Two slips, two jobs
Settings → Thermal Receipt
Every order can produce two pieces of paper. The Kitchen slip tells the cooks what to make — items, sizes, quantities and any note, with no prices on it at all. The Customer slip is the receipt with the money on it.
The whole Thermal Receipt tab exists to answer two questions: when do those two slips come out, and which machine do they come out of.
Printing Mode answers the first. How slips are printed answers the second.
Printing Mode
1-Tap Print (recommended)
Both slips print together, with no preview.
Classic Preview
Each slip opens in its own tab first.
How slips are printed
Printing Mode: the two choices
Settings → Thermal Receipt
1-Tap Print (recommended) is the setting the software ships with. One tap prints the Customer and Kitchen slips together — no new tab, no preview.
Classic Preview gives you separate Customer and Kitchen buttons, and each slip opens in a new browser tab with a print preview first.
Choose 1-Tap Print for a busy counter, where the cashier should never have to think about paper. Choose Classic Preview when the two slips must come out separately, or when somebody wants to read the bill on screen before it is printed.
You can switch between the two at any time. Nothing about your orders changes — only what happens when somebody taps Print.
1-Tap Print, step by step
This is what a takeaway sale looks like on a till set to 1-Tap Print.
A takeaway sale with 1-Tap Print
- The cashier rings up 2 Zinger Burgers and a Cola and taps Pay.
- The customer hands over cash, the cashier taps Complete Payment.
- Both slips are sent to print in the same moment — the kitchen ticket with the two burgers and the cola, and the customer receipt with the total and the change.
- No tab opens and no preview appears. The cashier is already free to serve the next person.
- If the two slips are going to two different printers, the kitchen ticket comes off the kitchen machine and the receipt off the counter machine.
Classic Preview, step by step
The same sale on a till set to Classic Preview.
The same takeaway sale with Classic Preview
- The cashier rings up the same order and settles it.
- Instead of printing, a new browser tab opens showing the customer slip exactly as it will print.
- The cashier checks it, prints it from the browser's own print box, and closes the tab.
- The kitchen slip opens the same way, as its own tab, so it can be sent to the kitchen printer separately or held back.
- Use this when somebody wants a look before the paper is used, or when the two slips must be handled one at a time.
How slips are printed: silent or through the browser
Settings → Thermal Receipt
Silent — send straight to the thermal printers (recommended) is the setting that removes the print dialog altogether. The Kitchen slip prints on the kitchen printer and the Customer slip on the counter printer. It needs the Print Agent running on a PC inside the restaurant.
Through the browser is what the software uses until you set the other one up. The browser prints both slips to its own default printer.
This is the difference that matters most: only the silent path can use two different printers, and only the silent path never shows a dialog. Through the browser, the browser shows its print box every time unless Chrome was started with the --kiosk-printing flag, and everything goes to the one default printer.
If you set Printing Mode to 1-Tap Print but leave How slips are printed on Through the browser, the two slips are still sent one after the other without a preview — but the browser may still put its print box on screen for each of them. To be truly one tap, use the silent path.
Setting up the Print Agent
Settings → Thermal Receipt
The software runs on a server; your printers sit on the restaurant's own network. The Print Agent is the small helper that bridges the two — it sits on a PC inside the restaurant, collects the slips and writes them into the printers.
It is a plain script with nothing to install. Your address and key are already filled in when you download it.
A coloured dot at the top of the panel tells you whether it is working: Print Agent is running, or Print Agent is not running.
- 1 Choose Silent — send straight to the thermal printers.
- 2 Tap Download Print Agent.
- 3 Copy the downloaded file to a PC in the restaurant, on the same network as the printers.
- 4 Unzip it and double-click "Start Print Agent".
- 5 Come back to this page — the dot should turn green and read Print Agent is running.
Leave that PC switched on during service. If the agent stops, nothing is lost — the slips wait on the server and print the moment it starts again.
Telling the software where your printers are
Settings → Thermal Receipt
Two boxes appear once the silent path is chosen: Customer printer, described as at the counter and printing the customer receipt, and Kitchen printer, in the kitchen, printing the kitchen ticket.
