Kiosk & QR ordering

Setting up a self-service kiosk

Pair a kiosk screen with a code or your account, choose its app and display settings, and troubleshoot takeovers.

A kiosk is any touchscreen — an iPad, Android tablet, or all-in-one terminal — running your self-service ordering app in a web browser. Customers browse the menu, order, and pay without staff help.

Before you start

1. Create a kiosk app under Apps (see App builder) — or reuse a starter app if you finished the setup wizard, which creates ordering apps for you. A kiosk app is laid out on the same drag-and-drop grid as a register, so you place every tile where you want it on the screen.
2. Add a kiosk device under Settings → Devices at the right location: choose Add device, give it a name like "Kiosk 1", set the type to Kiosk, and pick the app it should run. See Managing devices.

Option 1: pair with a pairing code

Best when the kiosk is set up by someone without an admin account:

1. In the admin dashboard, go to Settings → Devices and click Pair code next to the kiosk (a code is also shown when you first create the device). Codes are short (e.g. ABC123) and expire after 10 minutes.
2. On the kiosk, go to mavos.com.au/pair. It's the same address for every device type, so there's nothing to get wrong.
3. Enter the code and tap Pair. You'll be offered the free Mavos Screen Helper (Windows only) before the kiosk loads its app — a kiosk has no settings menu of its own, so this is the easiest time to set it up on a Windows kiosk if you want it. If the computer has more than one monitor you'll be asked which one the kiosk is on; with a single monitor there's nothing to choose. Tap Skip for now to go straight to the app instead — that's the right choice on an iPad, Android tablet, or other non-Windows device.

The pairing screen itself also explains where to find a code, so a staff member standing at the kiosk can follow along.

Option 2: claim the device from your account

If you're signed in to Mavos on the kiosk's browser:

1. Open your kiosk app's entry link (from Apps, or Settings → Devices → Open).
2. You'll see the available kiosk devices for that app's location.
3. Tap the device this screen should become. Done — no code needed.

What the customer sees

The kiosk screen has three parts that never move, and one that changes:

• A top bar with your venue name and logo, language buttons if you offer more than one, Search if you've turned it on, and Start over.
• A category rail down the left, one button per page you built, with the icon and colour you gave that page. It stays on the left whether the screen is portrait or landscape — a customer who walks up to one kiosk finds the same thing on the next. An app built on a single page lists that page's sections instead, so you get a rail either way; it needs at least two buttons to be worth showing, and below that the menu simply fills the screen. The builder says so while you're editing, so it's never a surprise on the hardware.
• Your menu in the middle, laid out exactly as you arranged it in the builder. Tapping a folder opens it in place, with a way back out.
• An order bar along the bottom showing the number of items, the running total, and View order.

Tapping an item opens its details, where the customer picks any options and chooses a quantity, then adds it to their order. Some items suggest an extra before moving on — tapping No thanks — go to my order skips it.

View order opens the full order screen: every line with its options, buttons to change quantities or edit a line, somewhere to enter a discount or gift-card code, a tip if you offer one, the order type, and Pay pinned along the bottom so it never scrolls away. Cancel at the top clears the order and starts again.

Paying happens on the card reader. The screen shows what to do — tap, insert or swipe — and can't be dismissed by a stray touch while a payment is running; the only way out is the button on that screen. When it goes through, the customer gets an order number, a receipt QR code they can scan with their phone, and Done.

There's no keyboard on a kiosk, so one appears on screen whenever a customer taps a field — for a name or an email on a booking, or a discount code. The screen slides up so the field and the Pay button stay visible above the keys.

Wherever the order screen asks for a name, phone number or email, a short note underneath links out to your venue's terms and privacy policy, so customers can read either before they type anything.

Rewards and gift cards on the kiosk

If you run a rewards program, sell memberships, or have gift cards out with customers, the kiosk order screen shows a Rewards & gift cards section next to the tip and discount options. A venue with none of those three sees nothing new — the section doesn't appear at all.

