Kitchen Display
Restaurant > KDS is the kitchen's screen. It takes over the whole display, keeps itself awake, and updates as orders are fired without anyone refreshing anything.
Tickets are grouped into station columns: Hot, Cold, Bar, Dessert, Prep, and Other for anything without a station on its menu item. A column only appears when it has something in it, and the station filter narrows the board to one station for a display mounted at a single pass. When the property has more than one outlet, the outlet selector switches boards.
A ticket is headed by its table, or by the order type for a pickup or delivery order, and carries an age timer counting up from the moment it was fired. The timer turns amber and then red as the ticket gets old, so the pass sees lateness rather than having to work it out.
The indicator next to the heading shows Live when the screen is streaming updates and Polling when it has fallen back to periodic fetches. Either way the board is current; the difference is only how quickly.
Each line moves through three states, colour-coded down its left edge:
| State | Shown as | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| New | New | On the ticket, not yet started. |
| Preparing | Cooking | Being made. |
| Ready | Ready | Waiting to be picked up from the pass. |
A fired line goes straight to Cooking, not to New: the kitchen was told to make it, so making it is the starting state. While a line is cooking, a timer next to it counts down from the prep time on its menu item and then counts the overrun in red. An item with no prep time set shows elapsed time instead, which is a reason to fill prep times in on the Menu.
Tap a line to advance it one step. Advancing is strictly forward, one state at a time, so a mis-tap cannot skip a line from New to served.
Modifiers appear indented under the line, and a note from the cashier appears in amber, which is the one thing on the ticket that is not a standing instruction.
Press and hold a line for about a second to void it, then give a reason. The reason is required, and the void is attributed to the signed-in user.
A void from the KDS is final
Voiding removes the line from the order and cannot be undone. It is the right action for something that genuinely cannot be made, for example the last portion having gone. Long press is deliberately slower than a tap so a busy pass does not void by accident.
Voiding needs the Void Items permission. The KDS itself needs Kitchen Display. See Users and Roles.