Each takes an IP address and a Port. Port 9100 is the standard for thermal printers and is filled in for you.
Beside each one is a Test Print button. Tap it and a test slip should come out of that printer straight away.
Leave one of them blank and both slips print on the other printer, so a counter with a single printer works perfectly well.
Most thermal printers print their own IP address if you hold the FEED button down while switching them on.
Enter the printer IP and press Save Settings before using Test Print, or the test has nowhere to go.
Finding printers automatically
Settings → Thermal Receipt
If you do not know the addresses, use Find printers on the network. It scans the network for thermal printers and shows the IP address and model of each one it finds.
There is an optional Subnet box — something like 192.168.1 — if you want to narrow the search. Tap Scan Network and wait a few seconds.
Each printer it finds gets two buttons: Use for Customer and Use for Kitchen. Tap the right one and the address is filled in for you.
The scan runs from the server's own network. If your software is hosted elsewhere it will find nothing — in that case read the IP off the printer itself and type it in.
Paper width, cutting and the cash drawer
Settings → Thermal Receipt
Characters per line decides how much text fits across the roll. Use 48 for 80mm paper and 32 for 58mm. If the test slip wraps oddly, lower this number.
Cut the paper after each slip is on to start with. Leave it on unless your printer has no cutter.
Open the cash drawer when the customer slip prints is off to start with. Switch it on if your drawer is wired to the counter printer and you want it to pop when a receipt prints.
Separately, Receipt Width lower down the tab offers 72mm and 80mm (standard). It sets the width of the slip the browser prints, so match it to your roll.
The temporary dine-in bill never opens the cash drawer, even with that switch on — no money has changed hands yet.
What appears on the receipt
Settings → Thermal Receipt
Show logo on receipt is on to start with. Switch it off and the logo is left off the paper even though it is still uploaded — handy if the logo prints badly on your machine.
Print tax on receipt is on to start with. The button beside it reads Print Tax when it is on and Hide Tax when it is off. Turning it off hides the tax line on customer receipts.
Show footer message on receipt is on to start with, and controls whether your Receipt Footer Text is printed at the bottom.
Splitting the kitchen ticket by category
Settings → Thermal Receipt
Switch on Split the kitchen ticket by category and a list of your menu categories appears underneath, headed Send these categories to their own shared kitchen slip.
Everything you tick prints together on one kitchen slip. Everything you leave unticked prints together on a second one. That is at most two slips per order, and the customer still gets one receipt.
Use it when two stations need their own paper — the grill and the dessert counter, or the kitchen and the bar.
This is separate from which printer the slips go to. It changes how many kitchen slips an order makes, not where they come out.
One order, two kitchen slips
- You tick the categories Drinks and Desserts and leave the food categories unticked.
- A table orders a Chicken Karahi, two Naan, a Cola and an ice cream.
- Slip one lists the Cola and the ice cream — that goes to the counter station.
- Slip two lists the Karahi and the Naan — that goes to the hot kitchen.
- The customer still gets a single receipt with everything and one total.
The Print Agent key
Settings → Thermal Receipt
The Print Agent key is what lets the restaurant PC collect your slips. It is created for you and shown in a read-only box.
Generate new key rotates it. The moment you do, the agent running on the old key stops being trusted, so download the agent again and restart it on the restaurant PC.
Rotate the key if the agent file has been copied somewhere it should not be, or when a staff member with access to it leaves.
What a thermal printer cannot print
Thermal printers can only print English and Latin letters. Item names written in Urdu or Arabic script will not appear on the slip.
If your kitchen reads Urdu, write the item names in Roman letters — Chicken Karahi rather than the Urdu script — and they will print correctly.
This only affects the printed paper. The POS screen, the kitchen display and the reports show whatever you typed.
Test this before you go live. A kitchen ticket with blank lines where the dish names should be is discovered at the worst possible moment.
This chapter describes the software as it is today. Every account gets the same guide inside the product, searchable and printable.