Items troubleshooting

Symptoms, causes and fixes for the snags that come up around products, modifiers and VAT.

A modifier group isn't showing at the till

Work through these in order:

1. Is it attached to the product? Modifiers live on the product, not the menu. Open the product under Items → Products and confirm the group is listed in its Modifier groups section. If it isn't, add it with Add existing modifier group. See Create a product.
2. Is the product available on that channel? Check the product's Availability toggles — if it's hidden from the till, its modifiers won't show there either.
3. Has the device synced? Devices pick up changes on their next sync. Give it a moment, or trigger a sync, before assuming it's broken.

I ticked "Show on the till instead of a pop-up" and nothing changed

With Modifier flows switched on for your venue, this switch is called Corner key. The checks below are the same for both.

1. Does the group have three or more options? Only groups with one or two can use it. The toggle greys out and tells you the count — and if you add a third option to a group that was already showing on the till, it reverts to a pop-up when you save. Remove an option, or leave it as a pop-up.
2. Is another group already using it on the same product? Only one group per product can show on the till. Saving the second is refused with a message naming the first — turn that one off, then try again.
3. Has the device synced? Tills and card machines check for menu changes every couple of minutes and pick them up by themselves. If a change still hasn't appeared after a few minutes, drag down on the till's menu screen (card machines: More → Refresh menu), or close and reopen the app.

I changed a category's modifier flow but one product still asks the old way

With Modifier flows on, a product can override its category's flow or order. Open the product: if Overrides shows next to Modifier groups, use the Use … flow or Use … order button (it names the category) in the On the till part, then save. Also check which category the product is in on that menu — a product can be in a different category on each menu, and each menu follows its own.

The option buttons vanish when I open a different category

That's deliberate. The buttons are scoped to the products on screen, exactly like the size buttons — Coffees show the coffee options, Beers show the beer ones — so staff never see a button that does nothing for what's in front of them. They're also hidden while a search is open, because search results span every category and no one set of buttons would be right.

My online shop is charging the wrong price

Check these in order:

1. Is there an Online shop price set on the product? If that box has a number in it, the shop charges that and ignores the base price. Clear the box to go back to the base price.
2. Did you set a per-menu price override? Those don't reach the shop — the shop prices from the product itself, never from a menu.
3. If you typed the price as "Excludes VAT", the shop charges the VAT-inclusive figure shown underneath the box, not the number you typed.

My online shop price box has disappeared

Two reasons it won't be there:

• Show in shop is off for that product. The box only appears for products that are actually in the shop, and what you typed is kept if you switch it back on before saving.
• The product uses sizes. Sized products use their size prices in the shop, so a single shop price is switched off — it could not say what the other sizes cost.

I can't switch a product on for click-and-collect, QR ordering or the shop

Check whether Price is set at the till is on for that product. A product with no price can only be sold on the till — a customer ordering for themselves would get it for nothing — so those three switches turn off and lock while it is on. Switch it off, type a base price, and the switches unlock. See Product price and VAT.

A product isn't showing on a till or a card machine

If Price is set at the till is on for it: tills need the app update that includes the price keypad before they list the product, and card machines don't list these products yet. Staff can use the keypad amount in the meantime.

The VAT total on a receipt looks wrong

• Check the item's VAT rate. The total is derived from the rate set on the product (or per option). A wrong rate is the usual cause. See VAT rates.
• Remember the base price is gross. You enter the VAT-inclusive price; Tillable breaks the VAT out of it. If you typed a net figure expecting VAT to be added on top, the numbers will look off.
• Check the VAT-registered toggle. Turning VAT registered off (under Account) only hides VAT on receipts — it doesn't change what's charged. See Company details.

"No Onions" is adding a price

The option has a non-zero upcharge. Open the modifier group, find that option, and set its Extra (£) to 0. A preference that shouldn't cost anything should be £0 on every option in the group. See Modifiers and options.

A cold-takeaway item is charging 20%

Its VAT rate is set to standard. If the item should be zero-rated, open it and set its rate to No VAT / 0%. Which items are zero-rated is an HMRC question — see Which VAT rate applies (UK hospitality).

CSV import skipped my product, or didn't update it

Existing products are skipped by name match — the importer never overwrites a product you already have. To change an existing product, edit it under Items → Products instead of re-importing. See Bulk import with CSV.

Skipped means left completely alone, not updated. If you re-upload a corrected price list, the products you already have keep their old prices — the import will say how many it skipped, and none of those have changed.

My CSV import brought in blank prices, or blank names

Check the warning about columns we didn't recognise, on the preview before you import. If your file came out of another till system it may name its columns differently to ours — Item Name rather than Product Name, Cost rather than Price. We can only read the columns in our template, so anything under a different heading is ignored and arrives empty.

