Change your menu by asking

Assistant lets you change your menu by typing what you want in plain English — "add a Sunday roast for £25 with a choice of pork, chicken or lamb", or "put every burger up 50p". It works out the change, shows you exactly what it will do, and waits. Nothing on your menu changes until you press Approve.

The Assistant page, and your past conversations

Items → Assistant is the full-screen version. Your saved conversations run down the left, New chat is at the top of them, and the box you type in sits at the bottom of the screen where it stays put — the conversation scrolls above it, the page itself doesn't. Your last 20 conversations are kept there; anything you actually approved stays in History forever, whatever you do to the chat.

If your account is on the new assistant

Some accounts have been moved to our new assistant. If yours has, Items → Assistant opens the new assistant full-screen instead of the chat described above. You ask for menu changes in the same plain words, and the rule is the same: every change comes to you as a proposal, and nothing changes until you approve it. A menu change still opens on the card described below, with the same Approve button and the same Undo in History.

The new assistant can also suggest other kinds of change, such as a discount, moving a table to another section, or renaming a category. Those come to you as proposals too, under Proposals (open any one from the link in the chat). You approve, reject or undo each one there.

It's in the corner of every page now

You don't have to go to Items → Assistant to talk to it. There's an assistant button in the bottom-right corner of every page in the portal — a small one with a sparkle on it that says Ask. Press it and the conversation opens along the bottom of the page, sitting over whatever you were doing, with the same chat, the same cards and the same Approve button. On a phone it fills the bottom of the screen.

The one place it does not appear is a full-screen builder — the beta menu builder, the online-shop site builder and a bookings flow builder. Those screens run edge to edge and use the bottom corner for their own controls, so the button would sit on top of them. Leave the builder and it is back.

It's one conversation, and there is nothing to pick. Up to three assistants are behind it: Menus (this one), Help (answers questions about using Tillable from the help centre) and Reports (the "ask your data" chat — real numbers and charts about your sales). Their names sit in a dark strip along the top, but there's nothing to press up there. You type, and whoever can help takes it. A short line in the middle of the conversation — Menus joined — tells you who is answering, so you always know. Ask about your menu, then ask about last week's sales, and it changes hands on its own while you carry on typing. The box you type in sits at the bottom.

Help is always there. Whatever else your venue has turned on, the Help assistant is part of Tillable for everyone — so there is always at least one assistant to talk to. It reads the help centre and nothing else: it never sees your menu, your sales or your customers, which is why it can be on everywhere without anything to set up.

The first time it opens, it introduces itself. The first thing you see is three short screens: what you can ask, who is here — each one with an example of the sort of thing they take — and whether you'd like to give them names. That only happens once. After that, opening the button takes you straight to the conversation.

You can name them, or leave them exactly as they are. On the last screen each assistant offers a few names to tap, or My own to type whatever you like — so Menus can be Max, Help can be Bess, Reports can be Vera, and the joined line then reads Max joined. If you'd rather not bother, No names — keep Menus, Help and Reports is the button directly underneath, and nothing changes. If your account only has one assistant there is nobody to tell apart, so it skips the naming and takes you straight in.

To change a name later, press the faces in the dark strip along the top of the panel. That opens Your three, where each one can be renamed — or you can turn the names off altogether and go back to Menus, Help and Reports. A new name shows up straight away, both in the strip and on the joined lines in the conversation you are already reading. Turning names off keeps the ones you chose, so you get them back if you turn them on again.

The page behind stays live while you chat: you can still use the menu down the left and the page underneath without closing anything.

Or just tap ⌥ twice. Anywhere in the portal, two quick taps of the Option key (Alt on Windows) opens the assistant without reaching for the mouse — and two more puts it away. It only works while you're looking at a Tillable tab, and it never triggers while you're typing an accented letter.

The two ways in do different things, on purpose:

• The round button takes you to whatever needs you. If a reply came back while the panel was shut, it opens straight into that conversation. If nothing is waiting, it shows you your conversations — tap one to carry it on, or Start a new conversation.
• ⌥ twice always starts a new conversation, for when you want to ask something unrelated without losing your place. It skips the list entirely. Whatever you were saying is saved: press the round button afterwards, or open the assistant's own page, and it's waiting.

