Restaurant Table Orders

How it works

1. Set it up once. The first time, the app asks what kind of place you run, how many tables you have, what you serve and what each dish costs, and makes your tables and your menu from the answers.
2. Tap a table. The tables screen shows every table: free ones as an outline, busy ones filled in with what they have run up and how long they have been sitting. Tapping a table opens its order.
3. Tap the dishes. Each tap on a dish adds one. The − and + beside a line change it, and a note for the kitchen — “less spicy”, “no onion” — can be written under any dish.
4. Send to kitchen. A kitchen ticket is printed with the table and only what the kitchen has not been told yet. When the table asks for more, the next ticket carries just the new dishes.
5. Bill and pay. Bill prints the bill to take to the table, with a UPI payment code on it. Pay takes cash, UPI or credit, saves the bill and frees the table.

There is no “save” button and no account. Everything is kept as you go, in this browser on this device. Orders that are open stay open if the page is closed or the phone restarts.

Setting up, step by step

On a device that has not used the app before, the setup opens by itself as soon as the page is touched. It asks seven things, one screen at a time:

1. What kind of place it is. Seven kinds have a ready list of dish names: South Indian restaurant (28 dishes), North Indian restaurant (32), biryani and grill (23), Chinese and fast food (25), café (26), tea shop with tables (17), and juice and ice-cream parlour (24). “Something else” starts with an empty menu.
2. The language of the bill, from a list of 50.
3. Your restaurant's name, phone and address, for the top of the bill. All three can be left empty.
4. How many tables. Tap 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15 or 20, or type the number. They are named Table 1, Table 2 and so on. A place that only sends out parcels can have none.
5. What you serve. The ready list in its sections, each dish with a price box and a switch. Switch off what you do not serve, type your prices, and add anything missing.
6. Your prices for anything chosen that still has no price, one at a time on a number pad.
7. Kitchen, bills and payment: whether to print kitchen tickets, the paper you print on, your UPI ID, rounding to a whole rupee, and token numbers for parcels.

Nothing is saved until Start taking orders is tapped. Later leaves without changing anything, and Run the setup again under Restaurant brings it back; a second run adds tables and dishes and never removes any.

Tables and areas

Under Restaurant, tap a table to rename it — “Family 1”, “AC 3”, “Garden 2” — or to put it in an area. When there are two areas or more, a row of choices above the tables shows one area at a time. + Add several adds a run of tables numbered on from the last one. The app holds up to 120 tables. A table with an order open on it cannot be removed until the order is paid or moved.

On the tables screen a busy table shows its total, how long it has been open, how many lines are on it, and a flag when something is waiting: “3 lines not sent” in amber when the kitchen has not been told about everything, or “Bill 41 printed” in green once its bill has gone to the table. The line under the heading adds up how many orders are open and how much they come to.

Taking an order

Tap a table, then the dishes. The search box finds a dish by any of its names, and the groups — Breakfast, Curries, Drinks — narrow the tiles. A dish with no price yet asks for one the first time it is tapped. Other amount adds something that is not on the menu.

Under each dish on the order is what the kitchen knows of it: Not sent yet, 1 more not sent yet, or Sent. Tap + Note for the kitchen to write a note for that dish; the notes written before are offered again as one-tap choices. A dish the kitchen already has, given a new note, is taken back on the next ticket and asked for again with the note, so the kitchen is never left guessing.

Speak takes the order by voice: “two masala dosa, one vada, three tea”. The words for numbers are understood in English, Malayalam and Hindi. Listening uses your browser's own speech service, which needs the internet in most browsers; check the order on the screen before sending it.

Kitchen tickets (KOT)

Send to kitchen prints a kitchen order ticket: the table's name in large type, the ticket's number for the day and the time, and each dish with how many, in large type, with its note under it. It has no prices. Only what the kitchen has not heard yet is on it, so a table that orders twice gets two short tickets, the second marked “MORE FOR THIS ORDER”.

A dish taken off after it was sent stays on the order, crossed out, until the next ticket, which leads it with “CANCEL”. Put back undoes that before the ticket goes. Moving an order to another table prints a ticket saying where it went, and cancelling an order the kitchen knows about prints one taking it all back. Print the last kitchen ticket again is there for a ticket that jammed.

