the picker still shows, the workflow is identical — only the word on the third tab and the action button changes.

A small polish pass on Reservations that finishes off the multi-industry shake-out: the customer booking form drops two fields that were always restaurant-y, the time picker snaps to 15-minute intervals, and booking duration is now something only you control.

Time picker snaps to 15-minute intervals

Customers no longer pick "7:23 PM" by mistake. The time field on the booking widget (both the embedded chat-bubble widget and the Spreader/Kaleo/Cosmika storefront modal) now offers 7:00, 7:15, 7:30, 7:45 only. Mobile shows a snap wheel; desktop steps in 15-minute increments. Restaurants book on quarter-hours, salon appointments come in 30/45/60 blocks, clinic slots are 15/30 — 15-minute snap fits everyone without a per-merchant setting.

"Number of Guests" → "Party size", and hidden in simple mode

The party-size field used to read "Number of Guests" / "Guests" — restaurant-flavoured wording that didn't fit salons, clinics or 1:1 consultations. Two changes:

• Renamed everywhere visible to "Party size" (the merchant card now shows "4 people" instead of "4 guests").
• Hidden on the customer booking form when Tables is off. Almost every simple-mode booking is for one person (consultant, lawyer, coach, single-room therapist, salon stylist) — asking is friction. The booking submits 1 silently. If a merchant wants party size for couples therapy or family clinic visits, they'll be asked when they enable Tables.

In Tables mode, the field still shows on the customer form (because party size genuinely matters for table-capacity matching) and is required.

Booking duration is merchant-only now

Previously the customer picked their booking duration from a 1-to-4-hour dropdown on the storefront modal. That made sense for restaurants (long lunch vs quick coffee) but was meaningless for salons, clinics and consultations where the duration is fixed by the service type. We've removed the field from the customer form universally.

Instead:

• Set a default in Settings → Apps → Reservations → "Default booking duration" (15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 1 hour, … up to 4 hours). The new default ships at 30 minutes — adjust to whatever your typical booking takes.
• Override per-booking in the confirm modal. When you confirm a pending reservation, the duration field is right next to date and time — pre-filled with your default, change it for atypical bookings ("this haircut is a colour, 90 min").

This is more accurate scheduling for everyone: the customer doesn't have to guess, and you're never overcommitted because someone picked "1 hour" for a 4-hour family dinner.

A note on WhatsApp confirmation templates

The notification class itself (the bit WhatsMenu controls) is industry-neutral — it just passes data fields to your campaign template. If you've configured a custom WhatsApp campaign in WhatsBox that says "Your table is confirmed for X guests" and your business doesn't have tables, you'll want to update the template to match. The data fields available include customer_name, reservation_date, reservation_time, number_of_guests, special_requests, company_name, etc. — use whatever fits your wording.

No action needed for restaurants

Set Tables on, leave Default duration at whatever fits (1.5–2 hours is common for dinner), and the customer form looks the same as before with cleaner time-picker behaviour. Everything else is identical to what shipped on 2026-05-13.

The reservation chat-bubble widget you embed on your own website was rewritten end-to-end. The biggest day-to-day win: customer phone numbers now save in international format automatically, so your WhatsApp and SMS notifications actually reach them.

Phone numbers always save in a format that works:

• A customer typing 0123 456 789 on a Malaysian merchant's site now saves as +60123456789 — directly usable for WhatsApp / SMS.
• Customers can also type their own international format (e.g. +44 7700 900123 for a UK number) and it's preserved.
• If a customer types something we can't recognize, they see a clear message asking them to include the country code, instead of the form silently saving a number you can't reach.
• Coverage spans ~70 countries (SE Asia, Latin America, EU, Mid-East, Africa, NA, Oceania) and uses your Default country setting to fill in missing country codes.

Cleaner form panel:

• Dropped the chat-message styling (the green-bubble look with the speech-bubble tail). It implied a back-and-forth conversation that never actually existed — your customers were filling a form, not chatting. The new design is a clean form panel that opens from the same floating bubble, with your logo and brand colors prominent in the header.
• Field labels are now translated into the customer's language — "Your name" / "Phone number" / "Date" / "Time" / "Guests" / "Special requests" all show in the panel's working language across 19 supported locales.
• Inputs have proper focus highlights in your brand color, the submit button shows a subtle "Sending…" state while the request is in flight, and the launcher bubble is slightly smaller (52 px) to match Intercom / Crisp / Tawk conventions.

Better error handling on submit:

• If the date or time you've configured rejects the booking (outside business hours, beyond your max-advance days, etc.), the customer sees the actual reason inline — they fix it and resubmit without reloading.
• If the network drops mid-submit, they get a clear "Network error, try again" message instead of a hung form.
• Network failures and validation errors no longer hide the form, so a single mistake doesn't make the customer start over.

Spam protection:

• Bots scraping the form are silently blocked via a hidden honeypot field — they think their submission worked, you never see fake bookings clutter your panel.
• Submission rate is capped at 10 per minute per IP, so a misbehaving script can't flood your reservations queue.

Reservation history listing:

• The /reservations/reservation page (linked from the panel as Reservation history) had a heavy bold-everywhere look. Toned down to match the rest of the panel — single emphasis on the customer name, lighter secondary lines, action buttons right-aligned to match Staff and Contacts.
• The "Seated" status icon is now a small armchair instead of an empty square (the previous icon name didn't exist in our icon set, so it never rendered).