Getting back to the list. Once you're in a conversation, the arrow at the top left takes you back to your conversations without closing the assistant. The ✕ next to it still shuts the whole thing.

Open and Closed. In that list, anything you've written in over the last two days sits under Open. Leave a conversation alone for two days and it moves down to Closed — nothing is deleted, it's just out of the way. Write in a closed one and it comes straight back up to Open. Your last 20 conversations are kept either way.

Don't want the keyboard shortcut? Turn it off in Store settings → Assistant. The round button stays either way.

You get a +1 when a reply lands. If a reply arrives while the panel is closed, a small red count appears on the corner button, just like a messaging app. Open the conversation and the count clears.

When a conversation outgrows the corner you can carry it on full screen, on that assistant's own page — nothing is lost on the way. It's a button just above the box you type in, and it says where it is about to take you: Continue in the menu assistant, Continue in the help centre, Continue in reports. That button only shows up when there is somewhere to go — before anything has answered, or when you are already on that page, it isn't there.

To put it away, press the X at the top (or the Escape key on a keyboard) and it folds back down into the button in the corner. Closing it doesn't lose anything: open it again and your conversation — including a half-typed message — is right where you left it, even if you've moved to a different page in between.

It also knows which page you're on when you ask, so on a product or a report you can say "put this one up 50p" and it understands what "this one" likely points at — and it still shows you the full card to approve, exactly as always. The Items → Assistant page hasn't gone anywhere; it's the same assistant, with History and What-it-remembers alongside, and the corner button stays out of the way on that page.

It shows you what it is doing

A real menu question takes a moment — it has to go and read your menu before it can answer. While it works you'll see what it is actually doing: Looking at your menus, Reading "Main Menu", Writing up the change. If it runs long, the seconds tick up next to it, so you can always tell it's working rather than stuck.

It can read a whole menu at a time now, so questions that span a menu — "does my mid-price menu have the same dishes as the main one?", "put everything on this menu up 20%" — are things it can actually go and check, including which prices are set on that menu specifically and which come from the product.

If a job is genuinely too big for one go, it says so plainly and offers to do it in batches. It won't ask you to repeat yourself.

How a change works

1. You ask. Type the change the way you'd say it to a member of staff.
2. It asks back, if it needs to. Adding a dish, it will ask which section it goes in and which VAT rate it takes — neither can be guessed from a name, and both are yours to decide. It asks everything it needs in one go, so you are never sent round twice. If you'd rather it just picked, say so and it will tell you what it chose.
3. You review. Anything that touches more than one thing arrives as a table: one row per product, what it costs today and what it would cost after. Every row, however many there are — a change to forty burgers lists forty burgers, not the first few. Prices are shown in pounds so a slipped decimal point is obvious, and the same card names the section and the menus. On a phone the table scrolls sideways on its own; the page stays put.
4. You approve or reject. Approve applies everything in one go. Reject throws it away and nothing happens.

It knows what you have already approved

Once you press Approve, the assistant knows. Ask it for the next thing and it carries on from the change you just saved — it will not ask you to approve the same change twice, and it will not file it again. The same goes for a change you turned down, or one you undid from History: the assistant reads the current state of every change it filed in that conversation from your own records, not from what it said at the time. If a change is still waiting for you, it says so once and gets on with what you asked next.

It remembers your ways — and you're in charge of that memory

Tell it something lasting about how your venue runs — "new lagers always go in the Draught section", "always ask before touching prices" — and it keeps a note, so the next conversation already knows. It tells you when it does ("noted — new lagers go in Draught"), and it never stores prices: those change, so it always reads them fresh from your menu.

Everything it remembers is yours to see and to remove. Press What it remembers at the top of Assistant to read every note, each with the date it was made — one click on Delete and that note is forgotten from your very next question. There is nothing it knows about your venue that isn't on that page.

A big change reads as one proposal, not a hundred boxes

Ask for something that touches a lot of products — "give every draught beer a stock recipe" — and the card lays it out the way a supplier's proposal does, rather than as one panel per change.

