Kitchen screens, registers, handhelds and docket printers.
Hospitality venues. Owner/Manager.
Why devices are separate from logins
A wall-mounted tablet in a kitchen is not a person. It cannot be asked to remember a password, and it must not carry one — a tablet that walks out the door with a manager's login on it is a serious problem.
So BookMyVenue keeps two separate credentials:
| What it is | What it can do alone | |
|---|---|---|
| Your login | Email + password, a person | Everything your role allows, from any browser |
| A device token | Provisioned hardware, no password | Show a kitchen screen. Never move money |
The rule that follows: money needs both. A register or handheld taking payment requires a staff login and a provisioned device. A stolen tablet with no login renders a menu and nothing else. A password without the hardware cannot tender a sale.
Device roles and permissions
Each device is registered with a role — kitchen display, register, handheld — a name you will recognise ("Kitchen left", "Bar register"), and explicit permissions:
| Permission | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Can take payment | This device may tender a sale |
| Can open drawer | This device may pop the cash drawer |
| Can void | This device may void a line or a sale |
| Can refund | This device may issue a refund |
| Receipt printer | Which printer its receipts come out of |
Grant the least each device needs. A kitchen display needs none of them.
Pairing a device
- On the device, open the screen you want — for a kitchen display,
app.bookmyvenue.com.au/kds. It shows "Pair this screen". - Generate a pairing code for that device.
- Enter the code on the device.
- It pairs, and stays paired.
Three properties of the pairing code, all deliberate:
- Short-lived. It expires.
- Single-use. The moment it is claimed it is spent — so a code photographed off a screen, or left in a log, is already useless.
- Handed over in person. Whoever is standing in front of the device is who gets it.
The device token is shown once and never again. BookMyVenue stores only a fingerprint of it. A device that is wiped, factory-reset or replaced must be re-paired — there is no way to recover its token, and that is the correct behaviour for a tablet that has been lost or stolen.
Unpairing
Unpair a device to revoke it immediately. Do this the moment a tablet goes missing. The device stops working at once; it does not wait for the screen to be refreshed.
Device management is currently done through the register API rather than a screen in the staff app. There is no Devices page in the web app yet. To add, pair or revoke a device, contact [email protected] — or, if you are self-managing, see SPEC-devices-and-endpoints-v1.md in the repository.
Kitchen display (KDS)
The KDS shows tickets as they are placed and clears them as they are made. It updates live — no refreshing.
"No tickets" means exactly that: nothing is outstanding. "Connecting…" for more than a few seconds means the screen has lost its connection; check the tablet's wifi first.
Docket printers
BookMyVenue drives Star CloudPRNT printers. The printer polls BookMyVenue every few seconds asking whether anything is waiting for it.
What makes this worth understanding is the last step. The exchange is:
- The printer asks "anything for me?"
- It fetches the docket.
- It confirms the docket came out.
Step 3 is the proof of print. It is the only signal that distinguishes a docket sitting on the pass from one lost to a paper jam. A docket that was fetched but never confirmed shows as unconfirmed rather than as printed.
A printer that loses power mid-print re-fetches the same docket when it comes back, not the next one — so a power blip does not silently skip an order.
Printer setup
Each printer is configured once with a URL that contains its own credential, and its MAC address is checked as a second factor. A printer cannot log in, so the address is the secret — treat the printer configuration URL like a password, and do not reuse one printer's URL on another device.
If dockets stop coming out
In order:
- Paper. Then the paper path — is the lid properly closed?
- Power and network lights on the printer itself.
- Is the printer on the same network as it was configured on? A new router, a changed wifi password or a guest network will silently orphan it.
- Check the order in Orders — did the order actually reach the state that prints?
- If the docket is queued but unconfirmed, the printer is not collecting. That is a network or printer fault, not a BookMyVenue one.
Next
Still stuck? Email [email protected] with your venue name, what you were doing and what happened instead. Please don't send passwords — we will never ask for one.