Taking orders

The till, screen by screen

POS Terminal

POS Terminal is the till. The menu fills the left, grouped by category with a Search menu box above it, and the cart runs down the right under the heading Current Order.

Along the top are the three order types your role is allowed to take — Dine-In, Takeaway and Delivery — and, to the right, buttons for Held Orders, Open Tabs and any POS shortcuts you have switched on.

All Items shows everything; the Deals button shows your combos.

The green New Order button in the top bar of any screen brings you here.

A dine-in order

POS Terminal

Choose Dine-In and pick the table from the Table dropdown, which lists only free tables and shows how many each seats.

A table is required for a dine-in order — the software will not let you place one without it.

Placing the order marks the table Occupied, so the floor map and the next cashier both know it is in use.

The Customer box is optional here, for a name to call out or to attach the sale to a regular.

1. 1 Tap Dine-In.
2. 2 Choose the table.
3. 3 Tap the dishes on the left to build the order.
4. 4 Send it to the kitchen, or take the payment now.

A takeaway order

POS Terminal

Choose Takeaway. No table is needed, and the Customer name is optional.

This is the fastest path in the software: tap the items, tap Pay, take the money, hand over the receipt.

A delivery order

POS Terminal

Choose Delivery and the customer boxes become required: Customer name, Phone and Address.

Start typing a phone number or a name and the software offers the customers you already have — pick one and the rest fills itself in.

A new phone number is remembered automatically, so the second time that customer calls you only need the number.

There is a Delivery Charge box on the cart, which is added to the total after tax.

Whether you pick the rider now or later depends on Settings → Modules → Delivery Rider Assignment. On the recommended setting the rider is chosen when you complete the order from the Order Tab; on the classic setting a Rider dropdown appears here and is required.

Building the cart

POS Terminal

Tap a dish to add it. Tap it again to add another. An item with sizes asks you to choose one first.

Each line in the cart has plus and minus buttons for the quantity and a cross to remove it.

Clear empties the whole cart in one go.

The running totals sit under the cart: Subtotal, any Loyalty redemption, Order Discount, Delivery Charge, Tax, any dine-in service charge and then TOTAL.

Notes on a line

POS Terminal

Every cart line has a Notes box. Whatever you type there is printed on the kitchen ticket under that item.

Use it for "no onions", "extra spicy", "well done" — anything the cooks need to know about that one dish.

There is also a note for the whole order, which appears at the bottom of the ticket.

Discounts

POS Terminal

There are two kinds. A line discount sits on a single cart line, under Discount, and comes off that item only.

An Order Discount comes off the whole bill and is entered under the totals.

Both need the Apply Discount button permission. A role without it does not see the boxes at all.

Editing a price outright is a separate permission, Edit Item Price. With it, a cart line can be re-priced by hand and the line is marked as edited.

Tax is worked out after the discount, so the customer is taxed on what they actually pay.

An item the owner has put out of discounts (Settings → Tax & Discount) shows "No discount on this item" where its discount box would be, and a bill discount comes off only what is left after those items.

Hand over the discount permission carefully. It is the one button that can quietly reduce the day's takings.

Holding a cart

POS Terminal → Held Orders

Hold parks the cart without sending anything to the kitchen. Use it when a customer walks off to look at the menu again and there is somebody behind them.

Held Orders at the top opens the list of parked carts, with what is in each one, its total and how long ago it was parked. Resume brings one back onto the till exactly as it was.

Cancel this held order drops a single one. Cancel all held orders clears the lot — useful for a till that has collected stale carts.

A cancelled hold is recorded as a cancelled order rather than deleted, so the day still shows what was rung up and then dropped.

Nothing is cooked and no stock moves on a hold, so parking and dropping carts costs you nothing.

Sending an order to the kitchen

POS Terminal

With Settings → Modules → POS Order Tab switched on, the cart gains a Kitchen action alongside Pay. Sending to the kitchen places the order without taking any money.

The kitchen ticket prints and the order appears on the kitchen screen as Pending, and in the POS Order Tab where the cashier can see it.

This is the order-first, pay-later way of working, and it is what table service needs.

For a delivery on the recommended rider flow, the button explains itself: the order goes to the kitchen and the rider and the payment are picked from the Order Tab on completion.

The Order Tab

POS Terminal → Open Tabs

The Order Tab is the list of everything currently running: dine-in, takeaway and delivery orders that have been sent to the kitchen but not yet settled.

Each row shows the order number, the table or customer, what is on it, the total, and how many minutes the kitchen has had it — that ticking number is what a cashier watches.

The status reads Pending in Kitchen, then Preparing, then Ready as the kitchen bumps it along.

Each row offers Complete, an edit button described as "customer changed their mind", a button to print the customer bill, one to reprint the kitchen slip, and Cancel order.

A second tab lists today's Cancelled orders, so nothing disappears without trace.

Depending on Settings → Modules → Order Tab layout, the Tab is either a popup you open from its button, or a column that lives permanently beside the cart.

The temporary bill

POS Terminal → Open Tabs

With Settings → Modules → Temporary Bill (dine-in) switched on, every open dine-in order in the Order Tab gets a Temporary Bill button.

It prints a provisional slip headed TEMPORARY BILL and, under it, NOT A RECEIPT. It carries the same items and figures as the real receipt but has no payment section, and it never opens the cash drawer.

The waiter takes it to the table so the guests can check the bill before anybody pays.