• Changes of the same kind are grouped under one heading, with a count beside it: "Add an ingredient — 13 changes".
• Where every change in a group is the same shape, they become one table: the column headings once at the top, then a line each.
• Anything the whole group has in common — "it arrives blank: no cost, no stock count and no allergens" — is said once underneath instead of repeated on every line.
• At the bottom, a sign-off states the size of what you are about to do before the buttons: "This proposal makes 26 changes."

Nothing is hidden by any of this. Every change still has its own tick, and every amount is still a box you can type in. A change that carries more detail — a price it is replacing, an ingredient that drops off a recipe, a warning of its own — keeps its own panel, because that detail is the point.

What the card tells you

• Prices, with the current price next to the new one.
• The whole spec of a new dish: the section it will sit in, every menu it goes on by name, the VAT rate it will be sold at, and any choice lists on it. If a dish has no section it says it will show under "Uncategorised", and if it has no VAT rate it says so in the same highlighted way a VAT change is shown — so nothing about a new dish is decided quietly.
• VAT changes on their own line, because they affect your VAT return.
• "Used by N other products" when you change a choice list that other dishes share — so you know the change reaches more than the dish you asked about.
• "No allergens or kitchen printer routing set yet" on a brand-new dish. The assistant cannot set either of those. Allergens live in the product editor; for routing, the note links straight to the Menu routing screen with that dish already filtered, so setting where it prints is one click — not a hunt.

Approve some of it, and change what's wrong

You don't have to take a change whole. Every row on a card has a tick, and they all start on. Untick one and it simply doesn't happen — the rest still does. So "put every burger up 50p" over forty burgers, with three you'd rather leave alone, is three clicks and one Approve, not a conversation you have to start again.

Where the number is yours to choose, you can type over it. Prices and recipe amounts have a box in the "New price" or "New amount" column: type 8.80 instead of the 9.00 it suggested and that is the price that lands, recorded as yours. Type something that isn't a price and it tells you in the box, before you press anything.

A few things are deliberately not editable:

• Size prices worked out from a rule ("doubles are 70% more") show a note saying so. Those are calculated from each product's own standard price at the moment you approve, so there's nowhere for a typed number to go. You can still untick any row you don't want, or ask for the price you had in mind.
• A part of a change that another part depends on. If a change creates a new section and then puts products into it, turning down the section greys out the products too — they've nowhere to go without it. Tick the section back on and they come back.
• Whole steps that aren't lists — "add this product", "put it on the Drinks menu" — have one tick each, on the step, rather than a tick per line.

Above the Approve button you'll see a plain summary of what you've changed — "2 rows are turned down and 1 row carries your number" — and the confirmation says it again, so a partial approval never looks like a whole one.

It learns from what you correct — but it does not retrain

Every row you turn down and every number you type over is kept as a note, and the assistant reads them before its next suggestion. So if it keeps pricing your house wine wrong and you keep fixing it, it stops.

Be clear on what that is and isn't. It remembers your corrections and is told about them next time. It is not retraining or getting cleverer on its own — nothing about the assistant itself changes. If you delete a correction it is genuinely forgotten from your next question on.

They live on the same What it remembers page as its notes about your venue, under "What you have corrected", each with what you changed and when, each with a Delete. Removing one doesn't touch your menu and doesn't touch History — what actually happened is recorded there either way.

Your conversations come back when you do

The assistant now keeps your conversations. The moment you send a message it is saved, and when you come back to Items → Assistant — after a refresh, tomorrow, or from a different computer — your last conversation is right where you left it, with a list of your previous conversations down the left-hand side. Click one to reread it or carry it on; the assistant remembers what you were talking about.

• New chat starts a fresh conversation without losing the old ones.
• Your last 20 conversations are kept — older ones drop off quietly.
• Deleting a conversation only tidies your list. Every change you actually approved stays in History forever, and deleting a chat never undoes anything on your menu.
• Anything you ask about your menu from the corner button is saved the same way, and shows up in the same list.

Your conversations are kept, so we can make it better

Everything you ask the assistant, and everything it answers, is now saved against your venue — including the times it says no, misunderstands you, or falls over. That last part is the point. Until now the only thing kept was a change it managed to put together; if it couldn't help you, nothing anywhere recorded that it had been asked.

