In an effort to get to 12 dines by 12/31 am thinking of going to 2 different Buena Beef's here in the Chicago area. Will idine allow you to get credit for two dines from the same chain/different locations on the same day?

Check for restaurant restrictions, but most restaurants allow multiple dines at the same location/same day. I've paid for dinner, then purchased gift cards from the same restaurant (using same credit card) and not had any problems.

If there's no restrictions (such as once per month) and you haven't reached the monthly limit (of $600 or $1,000), you can have multiple dines at the same location!

Important note: Vary your amounts to different mile/point amounts! (Allow one "dine" to give you 102 miles and one "dine" to give you 104 miles!) The reason is that the idine computer is programmed to notice 2 "dines" from the same restaurant on the same day for the same amount! You will (eventually) get credit, but you may have to send in your receipts to prove that they were different "dines" and not just that the server ran your card twice because "the machine didn't work".

What I do is if my bill is $51, I ask the server to run 2 charges - one for $25 and one for $26! Thus, I get 2 dines!

I am most concerned about these counting as separate visits to count towards the 12 I need to maintain elite status.

The location is what matters. The chain is irrelevant.

iDine/RN treats every location independently. It's irrelevant to them whether the other location is in the same chain or not. The only confusion might come if they were really close, like both in the same zip code (since they first tend to look restaurants up by ZIP code).

Even when restaurants in a chain each have 1/month limits, you can get credit for one dine per location in a month, and thus if you have 3 locations of the chain near you, credit for 3 dines in the chain a month.

Yes they do count each as a separate "dine"!

Before I got smart (and varied the amounts), I had a $60 bill. I asked the server to run it through as 4 charges of $15 each. 2 of the charges posted automatically, but the other 2 did not. But when I sent the receipts in, I got credit for all "dines"!

So my 1 visit amounted to 4 "dines"!

If the detailed restaurant information doesn't prohibit it specifically, it is OK. When Lady JDiver decided this miles thing was actually worth emulating, we decided to get status fast - at one place, we had drinks for dine 1, entrees for dine 2, whoops, we decided we wanted dessert for dine 3, and on the way out we bought a six pack of ale and a tee shirt for dine 4. Another day, we ate at two different Daphne's locations - only one dine per month or such nonsense, but that was per location, not for the chain - and the coffee and dessert place next to Daphne's #1 was also iDine.

As others have mentioned, keep the totals different, and of course you can always use different credit cards (though I prefer we use our Hilton HHonors AMEX so we can earn 5 + 5 miles and 5 points per dollar spent, better yet if we can make a reservation with Open Table and get OT points as well.)

There are rare situations in which a single fanchisee has more than one location and only one credit card processing account. In that case, to idine it would look like two dines in one location. IME, it is possible to talk idine into treating them correctly for qualifying and bonus purposes, if the bonus/qualifying restricts to one per day/location.
Though, caveat, I have encountered only two situations of more than one location sharing a single credit card account. And only one of those involved a chain. (The other was adjacent restaurants sharing a kitchen and a cash register.)

I ran across that in the food concourse of Grand Central Station years ago, back in the days when the old iDine was 1x/month for all joints. Two restaurants had separate, distinct listings, sharing a long counter; the single cash register only printed out one name on the receipt, so the other was a "phantom" member. Luckily, I figured that out before going back a second time that month.