For restaurants, cafes and bars. If your left-hand navigation shows Orders, Menu, Floor and Till, this manual is for you.
Hospitality venues also take table bookings — that side works like the appointments diary and is covered in Appointments.
The screens
| Screen | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Orders | The order board. Accept, cook, hand over |
| Menu | Categories, items, prices, what is available where |
| Floor | The floor plan — tables and who is on them |
| Till | Take payment, run the cash drawer, print receipts |
| Dispatch | Delivery runs |
| Kitchen display | The kitchen screen, on its own paired device |
Channels
Every order arrives through a channel, and channels are configured per venue in Settings → hospitality policy:
| Channel | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Dine-in | Ordered at the table |
| Pickup | Ordered ahead, collected |
| Delivery | Ordered ahead, delivered |
| POS (in-person) | Rung up at the counter by staff |
| Kiosk | Self-service terminal |
Channels are not just labels. A menu item can be available on one channel and not another — dine-in only, or delivery only — and each channel can carry its own category and item ordering, so the delivery menu can lead with what travels well.
The order board
Orders is the live board. Every order moves forward through one state at a time, and the board offers exactly one forward button per order — never a dropdown of every possible state, because a counter screen is used at speed with one hand.
| State | The button you see | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Placed | Accept | It has arrived. Nobody has committed to it |
| Accepted | Start | You have taken it on |
| Preparing | Ready | It is being made |
| Ready | Handed over | It is on the pass / at the counter |
| Completed | — | Done |
| Rejected | — | You refused it. A reason is required |
| Abandoned | — | Never completed by the guest |
Rejecting needs a reason. This is deliberate — rejection is the one destructive step, and the reason goes to the guest and into your reports. A rejection also fires an order rejected text to the guest if you have that notification switched on.
Reaching Ready is what triggers the guest's order ready text.
Only Owner and Manager can change orders by default; a Staff user who lacks the permission sees "You do not have permission to change orders."
Order numbers
Order numbers restart each business day, and the business day is the one you set in Settings → Regional → Business day starts. For a venue trading until 3am, setting the business day to start at, say, 5am keeps the whole night on one number series and in one day's reports.
Menu
Menu is where categories, items, prices and option groups live. Owner or Manager only — a Staff user sees "Only an owner or manager can change the menu."
Each item carries a name, a price, a category, and its per-channel availability.
Option groups and 86'ing
Items can have option groups — "choose your sauce", "choose a side" — and groups can be required.
When you 86 a choice during service, BookMyVenue tracks the consequence. If an item's required group runs out of every choice, the item stops being orderable and says so, instead of letting a guest order a parma with a sauce you do not have. This happens live, during service, not just when you publish the menu.
Turning an item off and back on
An item switched off disappears from the ordering surfaces immediately. Switching it Back on restores it. Neither affects orders already taken.
A price change does not rewrite what was sold
Editing a price changes what you charge from now on. Orders already placed keep the price they were sold at, and so do your reports.
Floor
Floor is the floor plan: your tables, their capacity, and what is on them right now. Bookings that hold a table show against it, which is how the diary and the floor stay in agreement.
Till
Till is the payment and cash-handling screen.
A shift
- Open a shift with an opening float — the cash you are starting with.
- Take payments through the shift.
- At the end, Count the drawer — enter what is physically in it.
- The till tells you Drawer balanced, Drawer is OVER or Drawer is SHORT.
The variance is recorded, not hidden and not silently corrected. A miscount is information: it is the only way a venue ever finds a till problem. Do not "fix" the count to make it balance.
Taking a payment
Enter the amount, choose the payment type, and for cash enter cash given — the till works out the change. Gift card is a payment type: enter the code and the balance is drawn down (see 08).
An order that has already been paid shows "Already taken" rather than letting you take the money twice.
Receipts
The till produces a receipt, and can produce a tax invoice — which is where your ABN and legal / registered business name from Settings appear. If those are blank, your tax invoice is not a valid tax invoice. Fill them in before you trade.
Receipt copied means the receipt text is on your clipboard, ready to paste into a message to the guest.
Dispatch
Dispatch is the delivery board: jobs, the technicians or drivers assigned to them, and what is scheduled when. Jobs approaching their promised time are flagged at risk.
Two things to know:
- No technicians means nobody is set up to be dispatched to, so nothing can be assigned.
- Times on the dispatch board are shown in the venue's timezone. A 9am job renders 9am.
Order-ahead
Guests ordering ahead choose "As soon as possible" or "Choose a time". Chosen times are checked against your kitchen's capacity and service windows before being accepted — a guest picking an unavailable time is told "That time is not available" at that moment, rather than being taken and disappointed later.
If ordering is closed, the guest sees "Kitchen closed" rather than an error.
Kitchen display (KDS)
The KDS is a separate screen for the kitchen, on paired hardware — see Devices & printing. It shows tickets as they arrive and clears them as they are made. It runs on a device token rather than a login, so a wall tablet is not a logged-in staff account and cannot be used to take money.
Dockets can also be printed to a kitchen printer. Printing is a real handshake: the printer collects the docket and then confirms it came out. A docket that was queued but never confirmed is visible as such, which is the difference between "the kitchen has it" and "the kitchen's printer jammed".
Next
- Money, surcharges and refunds → Money & payments
- End-of-day numbers → Reports
- Hardware → Devices & printing
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.