Help & Troubleshooting

Location & restaurant matching

The app didn't ask "Back at …?" at a restaurant I've saved

Auto-matching works against restaurants you have already saved, within roughly 75 m of the place's pin — the spot where you confirmed being there. If this is your first visit since installing, log it once — every visit after that will match. If it's a saved place that isn't matching:

• Make sure location permission is granted and location is enabled on the phone.
• Step away from deep indoors or a mall interior — a weak GPS fix can land outside the matching radius. "Pick a saved place" on the log-meal screen covers the rest, and confirming the place there while you're at the table tightens its pin for next time.
• A place saved with Not logging from here has no pin yet, so it can't match until you've confirmed being there once (via "Pick a saved place").
• Pin in the wrong spot — a large venue first logged from the far corner, say? Stand where you'd normally sit, open This City, tap the card's ⋮ menu and choose Set pin to current location.

It asked "Back at …?" but I'm somewhere else

Two places within 75 m of each other — a food hall, or a pin that drifted — can both qualify. Tap No: Premium subscribers get the nearby list next, everyone else the New place form, and "Pick a saved place" is there if you mis-tapped. If one place keeps winning wrongly, move its pin as above.

The suggested city name is wrong or missing

City names come from your device's built-in geocoder and can occasionally be stale or empty (especially with poor signal). Just type the city yourself — it's a plain text field, and the correction sticks with the restaurant.

I denied location permission — can I still use the app?

Yes. Everything works; you simply select restaurants manually instead of being auto-matched. To re-enable matching later: Settings → Apps → TableEncore → Permissions → Location → Allow only while using the app.

Find restaurants near me

The nearby list never shows up, or the button has a lock on it

"Find restaurants near me" is a Premium feature. Without the subscription the log-meal flow goes straight to the New place form, and the locked button opens the Premium sheet. With Premium, the list only runs after you've turned it on: the first time there's nothing saved nearby the app asks ("Find restaurants near you?"), and the answer is remembered. Tapped Not now? The "Find restaurants near me" button on the New place form brings the offer back, and About → Find restaurants near me is the switch.

The restaurant I'm in isn't on the list

• The list is what Apple Maps (iPhone) or Google Maps (Android) knows within about 150 m of your fix, nearest first, up to ten places. New, tiny or pop-up spots may simply not be there yet — tap Not listed and type the name; everything else works the same.
• It needs a data connection. Offline, the flow falls through to typing with a short note; "Find restaurants near me" on the form retries once you're back online.
• Deep indoors, a poor GPS fix can put you on the wrong block. Step towards a window or the door and tap "Find restaurants near me" again.

It asked "Already saved?" when I picked a name

That means a place with the same name is already in your journal without a pin — logged from home with "Not logging from here", most likely. Chains make this ambiguous, so the app asks instead of guessing: tap the saved one if this is it (it gets pinned here), or "A different …" to keep a second branch.

Logging & editing

I logged a dish at the wrong restaurant

Open History, find the visit, and edit or delete it. Then re-log the dishes at the right place. Nothing in your journal is locked.

A diner tag is misspelled and now autocompletes wrong

Edit the visits that use the misspelled tag (via History) to the correct spelling. Once no visit uses the old spelling, it stops being suggested.

The Here screen is empty at a restaurant I know I've been to

• Confirm the visit exists in History — if the log was saved under a manually created place, it may be a duplicate entry of the same restaurant.
• Check that you're within the matching radius; if not, open the restaurant from This City or History instead.

Menu & receipt scanning, photos

The scan buttons show a subscribe prompt

That's expected: menu & receipt scanning — like "Find restaurants near me" — are Premium subscriber features. Tapping a scan button without an active subscription shows the Premium sheet, which explains what's included and where to subscribe. If you do have Premium and still see the prompt, make sure you're signed into the store account that holds the subscription, then use Restore purchases on the About screen.

