The Orders page
Where your staff see every order, waiter call and bill request as it arrives, and move each one from New to Done.
On this page
Every order, call for a waiter and request for the bill that guests send reaches the Orders page as soon as it is sent. Keep the page open on a tablet at the pass or behind the bar: it updates by itself, chimes when something new arrives and flags an order that has waited too long.
Who can do this: Owner, Admin, and Finance, and at their location: Location manager, Shift lead, Floor staff, and Kitchen
Before you start
- Your plan includes guest ordering: On Pro and Ultimate. On other plans the page offers an upgrade instead.
- Guest ordering is on and the location is taking orders — see Turn on guest ordering.
- You have a role that shows you the location's orders. Floor and kitchen staff get one at their own location — see Set up your floor and kitchen staff. Without one, the page says there are no orders to show.
Find your way around
The page has three views, named at the top:
- Board — what needs doing now. It opens first, and the rest of this page is about it.
- Tables — every table, its guests and what they owe — see Serve tables.
- History — orders that already reached your staff, today's and earlier — see Find past orders and export them.
If you can see more than one location, choose one in Location at the top right. The location and the view are part of the page's address, so a tablet can keep a bookmark to its own board.
- The views: Board, Tables and History.
- Accept takes a ticket on.
- Kitchen mode fills the screen of a tablet at the pass.
The board
Each order and request is a ticket, and the board sorts tickets into three columns:
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| New | Tickets nobody has taken on yet. The one that has waited longest is at the top. |
| Accepted | Tickets someone is working on: an order in the kitchen, a waiter on the way. |
| Done | Tickets finished or cancelled in the last 30 minutes, the latest first. |
A ticket names its table and says how long it has been waiting. There are three kinds:
- Order — an order, with its number. The card lists every dish with its size, add-ons, the allergens you declared and the guest's note for the kitchen, then the guest's note on the order, the number of items, the total and whether it is Paid or Not paid. A pickup order is named after the guest, or by its number when they left no name.
- Call waiter — someone at the table wants a waiter.
- Bill — a guest asked for the bill, and says whether they will pay in cash or by card.
Two marks on an order deserve a look: Staff order when a member of staff placed it at the table, and Table chosen by a guest when the guest chose the table from a list instead of scanning its code — check that someone is really sitting there before you accept it.
Overdue orders
A new order that nobody accepts in time turns red and is marked Overdue. How long counts as in time is the location's Escalate unaccepted orders after setting — see Turn on guest ordering.
Work the tickets
Who can do this: Owner and Admin, and at their location: Location manager, Shift lead, Floor staff, and Kitchen
Each ticket shows the steps it can take next:
| Button | What happens |
|---|---|
| Accept | The ticket moves to Accepted. For an order, the guest's phone shows it is being prepared. |
| Done | The ticket moves to Done. An order is complete: it was served, or handed over at the counter. A new ticket can go straight to done. |
| Cancel | After you confirm, the ticket moves to Done as cancelled. |
The board moves a ticket the moment you tap. If the step fails, the ticket goes back, a message says why and offers Retry when trying again could help. If a colleague moved it first, the board refreshes and tells you where it is now.
Two tickets work differently:
- A bill. Marking it done records how the table paid, so the board first asks for the payment method — see Take payment at the venue. Only staff who take payments see its Done button; the kitchen can't close a bill.
- An order you can't serve. Cancel on an order asks Why can't it be served?: Out of stock, Kitchen closed, Nobody at that table or Other reason. Reject order turns the order down, and the guest sees the reason on their phone. Nothing on it is owed any more.
- Why can't it be served?: the reason the guest reads.
- Reject order turns the order down; Keep it leaves it as it is.
Tickets also move without you:
- With Accept orders automatically on, a guest's order arrives already accepted. An order a member of staff places is always accepted.
- A guest can withdraw an order nobody has accepted yet, or a call nobody has taken. It moves to Done as cancelled by the guest.
- A waiter call or bill request nobody handles in two hours is cancelled and reads Expired — nobody took it. Orders never expire.
Open an order
Details on an order opens the whole order beside the board: its dishes with what was taken off and why, the charges and the VAT they include, the check it is on, the kitchen ticket, the guest's rating once they gave one, and its history — every step, when it happened and who took it. Staff who can see the team read their colleagues' names there; everyone else reads Staff.
Staff who take payments also record the payment and resend the receipt from here — see Take payment at the venue and Send email receipts.
On a tablet
- The connection. Live at the top means the board is up to date. If the connection drops, it reads Reconnecting…, then Offline — showing the last update: the last tickets stay on screen, and the board catches up by itself once the connection is back.
- Sound and kitchen mode. The board chimes for each new order or request, and Kitchen mode fills the screen in large type and keeps it on. Setting a tablet up for both is on Set up your floor and kitchen staff. Mute silences one device only; leave kitchen mode with Exit kitchen mode or the Esc key.
Watch without acting
Anyone who can see a location's orders sees its board. Staff who can't work tickets there — the Finance role, for one — read a note that the board is for watching, and the cards have no buttons.