Restaurant Mode: Tabs, Courses and the Kitchen Display

Overview

Restaurant mode turns the till into a restaurant register. You keep everything the point of sale already does, and add:

• Modifiers on a menu item ("+ cheese $1.50", "choose 2 sides"), a note for the kitchen on any line, and a course (Starter, Main, Dessert, or your own).
• Open tabs by table or name, shared by every register in the store, with lines added over time.
• Send to kitchen, with later courses held until you fire them, and a void ticket when a line the kitchen already has is taken off.
• Split the bill by item or equally, each part paid any way the till takes payment.
• A service charge you add to the bill, such as an automatic gratuity for a large party.
• The Kitchen display at /kds, with tickets by station, timers and recall, and a ready board for takeout numbers.

Restaurant mode is on every plan, like the till. It is off until you turn it on.

Step 1: Turn it on

Go to Settings → POS setup and scroll to Restaurant mode.

1. Tick Turn on restaurant mode at the till.
2. Under Kitchen stations, add a station for each screen or printer in your kitchen (for example Kitchen and Bar) and tick the product categories each one makes. Tick Takes every other category on the station that should get everything you did not name. With no stations at all, one Kitchen takes every order. A category no station takes is not sent: a bottle sold over the bar, say.
3. Courses lists your courses in serving order, separated by commas.
4. Ticket turns amber after and Ticket turns red after set when a ticket's timer on the kitchen display changes colour.
5. Service charge: a percentage, the name printed on the bill, and optionally the party size from which a tab gets it on its own. Leave the percentage empty for none.
6. Click Save restaurant mode.

The till reads the setting when it opens and keeps a copy, so it still works with no connection.

Step 2: Add modifiers to your menu items

Open a product in Products and find Modifiers at the till.

1. Click Add modifier group and name it (for example Sides or Add-ons).
2. Set At least and At most. At least 0 makes the group optional; at least 1 or more makes it required, and the till will not add the item until that many are picked. "Choose 2 sides" is at least 2, at most 2.
3. Add each option with its price on top of the item's price. A price of 0 is a choice that costs nothing extra.
4. Click Save modifiers.

When you tap the item at the till, it asks for the modifiers before the item goes on the sale. The price shown is the item's price plus what was picked, and it is exactly what the sale charges: the server works out the price of every modifier from the product, never from the till's screen. The same item made two ways is two lines on the bill and on the kitchen ticket.

Modifiers are for the till: online orders do not show them. A gift card, a weighed product and a product tracked by serial number or lot cannot have modifiers.

Notes and courses

Tap Note on any line to add a note for the kitchen ("no onions") or to give it a course, and to change its modifiers. The note prints on the kitchen ticket and shows on the kitchen display. A line with a note or a course is its own line.

Step 3: Open a tab

Click Tabs on the till.

1. Click New tab and enter the Table, a Name, or both, and the number of Guests.
2. Click Open tab. The tab gets the store's next order number for the day (it starts at 1 each morning). With no connection the number comes when the till syncs.
3. Choose Add items. The till shows Adding to with the tab's name. Ring the items up as you would a sale, with their modifiers, notes and courses.
4. Click Save to tab to keep them on the tab, or Send to kitchen to save and send them at once.

Every register in the store sees the store's open tabs, so a tab opened at the bar can be added to and paid at the front till. Click Tabs at any time to see them, with what is left to pay on each.

Send to the kitchen, hold and fire

Open the tab under Tabs. Lines not sent yet say Not sent. Click Send to kitchen to send them. When the new lines are in more than one course, tick Hold beside a course to keep it back: those lines say Held and the kitchen does not get them yet. When it is time, click Fire with the course's name, and the kitchen gets a ticket marked FIRE with that course.

Only lines the kitchen has not had are sent. Sending twice, or from two registers at once, sends each line once.

Void a line

Click Void beside the line and give the reason. A line the kitchen has not had simply goes. A line the kitchen already has is struck through on its ticket, and the station gets a VOID ticket naming it, so the cook stops making it. Every void is on the audit log with its reason. A line that has been paid cannot be voided: refund it from the sale instead.

Move a tab to another server

Choose the new server under Server on the tab. The tab, its kitchen tickets from then on and its bill are theirs. The change is on the audit log.

Step 4: Take payment

Open the tab under Tabs.

• Pay all puts every line still to pay on the till.
• Pay selected puts only the lines you tick: one guest's share when the bill is split by item. Each share is its own sale with its own receipt, and the tab stays open until every line is paid or voided.

