Run a party: reservations, confirmations, and email history

Today’s parties uses the venue’s local date. Check the time, room, guest count, payment, and planning indicators before the shift starts.

Use Reservations to find another date or reference. Open the matching reservation rather than creating a duplicate.

Confirm the adult contact, package, date, room, guests, extras, and notes. Staff see permitted birthday-name/age summaries; exact dates of birth are restricted to managers and owners.

A manager or owner opens Reservations, selects the party, and chooses Change guest count in Overview. Adjust Birthday celebrants and Other participating guests; both count toward the total. If the package or room is too small, change that first, then adjust the guest count.

After a deposit, the saved package and extra-guest rates stay in place, including the replacement package after a package change. Selected per-guest extras follow the new count. Review the total and credited payments, enter a reason, then Save changes. Change the time or room separately. This does not charge or refund anyone.

Review any saved draft invoice after changing the booking. Completed questionnaire answers stay in history. Unfinished questionnaire links close, so use Confirmation to send an updated form if needed. A guest-count edit does not automatically send an email.

Open the reservation’s Invoice tab, open the party invoice, and edit Actual guest count to bill the people who arrived. Review and save before sharing it. Resolve an active final-payment invoice or pending payment through its correction controls before editing.

In Packages & add-ons, open the package’s Rooms & planning section and enable gift tracking, then save and publish. Other packages do not show the gift checklist.

Open the reservation → Overview and check Gift purchased. Staff can then enter an optional Gift description and choose Save gift description. Include identifying details such as the item, box color, or expected delivery day so managers can match the delivery to the correct party.

The description is staff-only; it is not sent to the guest. It stays with the reservation if the purchase check is cleared or the package changes. If the replacement package has no gift tracking, the saved description remains visible as read-only history. Cancelled and archived reservations are also read-only.

Open Reservations → Enter booking. Choose the package by name, enter guests and the date, then choose Check times and an available room. Complete the contact details and save the booking. Staff can book inside the guest advance-notice window, but cannot use past times, closed hours, unavailable rooms, or exceed capacity. Saving the form does not charge a card.

Open the reservation’s Payments tab. A manager or owner can email a private payment link to the saved booking contact. Alternatively, complete a phone payment in the venue’s Stripe Dashboard or Square Virtual Terminal, then record the successful payment amount and reference in FECForge. Stripe may need to enable manual phone payments for your account first. Cash or a payment collected at the POS can also be recorded. Never put card numbers, expiry dates, or security codes in FECForge notes.

New staff-entered bookings automatically confirm when their required deposit is received, regardless of the guest auto-confirm toggle. A booking requiring no deposit confirms immediately. Sending a payment link, starting checkout, or attempting a declined payment does not confirm the booking. Existing pending staff requests are not changed retroactively. Configured planning emails still require a working email connection.

Managers open Settings → Confirmation & questions. Enable automatic guest confirmation only if it matches venue policy, then Save & Publish. It applies to new guest bookings, not a bulk change to old requests.

When online payment is required, automatic confirmation waits for provider-verified success. Declined, ambiguous, or unpaid required payments remain unconfirmed. A policy requiring no online payment can confirm immediately. No staff visual check of the provider screen is needed for verified success.

In Settings → Confirmation & questions select a package. Add its itinerary, sections/questions, acknowledgments, and code-of-conduct document as needed. Save & Publish applies it to future issued forms.

Choose Preview confirmation form. Work through the sample to check labels, required answers, policy acknowledgment, and signature. Closing the sample leaves the real reservation unchanged.

Review Guest planning confirmation. The guest receives a private invitation when the configured confirmation flow issues one. Keep that link private; a booking receipt alone is not the planning invitation.

Check the signed answers and any requested changes. A guest’s requested change is not automatically a reschedule or a new charge; a manager must review it. Previously issued forms retain their saved questions.

Today and Reservations show Awaiting questionnaire, Questionnaire complete, Guest changes pending, Questionnaire expired, or Questionnaire not sent. These describe the latest planning form, not email delivery or payment. Open the reservation’s Confirmation tab for the response and next steps.

Find the email type, recipient, time, attempt, and recorded result. The booking receipt, confirmed/planning invitation, planning receipt, and survey invitation are different messages.

Queued is waiting. Provider accepted means the mail provider accepted the handoff; it does not guarantee the inbox. Review failures or uncertain attempts before retrying.

Confirm the booking contact address without sharing private links in a group message. Check sender authorization and mail-provider logs when acceptance is recorded but no message is found.

A manager or owner can use an eligible email’s resend action. Read its result; blocked, stale, or ambiguous jobs may not be safe to resend. Do not repeatedly click while a handoff is uncertain.

Managers open Settings → Confirmation & questions and enter the one venue address for new-booking notifications, then Save & Publish. Blank keeps notifications off. The message distinguishes a pending request from a confirmed booking. It is not a guest marketing list.

Use the reservation’s cancellation action and required reason. Cancellation does not return money or erase the financial history.

Read each online payment and the Refund and dispute review section. Individual payments show amounts and dates; one total is not a complete payment history.

Choose Refund required or No refund required, enter the requested amount when applicable, and explain the reason. Choose Save review decision. This records a decision only; it never sends money.

Use the available provider payment link for the original account and mode. On Stripe, review the original payment and use its refund control only if authorized by your venue. A connected test-account view may require the correct platform account. Do not refund a different payment or guess an amount from a screenshot.

Wait for provider-verified refund/dispute information. A refund initiated at the provider is not the same as a completed refund recorded by FECForge. Ask the service administrator to reconcile an uncertain result.

Use Archive cancelled reservation with the required reason. Verified TEST records may be archived without a provider refund; the server decides from payment provenance, not a checkbox. Live or mixed/uncertain records retain stricter financial checks.

A restored record stays cancelled. Restoring visibility does not restore private payment, planning, or survey access and does not reclaim room capacity.