Restaurant and café POS: tables, modifiers, kitchen display, split bills, tips and QR ordering
Run a restaurant, café or food court on the same POS engine as a shop: floor plans and tables, product modifiers, orders sent to the kitchen in rounds, a kitchen display with station routing and ticket printers, split bills by item or seat, tips and service charge, waiters taking orders on their phones, and guests ordering from a QR code at the table — with every bill posted as a tax invoice and a journal entry.
Restaurant and café POS: tables, modifiers, kitchen display, split bills, tips and QR ordering
Restaurant mode is not a separate product. Set up floors and tables and the same counter that runs a shop becomes a table-service system — and every bill still posts as a numbered tax invoice, a balanced journal entry and a stock movement in one step.
1. Floors and tables
Under POS → Settings → Floors & tables create floors (Ground, Terrace, Private room) and their tables with a name, number of seats and shape. Each table gets a QR code for guest ordering that you can show, download, print or rotate.
2. The floor
POS → Floor shows every table coloured by state — free, occupied with the time since it opened and how many lines are unsent to the kitchen, and a QR badge when a guest has ordered — plus walk-up orders. Tap a table to take or continue its order. Orders belong to the business, not to a device, so any counter, tablet or phone can continue them.
3. Modifiers (options)
Products carry modifier groups — size, milk, extras, cooking level — with minimum / maximum choices and price differences. Tapping such a product opens the options dialog; the price difference is applied on the device and again on the server, so a tampered device cannot under-price a large coffee.
4. Orders and the kitchen
Lines accumulate on the order across rounds. Send to kitchen creates one ticket per station — the bar gets the drinks, the grill gets the mains — printed on the station's ticket printer and shown on the kitchen display (POS → Kitchen): filter by station, Start, Done, and bring back a ticket bumped by mistake. Tickets carry the ticket number, the table or walk-up, the course, the seat, the server and any notes.
Stations are defined by the categories they cook; a default station catches everything else. A line the kitchen already has is marked Sent on the order and can only be removed with a reason, which becomes an audited void event.
5. Waiters on their phones
On a phone the billing counter shows the menu, the order and a Send button in the thumb bar whenever there are unsent lines; after sending it returns to the floor. Menu → table → send → next table, one-handed, with camera scanning for packaged items.
6. Billing: split bills, tips, service charge
- Bill takes the whole order to checkout.
- Split lets the server pick lines — or a whole seat — to bill now; the rest stays open on the table as the next bill.
- Tips — preset percentage chips, no tip or other at checkout; a tip posts to Tips payable, never to revenue and never taxed, and the dashboard's Tips report shows tips by server and by tender ready to pay out.
- Service charge — a configurable percentage added at checkout, taxed or not, optionally dine-in only so walk-up counter sales get none; removable per bill by a cashier with the discount right. It posts to its own revenue account.
Every bill is a normal POS sale: split tenders, gift cards, loyalty points, mada or UPI, receipt printing and the drawer all work as they do in a shop.
7. Guests order from the table (QR)
Switch on Order at the table and add a welcome line. A guest scans the QR on the table and opens a public menu page — no app, no login — with photos, options, a note per item and a note for the staff, and Send to the staff. The order lands on the table unsent, so the waiter reviews it and sends it to the kitchen; the guest sees your order so far with what is in the kitchen and what is with the staff. Ordering is throttled per table, no payment is ever taken on the guest page, and a leaked code can be rotated in one tap.
8. Accounting impact of a restaurant bill
| Item on the bill | Posting |
|---|---|
| Food and drink | Revenue per line's account · output VAT / GST |
| Tip | Credit Tips payable (liability) |
| Service charge | Credit Service charge revenue · VAT if taxed |
| Discount or promotion | Debit Sales discounts given |
| Tender | Debit cash / bank / gift-card liability / loyalty liability |
Stock is consumed at the outlet's location as items are billed, so packaged goods, bottles and retail lines on a café menu are tracked like any other product.