What a customer does

Tapping Use my rewards or gift card offers whichever of these the screen can do:

• Enter your code — the usual way. Customers open their card (from the email you sent, or from their account) and tap Get a counter code, then type that code on a big on-screen keypad. There's a link underneath for entering a gift card code instead.
• Use your phone — the kiosk shows a QR code. The customer scans it with their own phone camera, confirms it's your venue on the page that opens, and the kiosk picks them up a moment later. Nothing to type. The QR is good for five minutes.
• Scan your card — appears when the kiosk has a camera, or when a barcode scanner has been used on that screen before. The customer holds their card's QR up to it.
• Mobile number — a keypad for their mobile number, if you allow it. This one only ever earns points: the kiosk confirms with "Points will be added to the account ending in ·· 12" and shows nothing else about the customer.

Once they're identified, what the kiosk shows depends on how sure it is who they are. A counter code proves it, so the customer sees their name, points and tier, their member discounts, their gift cards, and can spend points. A scanned card only identifies by default, so it shows the balance without letting anyone spend it — a card sitting on a table is enough to look, never enough to pay. A mobile number shows nothing at all.

What staff need to know

• Nothing is stored on the screen. The identity lives on the server for the length of the order and is cleared by Start over, by paying, and by the kiosk resetting itself after sitting idle. Even without any of those, it lets go on its own after about fifteen minutes. The next customer never inherits it.
• Sessions expire. If someone leaves a kiosk half-finished for long enough, the rewards part lapses and the screen asks for the code again. The order itself is untouched.
• Too many wrong codes shows "Too many tries — wait a moment". Codes are single-use and last ten minutes, so a code someone read out earlier won't work twice.
• A customer who can't get any of it to work can always pay normally and be attached to the sale at the counter afterwards.

The two settings that matter

Both live under Settings → Loyalty & cards:

• A card scanned at a kiosk can — identify only (the default) or identify and redeem. Leave it on identify only unless your kiosks are somewhere staff can see them.
• Mobile number at a kiosk — whether the mobile-number option appears at all. Turn it off if you'd rather customers always used a code.

Counter code length on the same page decides how many digits the keypad asks for — 4 is easiest to type standing at a kiosk, 6 is harder to guess.

Display settings

Each device has display settings, edited under Settings → Devices → Edit device:

• Screen size — Small, Medium, or Large (1920×1080+). This tunes the layout density. Touch targets are sized against the smallest setting, so buttons stay big enough to hit on a small screen.
• Orientation — Portrait or Landscape.

You can also change the assigned app and the default payment terminal here. A kiosk needs a terminal attached to take card payments — see Payments and the till.

When a customer walks away

People abandon kiosk orders. Someone gets a phone call, or changes their mind at the total, and leaves half an order on the screen for the next customer to find.

Two settings on the kiosk app's own settings page handle it, under Abandoned order:

• Idle before the warning — how long the screen sits untouched before it asks. Set it to 0 to never clear the order.
• Countdown on the warning — how long the customer then has to say they're still there.

After the idle time a message appears with a countdown. Any touch takes it back — the order is untouched and the timer starts over. If the countdown runs out, the order is cleared and the kiosk returns to a fresh menu.

A payment in progress suspends both timers. A customer standing at the reader with their card out is never interrupted.

If the abandoned order held a booking — a session, a ticket, a time slot — that reservation is given back straight away rather than sitting on the slot until it expires on its own. A customer who walks off at 6:58 doesn't cost you the 7:00 table. The same is true when a customer taps Start over themselves, and when the receipt screen closes itself after a sale.

The idle loop

When nobody is ordering, a kiosk can play an attract loop: pictures, videos and product slides that invite people over. A kiosk whose loops have moved onto the app itself has an Attract tab in its settings, where you open a loop with Edit slides, add one with Add a loop, and choose under When the screen is idle which loop plays, or Nothing (no idle loop). The tab has its own Save attract loops button. The kiosk keeps its own copy of each loop, so changing one here changes no other screen. To have several screens follow the same day and time schedules instead, point the kiosk at an attract app on its first settings tab. See Building ordering apps.