What's kept: your question, its answer, any questions it asked you back, which of your menu it looked at, and how long it took. Nothing else — no payment details, nothing about your customers.

Who can see it: you, and Tillable support. We read them to find where the assistant is falling short and fix it. Nobody outside Tillable sees them, and they are never shown to another venue.

It still does not retrain. Same as with your corrections above: a person reads these and improves how the assistant is briefed. The assistant itself does not change on its own, and your conversations are never fed back into it automatically.

If you'd rather a particular thing wasn't written down, don't type it here — the same as you would with any note in the back office.

Big price changes ask twice

If a change reprices more than ten products, cuts any price by more than half, or sets anything to £0.00, you'll be asked to type APPLY before the Approve button unlocks. That's deliberate — it's the one mistake that costs real money before anyone notices.

Big jobs come in steps — and it says so

Some asks are too big for one proposal — a whole new menu with sections, VAT and dozens of products, say. The assistant splits that into steps, and it tells you the plan everywhere you'd look: a Step 1 of 2 badge at the top of the card, a line under the title ("Sections and VAT first, your 17 products right after"), and the same promise again next to the Approve button.

Approving a step that isn't the last one shows progress, not a green tick: "Step 1 of 2 saved", what's still to come, and an Add them now button that starts the next step for you — one tap instead of typing, and it costs the same single daily question your typed message would have. The green Saved to your menu tick only ever appears when everything you asked for exists.

It asks about kitchen stations at the end

If your venue runs kitchen screens and a change just created products that aren't sent to any kitchen yet, the assistant closes the loop itself: "Your new products are not sent to a kitchen yet, so their orders will not print kitchen tickets. Do you want to add stations?" — Yes, set them up sends that request for you (it then proposes the routing on a normal approval card, so nothing reaches a kitchen without your Approve); Not now simply closes it. The yellow warning banner on your Products page still keeps watch either way.

When your tills see it

Approved changes reach your tills the next time the app refreshes — pull down on the till's home screen, or restart the app. This is the same as any other menu change you make in the portal. A till mid-service will not change under your staff's hands.

See what changed, and undo it

History (the button at the top right of Assistant) lists every change the assistant has suggested for your venue, newest first, with what you decided:

• Waiting for you — suggested, not yet approved. Press Review it — approve or reject on that entry to open the card and decide.
• Applied — it went through, with who approved it and when.
• Rejected — you turned it down; nothing happened.
• Put back — it went through, and was later undone.
• Expired — nobody decided within seven days.

Open any entry to see exactly what it did: the same old price → new price lines you saw before approving, plus any notes that came with it.

Putting a change back

An entry that says Applied has a Put it back button. It restores everything that change touched — prices go back to what they were, a dish it added is taken off the menu (kept, not deleted, so your past sales still add up), and anything it moved goes back where it was. Tills pick it up on their next app refresh, the same as any other menu change.

Putting a change back is itself recorded, as an entry that links to the one it undid, so the trail stays complete. You can put that one back too, which re-applies the original.

If you have edited the menu yourself since, the assistant will refuse rather than guess: it tells you your menu has changed and asks you to sort it out in the editor or ask again. It never partly undoes something — either the whole change goes back, or nothing does.

Make a new menu, with things already on it

"Make me a Christmas menu and put the burgers on it" is one ask, so it is one card. The assistant creates the menu and puts the products on it in the same change — you approve once. Products you already have go on as they are; if you also asked for new dishes, those get created and placed in the same go.

A new menu is on no till yet. Making a menu does not put it in front of anyone: you choose which devices show it, or add it to a mode. The card says so and links you straight there. And when you do, tills pick up menu changes on their next refresh — not instantly.

If you already have a menu with that name, the assistant will say so rather than making a second one. Nine times in ten that means you meant the one you have. If you genuinely want two, give the new one a different name.

New menus go to the end of your menu list, not the front — your existing order is left alone.

Retiring a menu you no longer use

Ask it to get rid of a menu you've finished with — "delete the Test menu" — and it will retire it rather than delete it. The menu stops showing in the portal and disappears from your tills at their next refresh, but it is kept in full, exactly as it was.