No setup needed — open Settings > Apps > Reservation Widget to see the new design in action, and your existing embed code on your website continues to work without changes.

When a customer submits a reservation through your storefront or embedded widget, the panel now reacts in real time — no refresh needed.

What changed:

• Doorbell + on-screen toast — if you (or a staff member) have the panel open, you hear a short doorbell sound and see a toast with the customer name and reservation code the moment the request arrives. Same behaviour you already get for new orders.
• Top-bar bell badge — the new request lands in the bell dropdown in the top navigation, so you see it next time you load any page even if the panel was closed.
• Mobile vendor app push — if you use the WhatsMenu vendor app on your phone, you get a native push notification with the request details.

What didn't change:

The existing Twilio SMS and WhatsApp via WhatsBox notifications still fire when the Notify me when a new reservation is submitted setting is on. They are now an extra channel rather than the only way to find out.

No setup needed — these alerts are on by default for every merchant. If you don't want the doorbell sound, your browser tab controls work as expected.

We tightened up Reservations so you spend less time chasing bad requests and more time confirming the good ones.

New settings in Settings > Apps > Reservations:

• Enable customer-facing reservations on your storefront — controls whether visitors see the booking entry. The panel still works for staff phone bookings even when this is off.
• Maximum days in advance customers can book — leave blank for no limit, or cap at any number of days. The storefront date picker respects the limit automatically.
• Accept bookings outside business hours — off by default, so a customer cannot book a 3 a.m. slot when you are closed. Turn on for venues that handle private events outside posted hours.
• Notify me when a new reservation is submitted — pings your registered phone the moment a request lands, so you do not need to keep the panel open to spot it. Uses the same Twilio or WhatsApp channel as confirm/reject.

Smarter automatic rejections:

Three rules now reject obvious garbage before it reaches your panel — past dates, party sizes outside 1–50, and times outside your business hours (unless you allow off-hours). The customer sees a clear message explaining what to fix and can resubmit.

Mode-aware visibility:

• On a QR Ordering storefront, the customer-facing reservation entry is hidden — your customer is already at the table, so the booking form would be confusing. Staff still take reservations through the panel.
• On a showcase storefront (Disable Ordering), the Reserve / Book button is promoted as the primary call to action — exactly what salons, clinics, and consulting businesses need.

Reservation Widget date input also honours the max-advance setting now, so an embedded widget on your external site can't accept dates beyond your panel's horizon.

Open Settings > Apps > Reservations to try the new controls.

We rebuilt three of the daily-driver pages around Reservations with the same look and feel as the rest of your panel — clearer typography, consistent badges, and a more usable preview where it matters.

Reservations panel cards:

• Status badges now use distinct colors per state — pending (warning), confirmed (primary), seated (success), completed (neutral), late and no-show (danger) — so you can scan a long list and spot what needs attention at a glance.
• Each booking card was tightened up: customer name leads, contact info groups under labelled icons, and the table assignment shows as a chip next to the party size.
• Empty tabs ("No pending reservations", etc.) now include a one-line hint about what would normally appear there, instead of just a heading.

Cleaner panel header:

• The Widget, Contacts, and old "All reservations" buttons collapsed into a single More dropdown next to New reservation, so the toolbar stays tidy on small screens.
• "All reservations" was renamed to Reservation history to make its role clear — the panel is for today's work, the history page is for lookups, exports, and edits to past records.

Contacts list:

• Modals, dropdowns, and the Bulk action menu were rebuilt on the current Bootstrap 5 base, so they open and close reliably across browsers.
• Action buttons (Chat, Reservation, Edit, Delete) collapsed into compact icon buttons with tooltips, freeing up horizontal space for longer names and group tags.
• Status pill ("Subscribed" / "Not subscribed") and group tags now match the rest of the panel's badge style.

Web Widget creator:

• Form is split into three labelled sections — Branding, Content, and Appearance — so you can find a setting without scrolling the whole form.
• The two color pickers sit side by side instead of stacking vertically.
• The live widget preview and the embed-code snippet moved to a sticky right column, so the preview stays visible while you tweak settings on the left.

No behaviour changes — every existing setting still does exactly what it did before. Open Reservations, Contacts, or Settings > Apps > Reservation Widget to see the new layout.

If you run a QR Ordering storefront, your customer-facing reservation entry no longer disappears for everyone — it now appears for visitors who reach your storefront without scanning a table QR code.

The new rule:

• A customer who scans a table QR code (URL has ?tid=) is physically at a table — the Reserve button stays hidden because they're already there.
• A customer who visits your storefront URL directly — from search, a social link, or a saved bookmark — sees the Reserve button and can book a future visit, exactly like on a non-QR venue.

This unblocks QR-mode merchants who also want to take phone-style reservations from remote customers, without forcing them to choose between QR ordering and a public reservation flow.

No setup needed. The behaviour switches automatically based on whether the customer arrived via a table QR code. If you don't want any customer-facing reservations at all, the existing Settings > Apps > Reservations > Enable customer-facing reservations on your storefront toggle still controls that — turn it off and the button is hidden everywhere, just like before.