Help & Troubleshooting
Quick fixes for common situations. If something here doesn't solve it, see contact & support at the bottom.
On this page
Location & restaurant matching
The app didn't recognize the restaurant I'm in
Auto-matching works against restaurants you have already saved, within roughly 75 m of where the place was first logged. 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. You can always pick the restaurant manually from the list.
- Large venues (food halls, hotel restaurants) may have been first saved from a different corner of the building; matching still works when the fix lands within the radius, and the manual picker covers the rest.
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.
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 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, and Backup & sync; the one-time unlock is only for people who want unlimited restaurants without a subscription.
Premium Backup & sync
Google 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 if unsure).
- Backup needs a network connection — it's the one feature that does. Try again on Wi-Fi.
- Sign out and back in from the Backup & sync screen, choosing the Google account whose Drive should hold the backup.
- A backup that won't upload can also mean your 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 signed into the same Google account the backup was made with; backups live in that account's hidden app folder.
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 Play), sign into the same Google account, and restore — photos included. 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.
Removing the app removes its data. If you're troubleshooting by reinstalling, make sure a Premium backup or device backup exists first — we have no copy to restore for you. That's the point of the privacy design, but it means the backup is in your hands.
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.