If the menu still has products on it, the card says how many before you approve. That matters: retiring a menu takes everything on it off your tills. To bring a retired menu back, open History and press Put it back on that entry.

Fold two duplicate products into one

If the same product ended up on your menu twice — often after an import — ask the assistant to merge them: "merge these two Malbecs into one". It will always ask you which one survives and never guess. The survivor keeps its own name, price, VAT, recipe and picture. The duplicate's menu placements, size prices, choice lists, recipe and kitchen routing move onto the survivor wherever the survivor doesn't already have them, and the duplicate is then retired — not deleted — so it's kept in full and you can put it back from History.

Your sales history is never touched. Past sales of the old product stay exactly as they were rung; your reports simply show the old name for the old sales and the surviving one from here on.

The card shows you the survivor, what gets retired, and exactly what moves across before you approve. A few cases ask you to type APPLY first, because they affect money or a live sale: the two products are on different VAT rates (the survivor's rate wins, shown on its own highlighted line), the duplicate has sold in the current period, or it is on an open tab right now.

Turn a size-like choice list into real sizes

Plenty of venues sell measures as a choice list, because before sizes existed that was the only way — "Single / Double" on every spirit, "Pint / Half" on the draught. Ask the assistant to sell those by size instead and it can do it:

Change all my spirits to have the single/double size rather than the modifier single/double, and all the prices now are for a single — the doubles are 70% more.

It will ask you two things first, and neither is ever guessed:

1. Which measure is your normal price? Whichever you name becomes each product's standard price, and one of it takes one measure out of stock.
2. What about the other products in those sections? Sizes are set on a section, so everything in that section is sold in those measures. It lists those products by name and waits for your answer. If you'd rather they weren't sized, move them to a different section first.

Then the card shows you the whole table before you approve — every product on it, the price it is on today, and what each measure would cost, with nothing cut off the bottom of the list. Those are today's prices, read as the card opens, so if you changed a price after asking, the card shows the new one.

You never give it a set of prices. You tell it the rule — "the doubles are 70% more", or "keep each option's existing uplift" — and it works out every penny from your live menu.

A few things worth knowing:

• The choice list is kept, just taken off those products. You'll still find it under Items → Modifiers.
• It is reversible from History, exactly like any other change.
• If a product in one of those sections has no price, the conversion can't run — the card names that product and the Approve button stays off until you price it or move it.
• A conversion is filed on its own. If you asked for something else in the same breath, it will do that as a separate change.
• If you'd previously pinned one of the measures to a serving size (Inventory v2's "manual serving size" override, used for stock reports), approving removes that pin for you — the new size takes over instead. The card tells you which measure that affects before you approve.

Reprice a size across the board

If your products are already sold by size — singles and doubles on the spirits, say — you can reprice a whole size in one sentence: "all my prices are for singles, the doubles are 70% more." The assistant looks at the size sets you already have, tells you which one covers those products, and files one change that reprices every double from each product's own standard price.

• The standard size is never touched — the price on the product is the standard size, so changing that is an ordinary price change and the assistant will treat it as one.
• The card shows every product's today → new price before you approve — every one of them, however long the list — and names any product it would skip (one not sold in that size, for instance). Nothing is invented for a size a product is not sold in — a rule only moves prices that are already there. On a shelf where nothing is sold in that size yet, the rule refuses; give it the numbers instead ("Put a price on one size", below).
• You give it the rule, never the prices — it works out every penny from your live menu, and it is reversible from History like everything else.

Put a price on one size

The other half of the same shelf. When you have a number in mind rather than a percentage — "put the double Hendrick's up to £9.20", or "all the doubles are £8" — just say it. You get one card listing every product and size you named, today's price beside the new one, and you can retype any of them before you approve.

• It can also start selling a product in a size its section already offers. If you do not pour a bottle as a double today, say "we do sell it as a double now, £9.20" — the card shows that row as Not sold → £9.20 and says how many sizes are being added, so nothing is added quietly. A size the product's section does not offer at all still cannot be priced here; put the section on that size set first (ask the assistant to set one up — see below — or use the Sizes page).
• If the size you are adding is not the standard one and the product has no standard-size price yet, give both prices in the same ask — on its own the second size would leave the product unable to ring.
• Setting the standard size changes the product's own price, everywhere it is sold without sizes. The card says so, by name, before you approve. The standard size cannot go below 1p.
• The number that lands is the one on the card when you press Approve — yours if you typed over it, and it is recorded as yours.