The scan missed dishes or got prices wrong

• Flatten the page and fill the frame — glare, crumples, and steep angles are the usual culprits. Thermal-paper fading also defeats receipt recognition.
• The receipt scan deliberately filters out totals, tax, and payment lines; if a real dish was filtered or misread, just untick/fix it in the review list — every kept item is a fully editable draft.
• On Android the automatic document scanner crops and deskews for you; on iPhone, take the photo as straight-on as you can (or pick a good shot from your gallery).
• Handwritten menus and non-Latin scripts aren't supported by the on-device recognizer.

Menu autocomplete isn't suggesting dishes

Autocomplete draws from the menu scanned for that restaurant — pick the restaurant first, then scan its menu once. Re-scanning updates the saved menu (new seasonal card? scan it again).

A dish photo disappeared

Photos live inside the app's own storage, so they survive updates but are removed together with their dish or visit — and by "Clear data" or uninstalling. If a photo is missing but the dish isn't, re-add it from your gallery via the dish editor.

Purchases & the free limit

I hit the 5-restaurant limit — what exactly is limited?

Only adding new restaurants. All your existing places keep working forever: you can view them, edit them, and log unlimited visits and dishes at them for free. The one-time Unlimited unlock removes the cap on new places.

My Unlimited unlock or Premium subscription didn't restore after reinstalling

• Make sure you're signed into the same store account that made the purchase (Google account on Android, Apple Account on iPhone).
• Open the app once while online so the store can report the purchase, or use Restore purchases on the About screen.
• Still missing? Check Google Play → Payments & subscriptions (or Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions on iPhone) to confirm the purchase, then email us (below) with the order number.

Do I need both Unlimited and Premium?

No — Premium includes Unlimited. If you subscribe to Premium you get unlimited restaurants, scanning, "Find restaurants near me", and Backup & sync; the one-time unlock is only for people who want unlimited restaurants without a subscription.

Premium Backup & sync

Sign-in fails or the backup won't start

• Confirm your Premium subscription is active (About → Backup & sync shows the status; check Google Play → Payments & subscriptions, or Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions on iPhone, if unsure).
• Backup needs a network connection. Try again on Wi-Fi.
• Google Drive: sign out and back in from the Backup & sync screen, choosing the Google account whose Drive should hold the backup.
• iCloud (iPhone): there is no sign-in inside the app — it uses the Apple Account on your iPhone. If the screen says iCloud is off for TableEncore, open Settings, sign in to iCloud, allow iCloud Drive for TableEncore, then tap Check again.
• A backup that won't upload can also mean your iCloud or Google Drive storage is full — the backup includes your dish photos.

Restore didn't bring back what I expected

• There is one backup slot: each backup overwrites the previous one, and restore brings back the journal exactly as it was at the last backup.
• Restore replaces the journal on the phone (after a confirmation) — anything logged after the backup was made is not merged in.
• Make sure you're using the same cloud and the same account the backup was made with — the same Apple Account for iCloud, or the same Google account for Drive. Backups live in that account's hidden app folder.
• On iPhone, check the iCloud / Google Drive switch at the top of the Backup & sync screen: a backup made to one is not visible from the other.

Backups, new phones & data

How do I move my journal to a new phone?

The smoothest path is Premium Backup & sync: back up on the old phone, install the app on the new one (your subscription restores through the same store account), use the same iCloud or Google account, and restore — photos included. Going from Android to iPhone or back, choose Google Drive on both phones, since iCloud exists only on iPhone; note that a subscription bought on one store doesn't carry over to the other. Without Premium, the journal travels via your device backup: enable Google Backup (with app data) on Android or iCloud Backup on iPhone, then restore from that backup when setting up the new one.

Will an app update erase my data?

No — normal updates preserve your journal. Data is only removed by uninstalling the app or clearing its storage.

Contact & support

If you've worked through the relevant section above and still need help:

• Re-read the User Guide for the screen you're on.
• Check the FAQ for how privacy, pricing, and platforms work.
• Email us at support@code-cowboys.com — include your device model and a short description of what you did and what happened.

Mailing address:
Code Cowboys LLC
8063 Challis Road #1047
Brighton, MI 48116
United States