Search and the top bar

The kiosk app's settings also carry a Search option: leave it on the menu theme to follow whatever that theme's menu bar was set to (which is how an app that already had search keeps it), or force it on or off. When it's on, a Search button appears in the kiosk's top bar.

Choosing a look

The quickest place to change a kiosk's look is the kiosk app's builder: press Design in the top bar. Colours and fonts, corners, spacing, photos, layout, which bars show and the wording on fixed buttons are all there, changes show on the preview straight away, and Change look lets you try other looks on your own menu first. A kiosk app with no look yet is offered a set of starting looks built for kiosks. Changes are saved as a draft; the kiosk keeps showing the published look until you press Publish, which first lists every screen the change will reach. If the look is shared with other apps, or is your venue's default for kiosks, you're asked once whether to change it everywhere or take a copy for this kiosk. See Building ordering apps.

The full editor is under Apps → Library, with a live preview, version history and the ability to roll back. A wall-mounted screen someone reads while a queue forms behind them wants bigger type and bolder tiles than a phone does, so preview a look on the Kiosk (portrait) or Kiosk (landscape) device before you publish it, and step through the menu, item, cart and pay states rather than only the first screen. The kiosk's own bars — the category sidebar and the search bar — can be switched off per look under Bars. Anything a look doesn't set falls back to your brand colours, so a kiosk always matches the rest of your venue rather than going transparent or grey. A kiosk already on screen shows a newly published look after a reload.

Changing what the gallery offers doesn't touch a kiosk you've already styled — your existing app keeps the look it has until you apply a new one.

Selling tickets and bookings on a kiosk

Kiosk and QR ordering apps have a Bookings tab in their settings that controls whether customers can buy tickets, sessions, and other bookable products from that app:

• Sell tickets and sessions on this app — turn this on to let the app sell bookable products. A date selection row appears automatically so customers pick the day they're booking for.
• Sell multi-day products — for stays or hires that span several days. Instead of a single date, the app shows a From / To date range.
• Single item checkout — when someone adds an item, they go straight to checkout instead of continuing to browse. This suits single-booking funnels, like an app that sells just one type of session.
• Collect a name and/or email — choose whether orders that contain a booking must capture the customer's name and email. The defaults are pulled from the location's Checkout settings, and you can override them per app here.

If you turn a selling option off, the app warns you and removes any products from it that no longer fit — for example, switching off multi-day selling removes multi-day products.

POS registers always sell everything you offer, so they don't have a Bookings tab. Their booking-related setting (whether staff check customers in at the register) stays where it was.

If the device is "currently in use"

Only one screen can be signed in to a device at a time. If you pair or claim a device that's already in use somewhere, you'll see "This device is currently in use" with when it was last seen, and a Take over button.

• Take over signs the other screen out and gives this screen the device.
• The old screen shows a 10-second "This device was taken over" notice, then returns to the pairing screen.

This is handy when a kiosk browser crashed or a tablet was replaced — just take over from the new screen.

Run a kiosk on your register's customer screen

You don't always need a dedicated kiosk device. If a register has a customer-facing screen, staff can flip that screen into this kiosk whenever the till is unmanned — see "Turning the customer screen into a kiosk" in the Devices article for setup and day-to-day use, including the free Mavos Screen Helper that opens both screens full screen on the right monitors and locks the customer screen's touch while it's showing the order. Installing it is just a download from Settings → Devices and running it once on the register's PC — open the POS on that same computer afterwards and it connects on its own, no codes involved. From the register, Settings → This device → Screens shows a picture of that computer's monitors for setting it up.

Troubleshooting

You can review every sign-in on a device (when, from what hardware) via the session history button in Settings → Devices. Still stuck? Contact support.