Set up sizes from scratch

If your wines have never been sold by the glass — no size set, no choice list to convert — just describe it:

Make my wines 125ml, 175ml and 250ml. The prices on them now are the 175ml. 125ml is £4.50 and 250ml is £8.50 on the Picpoul, …

Before it files anything it asks the two things only you can answer: which measure is your normal price (that one becomes each product's own price and is what a bare tap on the till rings), and whether the other products in those sections should be sized too — sizes go on a section, so it reads the section, names every product in it, and asks. Then you get one card with everything on it:

• the set and its sizes, with the standard one marked;
• every section it goes on, with how many products that is;
• every price you gave, one row per product and size — a product whose standard size you did not price simply keeps its current price for it, and a size you did not price on a product means that product is not sold in that size (which is fine, and it says so);
• a highlighted line if any of those products has a different price on one menu, because a section sold by size prices from the standard size and that per-menu price stops applying.

A whole shelf gains size buttons, so you type APPLY to approve. The rows on this card cannot be ticked or edited one at a time — it is one decision; untick the whole card or ask for different numbers. Undo from History takes the set, its sections and its prices off again and puts every product's own price back — unless you have repriced the shelf or changed a section since, in which case it tells you which and asks you to undo that first.

A few things it will say no to, by name, before you approve: a product in those sections with no price (there is nothing to set its standard size from — price it first); a section already sold in a different set (switching a section between sets throws away the old prices, so that stays on the Sizes page with its own confirmation); and a product that sits in two sections on two different sets. If it tells you sizes are not switched on for your account, that is a setting on our side — ask us and we will turn it on.

"This one is only sold in pints"

A size set is attached to a section, so every product in that section is offered those measures — but each product prices each measure on its own. A drink with no price for a size is not sold in that size, and that is a normal thing to want: pint-only stouts, bottle-only wines, a spirit you only pour as a double. On the till, tapping that drink with the other size selected rings nothing and says which sizes it does come in.

The assistant understands this now, so you can just ask about it:

Which of my draught beers are only sold in pints?

It reads that straight off your sizes and answers — including a shelf you have sized but not finished pricing yet, which is the same list of drinks still owed a half price.

And it can now make the change for you. Just say it:

Peroni Draught and Guinness 0.0 are only sold in pints

You get a card listing every drink, every size and the exact price it will delete — not a summary — and because those prices are not kept anywhere else, you have to type APPLY to turn on the Approve button. Untick any row to keep that size on sale.

Undo from History puts every penny back, exactly as it was. Nothing else will — there is no other copy of a cleared size price anywhere.

A few things it will not do, and will say so:

• It will never take off your standard size. The pint is the product's own price, so removing it would leave the drink with no price at all. If you want to stop selling something entirely, that is archiving it, and the assistant will offer that instead.
• It will not "remove" a size the drink is already not sold in — there is nothing there to take off, and it will tell you it is already how you want it.
• It will not delete sizes and change size prices in the same change. Ask for them one at a time.

Changed your mind later? Two ways back. Undo on the change in History restores every price exactly as it was. Or just tell the assistant the new price — "we do sell Guinness in halves after all, £2.80" — and it files that as a fresh price for a size the section still offers, shown on the card as Not sold → £2.80. Undo is the one that brings the old number back; the other is a new number you give it.

You can still do all of it by hand on Items → Sizes → your set → Prices, using the "Only Pint" column on the right (it is named after your own standard size, so a Single/Double set says "Only Single"). Ticking it clears that drink's other prices; typing a price back into one of those cells unticks it.

Set up stock recipes for your drinks

If you track stock, every drink needs to know what it pours: a spirit takes 50ml off its bottle, a pint takes 500ml off the keg. Doing that by hand, one drink at a time, is the slow part — so do one, then ask for the rest.