Rename the columns to match the template and import again. If products have already come in wrong, undo the import first — from the import history, or with the undo button on the assistant's card if you sent the file there.

My CSV import won't accept my drink sizes

The importer checks a size file before it writes anything, so every one of these stops the import with the row listed. What each means:

• "needs a Pint price" (or whatever your standard measure is) — the column marked with a * has to have a price for every sized drink. That measure is what a bare tap on the till sells, so a blank or 0.00 there would ring it at £0. Note the check is per DRINK, not per row: if you list a drink over several rows, the standard measure just has to appear on one of them.
• "has size prices but no Size Set Name" — every sized drink needs to say which set it joins, e.g. Draught.
• "appears twice with different Pint prices" — two rows for one drink give the same measure two different prices. Sizes merge happily across rows; a genuine disagreement does not.
• "appears both with and without a Size Set Name" — pick one. A drink is either sold by measure or at a single price.
• "Mark the standard size with a *" — exactly one measure column must carry it. This is about your header row, not any one product.
• "would get two different size sets" — sizes are set per category, so every drink in a category shares one set. The message names the category and both sets: split those drinks into separate categories, or give them the same set.
• "priced but not sized" — those rows have no Category Name. The products imported at their standard price; give them a category and they pick the sizes up.
• "drink sizes are not switched on for this account" — the feature has to be enabled before a file with size columns will import. Your account manager does that. The file is rejected rather than half-imported on purpose, so you never end up with the products in but the prices missing.

A 0.00 in a NON-standard measure is not an error — it means "not sold in that measure", exactly like leaving the cell blank. A bottle-only wine should have a price in the bottle column and nothing in the others.

My products imported but their sizes didn't

The importer writes the products first and their sizes second. If the second step fails you get a message saying exactly that, and the products are on Items → Products at their standard-measure price. Nothing is lost: price them on Items → Sizes, or revert the import from the import history page and upload again. See Drink sizes.

A menu page is blank, but the till shows everything

If Items → Menus → (your menu) opens empty while your devices are selling the same menu perfectly, the menu is fine — one product on it has a value the editor can't display, and the page stops rather than show you a half-menu.

The page now lists exactly which products are involved, and the till keeps working the whole time. The usual cause is a tile label longer than 8 characters, which only a bulk import could create. Fix the named products under Items → Products — shorten the tile label — then reload the menu page.

Editing is deliberately switched off on that screen. If you could edit and save it while it looked empty, the save would take the menu literally and empty it for real.

A per-menu price isn't applying

A blank per-menu price falls back to the base price — it doesn't mean "free" or "unchanged from a previous override". To charge a different price on a specific menu, set the override on that menu. See Per-menu price override.

I can't change an option's price in the menu editor

If the price box next to a modifier option is greyed out in the classic menu editor, that menu has its own price for the option. Change it on the modifier group: Items → Modifiers → the group → Different price on some menus. Clear the box there to go back to the option's normal price on that menu.

A product I hid from a channel is still showing

Work through these in order:

• Till only, and recently changed — the terminal applies the switch when it updates to the current app version. The online channels apply immediately.
• You hid the wrong thing — the Availability toggles control channels; which menus run where is separate. A product can be hidden from a channel and still reachable because a different menu carries it.
• You meant to hide it everywhere — use Archive instead. Availability hides per channel; archive removes it from every channel and every menu at once, and you can restore it later.

My beer stock drops too fast, and only on drinks with options

Check the option's Main item used box (you'll only see it if you track stock with recipes). It says how much of the product itself one of that option takes out of stock, and it starts at 1, the whole item. A shandy sold as a modifier on a pint takes a full pint of the beer off your cellar until you set it to 0.5. The line under the box says it in words, for example "= half the item".

Whatever the option adds, like the lemonade in a shandy or the splash on a lager top, goes in the option's own recipe under Add-ons that consume stock, not in this box. A lager top stays at 1: a full pint of beer, plus its splash from its recipe. If the box shows a warning, check you haven't typed the splash here by mistake.

Two things that catch people out:

• Sizes multiply with it. A half shandy uses half of a half — a quarter of a pint. That's correct, not a bug.
• Deleting an option loses the setting. If you "rename" an option by removing it and adding a new one, the new one starts back at 1 and the over-counting comes back. Edit the name in place instead.

What's next

• Items FAQ — quick answers.
• Modifiers and options · VAT rates · Create a product
• Product photo and abbreviation — the tile-label limit.
• Drink sizes — size sets, and the two ways to set a lot of drinks up at once.