If nobody reads tickets in your kitchen, switch them off under Restaurant. Send to kitchen then only marks the dishes as sent, which still shows you at a glance what you have told the kitchen.

Bills and kitchen tickets come out of the same printer: the app joins one printer at a time. There is no screen for the kitchen and no second phone in step with the first — everything lives on the one device the orders are taken on.

Parcels

+ Parcel on the tables screen — or New parcel in the sidebar, the round button in the installed app, or the N key on a computer — starts an order that is not for a table. With token numbers on, each parcel gets the day's next token, printed large on its kitchen ticket and bill. Name or phone puts a name on a parcel so it can be called out. Open parcels wait in their own row above the tables.

Paying for a parcel sends the kitchen whatever it has not been told yet, so an order paid for at the counter reaches the kitchen without another tap. The same is true of any order.

The bill and the payment

Bill shows the bill for the table on the screen, with Print, WhatsApp, Email and Share picture. It says what is to pay, and carries a UPI payment code with the total in it when your UPI ID is set — the customer can scan it from the paper or from your phone's screen. The first time the bill is printed or sent it takes the next bill number, and keeps it: a dish added afterwards is billed again under the same number.

Pay takes the money: Cash with the notes the customer is likely to hand over and the change, UPI with the payment code, or Credit on a regular customer's account. Save and print keeps the bill and prints it; Save keeps it without printing. The table is free again at once.

Discount takes an amount or a percentage off. Move takes an order to a free table, or makes it a parcel. Cancel order clears an order; one the kitchen has heard of, or whose bill was printed, asks first, and a printed bill is kept in the day book as cancelled so its number is not missing.

The sums, worked through

A line is its quantity times its price. The lines add up to the subtotal. A discount comes off, a tax — only if you have switched one on — goes on, and the total can be rounded to a whole rupee. Here is a table of four, with a 5% tax switched on:

The prices and the rate are made up to show the arithmetic. If the table pays with a ₹500 note, the change shown is ₹253.

The tool multiplies and adds what you type. It does not know any price or tax rate, it does not work out GST for you, and it does not split a tax into parts. If you switch on “Add a tax to every bill”, you type the name and the rate yourself. The bill is a restaurant bill and is not a tax invoice; ask your accountant what you must issue.

Day book and reports

The Day book shows, for any day: sales, the number of bills, how much was eaten at tables and how much went out as parcels, cash, UPI, credit, expenses, and the cash that should be in the drawer. Below are what sold, every bill with its table (tap one to print it again or cancel it), the expenses, the customers on credit, and the month day by day. Export the data saves the bills, every dish sold, totals by dish, totals by day or the expenses as a spreadsheet file.

Reports shows any stretch of days: sales with how they compare with the days before, bills, the average bill, the best day and the busiest hour, sales by day, the busiest hours, the dishes that sold most, how customers paid, tables against parcels, and every table with its bills, sales and average bill — which tables earn the most.

Receipts, printers and sending a bill

Under Restaurant, choose the paper: a 58 mm roll, an 80 mm roll, or an ordinary A4 or A5 printer. Samples of your bill and your kitchen ticket are drawn there as you change things. Print opens the device's own print window, which works with any printer the device knows; or join a receipt printer by Bluetooth, USB or a serial port and print straight to it. Joining a printer needs Chrome or Edge on Android, Windows, Mac or Linux; an iPhone or iPad uses the print window. Print a test bill and a test kitchen ticket before a busy day.

WhatsApp and Email open that app on your device with the bill written in it; you choose who it goes to. This page sends nothing itself.

Installing it, and moving to another device

The app can be installed on a phone, a tablet or a computer: tap Install at the top of the page, or on an iPhone open the page in Safari, tap Share and “Add to Home Screen”. It then opens in a window of its own with your restaurant's name, starts at once and works with no internet. Holding the icon offers New parcel, Tables, Day book and Reports.

Under Restaurant, Export everything makes one file with the menu, the tables, the orders open on them, every bill and every account; Import from a file on another device shows what is in it and then replaces that device's data. A menu-only file starts another branch with the same dishes, and a file from the Shop Billing Counter can be imported for its menu.

This is a hand-over, not a link: two devices do not stay in step, so take orders on one of them at a time. The file is not locked with a password. Data lives in this browser — export a copy now and then; a strip reminds you after a week or a hundred bills.