Set up your first bottle however you like (the assistant can do it, or use the Recipes page). Then say:

"do the same for the rest of the spirits — 50ml each"

It reads the one you already did, copies the pattern across the shelf, and shows you one card listing every drink and every pour before anything is saved. Approve once. If a drink already had a recipe, the card shows you what it was and what it becomes, line by line — nothing changes silently. Undo puts it all back.

Three things it deliberately leaves alone:

• Costs. A new ingredient arrives blank. What you pay for a bottle comes from your purchases and the Ingredients page — the assistant never guesses a price.
• Allergens. Never, for anything. See below.
• Food recipes. A lasagne is a list of a dozen things with weights that matter; it will point you at the Recipes page instead of guessing. Drinks are the rinse-and-repeat case, so drinks are what it does.

If your spirits are sold as singles and doubles, you do not need two recipes — the size already knows a double is two singles' worth of stock.

"My stock is all in ml — I want kegs and bottles"

This one catches people out, because two different things sound like the same thing. Ask for it in your own words and the assistant will sort it:

"all my draught is showing in ml, it should be in kegs — they're 50 litre kegs"

There are two separate settings on every ingredient, and you almost always want the second one:

• What it is measured in — ml, grams, or just a count. This is what a recipe pours and what a sale takes off. A pint taking 500ml off the keg only makes sense if the keg is measured in ml, so this one usually stays put.
• What you count it by — "Keg", "Bottle", "Case". Your word, plus how much one of them holds. This is what your Stock page and your Count sheet show you, so instead of "50000 ml" you read "1 Keg + 88%", and instead of "1400 ml" you read "2 Bottles".

So when your spirits look wrong "in ml", it is the second one that is missing. The assistant sets it for the whole shelf in one card — every ingredient, its container and its size, for you to approve in one go. Nothing about your stock levels, your recipes or your costs moves.

It will ask you for the sizes, and it is worth answering carefully: kegs come in 50, 30 and 20 litres and bottles in 700ml or a litre, and a wrong size makes every count wrong afterwards. Tell it once — "the lager kegs are 50 litre, the spirits are 700ml bottles" — and it does the arithmetic.

Changing what something is measured in is the one it will not do for you, on purpose: every recipe using that ingredient is written in that unit, so switching it would quietly change what every drink pours. That one stays on the Ingredients page, and it is rarely what you actually wanted.

Allergens: it can add one, never take one away

Ask it to "put the allergens on my food" and it will — but only where your own data already says so, and it will show you exactly where each one came from.

It copies, it never guesses. An allergen goes on a dish because an ingredient in that dish's own recipe is tagged with it. If your Halloumi is tagged for milk and the Halloumi Burger's recipe uses Halloumi, the assistant can put milk on the burger — and the card names Halloumi, in a column headed Copied from, beside every single row.

It will not work one out from the name. A "Halloumi Burger" almost certainly contains milk. Almost certainly is not good enough for something that can put a customer in hospital, so if the recipe does not say it, the assistant will not record it. It will tell you so, and tell you the two ways to fix it: tag the ingredient on the Ingredients page, or add that ingredient to the dish's recipe first.

It can never remove one. There is no way to ask. If an allergen should come off a dish, you do that yourself in the product editor — the assistant will point you there and will not offer a workaround.

It will never say a dish is safe. Not "no nuts", not "gluten free". An ingredient nobody has tagged yet looks exactly like an ingredient that is genuinely free of something, and the assistant cannot tell the difference. It tells you what your recipes say, and nothing more.

Why record it at all, if the recipe already shows it? Because an allergen that is only derived from a recipe quietly disappears if someone edits that recipe or archives the ingredient. Recorded on the dish, it stays put. For a written allergen statement that is the whole difference.

You tick and untick rows on the card exactly like any other change, and Undo works the same way — except that putting one back can never leave a dish looking safer than it is: the allergen still shows from the recipe it was copied from.

Tell it where a dish should print

If you use kitchen screens, every dish has to be routed to one or it never reaches the kitchen. You can now just say it: "the cheeseburger needs to print in the kitchen as well as the pass", or "send all the desserts to the pass".