The till shows Bill for with the tab's name. Its lines are locked: the server prices them from the tab, so the total is exactly what is charged, with the tax, the service charge and any tip. You can still give a discount on the whole sale, take a gift card, points or a promotion code, and add a tip. Click Cancel bill to go back without taking payment.

To split the bill equally, turn on Split payment, enter the number of guests beside Split equally into and click Split. The total is cut into that many parts that add up to it exactly (the first parts carry any odd cent). Choose how each part is paid: cash, a card on your own card machine, a bank or e-transfer, or other. The BestWebby card reader takes a whole bill, or a share split by item; it does not take one part of a bill split equally.

When the last line is paid the tab closes. If another register paid some of the same lines a moment before, the till refuses the sale before anything is charged and says so: open the tab again to see what is left.

The service charge, and how it is taxed

Turn on Service charge on a tab to add the store's service charge to its bill; a tab with as many guests as your party size gets it on its own. For a sale that is not a tab, turn on the switch on the till before you charge.

A service charge is an amount you put on the bill, which the customer must pay. The Canada Revenue Agency treats a charge like that, an automatic gratuity included, as part of the price of the meal, so GST/HST is charged on it, and QST in Québec or provincial sales tax where your province charges it on the meal, the way it is on the food. BestWebby taxes it with the meal's own lines, under the tax rules for your store's province. A tip the customer chooses is not part of the price: no sales tax is charged on it, and it is added after tax. The service charge is printed on its own line on the receipt, above the tax. It is not a tip, and the tip percentage is never worked out on it.

Points are not earned on the service charge.

Step 5: The kitchen display

Open Kitchen display at /kds on the kitchen's screen. It is signed in like a till: with a staff login whose role can use the till. Choose the Store and the Station, or All stations. The screen remembers them.

Tickets come in three lanes: New, Preparing and Ready. Each shows the order number, the table or name, the server, each line with its modifiers and note, and a timer from when it reached the kitchen. The timer turns amber and then red at the minutes you set.

• Start moves a new ticket to Preparing, Ready moves it to Ready, and Done takes it off the screen.
• Recall (the arrow) moves a ticket back one lane. The last tickets done are listed at the bottom: tap one to bring it back.
• A VOID ticket says what to stop making; tap Seen to clear it.

The screen checks for new tickets every few seconds. If two screens move the same ticket at once, it moves once and the second screen is told. With no connection it keeps showing the last tickets and says it is not connected.

A sale rung up straight on the till (not a tab) goes to the kitchen too, with the day's next order number, which the till shows when the sale is done.

The ready board

The Ready board (the link at the top of the kitchen display, or /kds/board) shows customers the order numbers being prepared and the numbers ready to collect, in large type. It shows numbers only, never a name or an item. A number is ready when every station has its part ready, and leaves the board when it is done. Run it on a screen facing your customers, signed in with a till login.

Kitchen printers

Every kitchen ticket, and every void, is also prepared as a ticket for the station's receipt printer (42 columns, no prices), and kept until a printer takes it. Until a printer is connected for a station, the kitchen display is that station's ticket.

To give a station its printer, see Kitchen printers under Set up a receipt printer in the point of sale guide.

Working with no connection

A register keeps working with tabs when its connection drops:

• Open tabs, add items, send, hold, fire, void, change the guests or the service charge, and take payment. The till shows each change at once and keeps it.
• When the connection comes back, the till sends its tab changes first, in the order they were made, then its sales, so a bill paid offline always finds its lines.
• A tab opened offline gets its order number when it syncs.

What does not happen until the register is back online:

• The kitchen gets nothing it was sent. Tickets reach the kitchen display and the printers when the register syncs. If your kitchen depends on the display, tell the kitchen by hand while you are offline.
• Other registers do not see the changes. Take a tab on one register while it is offline. If another register pays the same lines meanwhile, the sale made offline is still recorded when it syncs, because the money was taken. You are told (A tab was paid twice in Settings → Notifications), the audit log records the lines, and you refund one of the sales.
• Lines paid offline are shown as paid on that register until the sale has synced.
• A change the server refuses when it syncs (a product no longer for sale, say) is listed under Tabs with the reason.

The card reader, selling gift cards and spending points need a connection, as they do for any sale.

What is recorded

Each sale that pays a tab records the tab and its lines, each line's modifiers, note and course, and the service charge, on the order. Opening, voiding, firing, moving a tab to another server, turning the service charge on or off and closing a tab are on the audit log, with the cashier who did it.