Documentation

Devices

Kitchen screens (KDS)

Set up bump screens for your kitchen — stations, an expo pass, a runner screen and a customer order board — and keep orders moving.

Kitchen screens replace paper dockets: new orders appear the moment they're placed, cooks bump items as they finish them, and everyone can see how long each order has been waiting.

The four screen roles

  • Station — a prep screen (Grill, Fry, Bar…). It shows only the items routed to it. Tap an item to mark it done; tap the button at the bottom of a ticket to bump the whole ticket to the next screen.
  • Expo / pass — sees every order coming together across all stations, with a live tick for each item. When everything's done (or the pass decides it's close enough), bumping here marks the order Ready.
  • Runner — a queue of ready orders, sorted by who's waited longest, with a big destination on each row (table number, pickup counter, or delivery address). Runners can tap their name to log who took it, then mark it delivered.
  • Order board — a customer-facing screen showing "Preparing" and "Ready — collect now" order numbers.

Small venues don't need all four: a single station screen works on its own — orders become Ready when it bumps them.

Setting up a screen

  1. Go to Settings → Kitchen screens at the location and click Add screen.
  2. Set the screen's role, where its tickets bump to, layout and text size — all from the pencil icon next to the screen.
  3. To send different items to different screens (grill vs bar), set up Order routing on the same page. A route picks items by category, tag, individual product or area, and delivers them to the screens you choose.

Getting a device onto a screen

Any active staff member can put a kitchen device onto a screen — no special permission needed beyond being a member at that location:

  • Log in and pick a screen — the usual way. On the kitchen device, sign in the same way staff sign in anywhere else, and you'll see a list of that location's kitchen screens. Tap the one this device should show — even if it's already open somewhere else.
  • Pairing code — the fallback for a device nobody signs into (a dedicated tablet mounted on the wall, say). Click Pair code next to the screen, then on the kitchen device open the pairing page — the same one used for POS registers and kiosks — and enter the code.

A kitchen screen can be open on more than one device at once, and everyone watching stays live — nobody gets bumped or sent back to the screen list to make room. That's useful when the pass and a runner want the same view, or a manager wants to keep an eye on the kitchen from the office. (POS registers and kiosks work differently — see Managing devices for how those handle a screen that's already in use.)

Either way, the connection survives restarts. To leave a screen yourself — end of shift, or moving a tablet to a different station — tap Screen in the top bar and confirm; the device returns to the screen list so you (or the next person) can sign in and choose again.

Reading a ticket

  • The coloured edge and timer show how long the order has waited — green, then amber, then red once it's past your target. Set the targets per order type in Settings → Kitchen screens.
  • UPDATED means the order was changed after it reached the kitchen: new items glow green, removed items are struck through in red.
  • MERGED means a follow-up order from the same table or guest was folded in as a new round, under a "+ ROUND 2" divider. Long-press an item to split it back out if you'd rather work them separately.
  • Greyed items with a clock are scheduled for later — they'll light up when it's time to cook them.

Handy controls

  • Long-press an item to bump part of a quantity (say 2 of 5 burgers) or tick off its modifiers one by one.
  • Recall last (bottom-left) brings back the last ticket you bumped; History shows everything bumped recently so an accidental bump is never lost.
  • Tap the staff chip in the header to say who's working the station — the list shows whoever is clocked in.
  • The gear opens screen preferences: layout, text size, sounds and the all-day summary panel (drag its edge to resize it).
  • If the connection drops, the screen keeps showing its tickets and catches up automatically when it's back.

Timing and merging settings

In Settings → Kitchen screens you can set, per location:

  • Service-time targets per order type — when tickets turn amber and red.
  • Order merging — the time window in which a second order from the same table or guest joins the first one's ticket, and whether to match by table, guest, or both. Set the window to 0 to turn merging off.
  • Fire tab items when sent — for table service, send items to the kitchen when staff add them to a tab rather than when the bill is paid.
  • Order board behaviour — how long collected orders stay on the Ready board and whether first names are shown.