Now Book It was built in Perth and it shows. It claims more than eleven thousand venues across Australia and New Zealand, and the managers who use it tend to actually like it, which is not something you can say about much hospitality software. It charges one flat monthly fee rather than taking a slice of every cover, so a fully booked Saturday is money you keep. If Now Book It is running your Fridays right now, nothing below is an argument that you chose badly.
They run a deeper diary than we do
Start with the concession, because it is real. Now Book It is a booking specialist and its diary goes further than ours in places you would notice. Allvio holds tables, sections, capacity and table status and puts a booking on a table, but there is no drag and drop floor plan designer yet, so if you rebuild the room every other week you will feel that. Allvio does hold a waitlist and does take a deposit at the moment of booking. What it does not do yet is charge a no show or a late cancellation fee automatically. If that setting is what keeps your Fridays honest, weigh it properly before you move anything.
A table of ten, a deposit, and a register that never heard about it
Friday, ten people, a card taken for a deposit when the booking was made three weeks ago. The diary knows. The register does not, because the register has never heard of that booking. So the bill prints at full value, and a guest has to say, in front of nine people she invited, that part of this was already paid. Someone walks to the office, finds the booking on a laptop, then takes the deposit off by hand as a discount that gets explained again at cash up. Nobody did anything wrong. The two products simply have no reason to know the other one exists.
In Allvio the deposit is taken in the diary, and the diary and the register are looking at the same booking and the same guest, so the person settling the table is not hunting for proof of a payment your own business already took.
Then the set menu goes up on Thursday
The flat fee is honest about what it covers, and what it covers is bookings. Your menu is not in there. When the private room set menu goes up five dollars, you change it in the till, then your ordering page, then the website, then the printed sheet at the pass, then leave a note in the diary so the next booking is quoted right. A five minute job done five times, and the copy you forget is the one a customer reads back to you.
Cup Day has the same shape. New hours go into the diary so nobody books a closed lunch, then the till, then the ordering page, then Google. A regular gives you a new mobile number while she is paying, it goes into whichever screen is already open, and from that moment she is right in one place and wrong in the others. None of it is hard. It is just permanent.
Two signups, two Tuesday nights
Now Book It does not sell a till, so you are also choosing one, buying it, pairing it and teaching it to whoever is on the floor. That is a second signup, a second set of settings and a second training night. Nobody sells you the part where those two products agree with each other. You do that yourself, unpaid, after close.
One flat fee, and the bill sitting beside it
Allvio Complete is $399 per month ex GST for one location with every app switched on, and $299 per month for each extra location, with no per user and no per app charge. If you only want two or three apps, Build your own starts at $20 per month per app. Hardware is bought outright: $1,499 ex GST for the single station, $1,869 for the retail station and $2,499 for the restaurant station. The trial runs 30 days and does not ask for a card. Now Book It's tiers are quoted rather than published, so your own monthly number starts with a phone call, and whatever it turns out to be, a till subscription lands next to it every month for as long as you trade.
Now Book It | Allvio | |
|---|---|---|
What you are actually buying | A well regarded Australian bookings diary, guest list and messaging. No till, no ordering page, no roster | One Australian subscription covering the diary, the till, your ordering page, the guest record and the roster |
Getting it running | The diary is its own setup. A till is a separate purchase with its own settings and its own training night | One setup, one login, one thing for staff to learn |
Changing a price or a menu item | Menus are not in the diary, so a price rise is typed into the till, the ordering page and the website separately | One catalogue behind the till and the ordering page, so a price changes once |
Changing your trading hours | Diary hours updated so nobody books, then the till and the ordering page told separately | Trading hours and sessions set once |
Keeping a customer's details right | A number corrected in the diary stays in the diary. The till holds its own version of her | One contact record used by the diary, the till and the ordering page |
A deposit at the table | Taken at booking. The register has no way to see it, so it comes off the bill by hand | Deposit taken at booking against the same guest the register is looking at |
Working out what it will cost you | A flat fee with no per cover charge, but tiers are quoted, so you need the call first | Pricing published in Australian dollars, so you can do the sum tonight |
When it breaks mid service | One number for the diary, another for whoever supplied the till | One number for all of it |
Best fit | A venue with a settled till that wants the strongest Australian diary and no per cover fees | An owner who does not want to shop for, learn and pay for each piece separately |
The same subscription also covers invoicing, payroll and the books, but that is a footnote here, not the argument.
Seven o'clock, from her side of the door
She has come in every second Friday for two years. Tonight she is the booking of ten. The person greeting her sees a name and a party size, because that is what a diary is for. It does not show that she always takes the corner table, that she has spent thousands here, or that she quietly forgave a slow kitchen in June. You know all of it, and a diary that never meets your till was never going to carry it for you.
Stay with Now Book It if your till is already sorted
If the register is settled, the staff know it, and the diary is the only piece still causing grief, Now Book It is a serious answer to that problem, it is Australian, and its flat fee is one of the fairer offers going. A venue in that position should shortlist it.
The question was never which diary is better at being a diary. It is whether your Friday table of ten, your set menu price and your regular's phone number should each be entered twice, every time, forever.
This comparison reflects each product's general positioning as published by each vendor in August 2026. Features and pricing change: always check directly with each vendor before deciding.