If they ask for something off, the cashier types the discount when tapping Complete. The amount due drops there and then, and the discounted total is what prints on the final receipt and what is recorded as the sale.

Taking the payment

POS Terminal

Pay opens the payment window, headed Process Payment, showing the Total Amount Due.

Choose the Pay Method — Cash, Card or Bank Transfer. Card and Bank Transfer let you pick which account the money lands in, or leave it on the default account.

For cash there is a Quick row of common note values and an Exact button, and a change line updates as soon as you type what the customer handed over.

Once the sale is done, the confirmation says Payment Complete! and shows the Change to Return in large green figures, so nobody has to work it out.

Complete Payment finishes the sale: the order is marked completed, the money is posted to the account you chose, the table is freed and the receipt prints.

Taking the money needs the Take Payment / Complete Order button permission. Without it the till says the bill is settled at the counter.

Split payments

POS Terminal

Add Split Payment adds another payment line, so one bill can be settled in more than one way.

The window keeps a running Order Total and Total Paid so you can see when the bill is covered.

Each line records its own method and its own account, so the money lands in the right places.

The tax rate for the sale follows the first payment line's method.

Tips

POS Terminal → Open Tabs

When a table is settled you can enter the Tip the customer left. The screen says plainly what happens to it: it goes to the waiter on the shift report and is not counted as a sale.

The Tip box appears when you complete an order from the Order Tab, and only while Settings → Modules → Waiter Shifts is switched on — a tip has to belong to somebody, and the shift is what says who.

A tip is never added to the bill total, never counted as revenue and never posted to your accounts. Your sales figures stay exactly what the kitchen sold.

The tip appears on the waiter's shift report as theirs to keep, and is deliberately left out of the cash they have to hand over.

The loyalty box on the till

POS Terminal

With the loyalty program enabled, the cart gains a customer phone box. Type the number and the software finds the customer and shows their points and what those points are worth.

If the number is new, type a name and tap Register to add them on the spot.

Redeem opens a window where you enter how many points to use, up to the customer's balance, and shows the discount that will come off this bill.

If OTP verification is switched on, a code is sent to the customer's phone and has to be entered before the points can be used.

The shortcut buttons in the top bar

POS Terminal

Deliveries opens today's delivery orders in a popup — who is out and who has paid — and lets the cashier mark one Delivered, take the cash with Collect, or mark it Return, without leaving the till.

Rider Ledger shows each rider's Collected, Expenses and Net Cash for today, with a badge for the days waiting to be approved. Approving still happens on the full page.

Each button only appears if the module is switched on and the cashier's role has access to that section.

Recording an expense from the till

POS Terminal → Add Expense

Add Expense opens a small popup: pick a Category, type the Amount, choose whether it was Paid From cash, bank or card, add a Description and a Date, and tap Save Expense.

It is posted exactly like any other expense, and the till is never left.

Use it for rider fuel, kitchen gas, a run to the market — the small cash that otherwise never gets written down.

It only appears for a cashier whose role can add expenses, and needs Settings → Modules → POS Shortcut Buttons → Add Expense.

If there are no expense categories yet the popup says so. Create at least one under Expense Categories first.

Keyboard shortcuts

Settings → Shortcuts

A till driven from the keyboard is much faster than one driven by taps. Shortcuts are set under Settings → Shortcuts, where Enable keyboard shortcuts is the master switch.

The defaults are F1 to focus the menu search, F2 to hold the order, F3 to send to the kitchen, F4 to pay, F5 to show deals, F6 for held orders, F7 for a new order, F8 for the discount box, F9 for the customer and loyalty box, and F10 to print the last receipt.

In the cart, the up and down arrows move between lines, plus and minus change the quantity, and Delete removes the selected line.

The question mark opens the shortcut list on the till itself, and Escape closes any dialog.

Function keys and Escape keep working while the cashier is typing in a box. Single keys like plus, minus and the question mark only work when no text field is focused.

Click a key in Settings to record a new one. Some keys cannot be used at all because the browser keeps them for itself — F12, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W and friends — and those are refused rather than left to silently do nothing. There is a Test a key box to prove whether a key reaches the page.

Printing after the sale

POS Terminal

When a sale completes the till confirms it and offers Print Slips (Customer + Kitchen) and New Order.

If anything goes wrong with the printer the till tells you, and on the silent path an order that could not print is queued and comes out the moment the Print Agent is running again.

Any past order can be reprinted from the Orders screen — open it and use Print Slips.

Editing an order the customer changed

POS Terminal → Open Tabs

An order still open in the Order Tab can be edited. The edit button on the row loads it back onto the till, where you add or remove items exactly as you would build a new cart.

When you save, the totals and the tax are worked out again from scratch.

The kitchen only gets a slip listing what changed — what was added and what was removed — so the cooks do not re-fire the whole order.

If the edit touched no food at all, no kitchen slip is printed and the till says so.

After an edit, reprint the customer bill from the Order Tab so the table sees the corrected total.

Cancelling and voiding

Orders

Cancel order on an Order Tab row cancels the whole order and frees its table. It needs the Cancel Order button permission.

On the Orders screen, a single line of an order can be voided instead of cancelling the lot — that needs the Void Items permission. If the stock had already been deducted, voiding a line puts its share back.

Nothing is deleted. A cancelled order stays in the history with its status, which is exactly what you want when somebody asks what happened to order 41.