Printers and kitchen routing

A restaurant needs the order to reach the kitchen and the bill to reach the guest. Printers are set up in Settings → Point of Sale → Printers, and each one is told what it is for.

The list

Column	Meaning
Printer name	What staff call it.
Printer type	How it is driven.
Target	Kitchen, cashier, or both.
Network host	Its address, for network printers.
Auto print on kitchen	Whether orders print by themselves.
Active	Whether it is in use.

Adding a printer

The form is a short wizard: Setup, then Layout.

Setup

• Printer name — must be unique. This is what staff pick from.
• Printer type:
  • Browser — prints through the browser’s own print dialog. Needs no configuration and works with any printer the computer can already see, but somebody has to be at the machine.
  • Network (ESC/POS) — talks straight to a thermal printer over the network. This is what a kitchen printer should be: it prints on its own, with nobody standing over it.
  • None — defined but not printing.
• Network host and network port — for a network printer, its IP address and port.

Print behaviour

• Target — Kitchen, Cashier or Both. This is the routing: a kitchen printer gets the order ticket, a cashier printer gets the bill.
• Active — take a printer out of service without deleting it.
• Auto print on kitchen — print the ticket as soon as the order is sent.
• Auto print on payment — print the receipt as soon as payment is taken.
• Copies (kitchen) and copies (cashier) — how many of each.

Paper

• Paper width — 58 mm or 80 mm. Getting this wrong is the usual cause of a ticket that prints too narrow or runs off the edge.

Ticket details

Tick what should appear on the ticket: logo, hotel name, table number, order number, timestamp, waiter name, item note and allergies.

Footer

Footer text is printed at the bottom — a thank-you, a tax line, opening hours.

Preview shows the ticket as it will print before you save.

Troubleshooting

• Nothing prints from the kitchen — check the printer is Active, that Auto print on kitchen is on, and that its target includes Kitchen.
• A network printer prints nothing — check the host and port, and that the printer is on the same network as the machine running the POS.
• The ticket is the wrong width — change paper width between 58 mm and 80 mm.
• Two tickets for every order — check copies, and that two printers are not both targeting the kitchen.

Related articles

• Point of Sale settings
• Restaurant
• POS operations
• Special requests and modifiers