You comp a course or upgrade a room mid-service. Which record has to change?

A host bumps a four-top to the private room because the table they booked is still occupied. A server comps a dessert because the kitchen ran late. A regular orders an extra bottle that was never on the proposal. None of this is unusual. The harder part is deciding afterward which record is supposed to carry it, and which ones should be left exactly as they were.

There are three places a night-of change could go: the signed BEO, the invoice, and whatever gets said to the floor before service. They do different jobs. Sending the wrong change to the wrong one is how a manager cannot explain why an invoice does not match what the team remembers, or why a plan on file no longer describes the night that actually happened.

Does a comped course change the BEO?

No. Finalizing a document writes an immutable snapshot of the rendered content along with a hash of it, and that snapshot is stamped with who finalized it and when. A comp decided on the floor during service happens after that plan was already fixed, and later edits to a document produce a new version rather than reaching back to change what the original snapshot says. Nothing about a comp reopens that snapshot for billing changes.

Where does the comp actually get recorded?

On the invoice. Payments are append-only — a payment is a new row, never a rewrite of an old one — and an invoice's total is a generated column computed from its line items, so the total cannot drift from what the lines say. That much is fixed by the platform. What the comp line itself looks like, and whether it is entered as a discount, a credit, or a separate line, is a call each group makes on its own. The guarantee underneath it is narrower and more useful than any single convention: the total always matches its parts, and once a payment record exists, it stays on file rather than being edited in place.

What if the table gets upgraded to a bigger room?

That is a floor and seating decision, not a document change. Seat assignment happens through its own capacity-checked process tied to the event and its floorplan, separate from the finalized BEO. For the fuller boundary between a floorplan change and the signed document, a table added or moved two days out walks through it in more detail.

Does an added bottle need to touch anything but the invoice?

Just the invoice. A bottle ordered mid-meal is a billing entry, added to the total the same way a comp subtracts from it. The invoice's generated total keeps the arithmetic honest either way, whether the line adds or subtracts.

What actually needs a word at line-up?

A pre-shift huddle is meant to be short and to close with a clear, specific point the team carries onto the floor, which is exactly the shape a same-night change like a room swap needs. If the room swap means the private room is occupied for the rest of the night, that is the kind of detail a floor team is better off hearing before doors than finding out mid-service from someone at the host stand.

A short list that holds up on a busy night:

• Comp or added item — a billing entry, recorded in the invoice.
• Room or table change — seating moves on the floorplan; the signed BEO stays as it was signed.
• A same-night detail the floor needs before it happens again — said at line-up.

This is the same sorting question that comes up with almost every day-of change — deciding which of the three channels actually carries it. If this kind of moment keeps coming up on your floor, it is worth reading which channel carries each day-of change next, since the logic holds whether the trigger is a comp, a seating swap, or a guest detail that arrives late.

For a restaurant group running events and private dining across more than one room, private dining software for groups is where this separation between a finalized plan and a running invoice actually lives, each with its own record and its own history.

In short

A comp or an extra item is a billing entry on the invoice. A room or table change moves on the floorplan and does not touch the signed BEO. A same-night detail the floor needs goes to them directly, at line-up. None of the three substitutes for the others.