• It replaces the list, it does not add to it. The card shows you where each dish prints today and where it will print after, side by side, so you can see what is being taken away as well as added.
• A kitchen losing a dish is silent — that screen just stops showing it, and nobody standing at it is told. So the card names every dish that stops printing somewhere, and which screen it stops printing at.
• A dish routed to no kitchen at all stops the whole order going through, not just that line. It is a real thing to want, and the card says plainly what it costs before you approve.
• If you only have one kitchen screen, everything already goes to it whatever the routing says. The card tells you that rather than looking like it did something.

Creating, renaming or retiring a kitchen screen is still yours, on the Stations page.

Make a new VAT rate

If the rate you need does not exist yet — a 12.5% for hot food, a zero rate for takeaway — you can ask for it: "add a 12.5% VAT rate and put both puddings on it". The rate and the products that move onto it come on one card, so you approve the whole decision at once rather than in two goes.

This is the one change that asks you to type APPLY, and it is worth knowing why. VAT here is inclusive: the customer pays the same total whatever the rate says. So a wrong rate never shows up at the till, never shows up on a receipt, and nobody complains — it shows up as a wrong number on your VAT return.

• Your past orders are safe. Every order keeps the VAT it was actually sold at, so a new or wrong rate only affects sales from here on.
• It cannot make a rate your default. The default is what keypad and custom-amount sales use, so changing it would move takings that have nothing to do with your menu. That stays on the Tax page.
• If the name is taken, it may be a rate you retired. Names stay reserved even after a rate is retired. Putting the old one back keeps every product already pointing at it — making a second one with a new name does not — so the assistant will ask rather than invent one.
• It checks what you already have first. Before it makes a rate, and before it asks which rate a new product should take, the assistant reads your venue's existing VAT rates — including the retired ones — so it will tell you if the name is already taken by a rate you retired, rather than making a duplicate.

Change what is on a choice list

The options on a list you already have — milk choices, extras, which meat — are yours to change by asking: "put an oat milk on for 50p", "the doubles are two pounds now", "call the soya milk soy".

Only what you name is changed. Everything else on the list stays exactly as it is, so you never have to list the whole thing back.

• A new option goes on the end, in the order you asked for them.
• Renaming does not change orders you have already taken. Those keep the name they were rung with, so your old receipts and reports still read correctly. It changes what new ones say.
• Retiring is not deleting. The option comes off every till at the next menu update, and orders that already chose it still show it properly.
• A choice list is shared. It belongs to your menu, not to one dish, so every product carrying it changes together. The card tells you how many.

Two things it will send you elsewhere for:

• Taking off the option that comes up first. On a pick-one list, one option is preselected — take that one away and the till shows the list with nothing chosen. Pick a different one to come up first on the Choice lists page, then ask again.
• Taking off the last option. A choice list with nothing on it still asks the question. If you want the whole thing gone, say so — retiring the list is a different job from emptying it.

How many questions you get a day

You get 50 assistant questions a day, and the count resets at midnight.

That allowance is shared across all three assistants — this one, the help assistant in the corner, and AI Reporting on the reports side. They are one pot, not three, so fifty questions is fifty questions however you spread them. The count is per venue, not per person, so if your team shares one login you share the fifty between you.

When it runs out, the assistant says so in the chat and tells you it resets at midnight. The Assistant page shows how many you have used today.

Send it a photo of your menu

You do not have to type a menu out. Press the paperclip next to the message box and add a photo of a menu page, a price list or a supplier sheet — or a PDF. It works the same on the Assistant page and in the corner of any other page.

• Up to four photos and one PDF on a single message. Need to send more? Send them in the next one.
• You can add a file and send nothing else — no need to type a word. Say what you want if it helps ("just the starters, please"), but you do not have to.
• Each file shows as a small tag above the box before you send. Press the × on a tag to take it off again.
• A PDF larger than 4MB is more than it can read in one go. Photograph the pages you want changed and send those, or bring the whole document in through Products → Import instead.

What happens next is the same as if you had typed it out: it reads the pages, tells you what it found, and files a change for you to look over and approve. A big photographed menu comes in steps, and it says which step it is on — nothing is applied until you press Approve.

What it will not take from a photo

The assistant treats anything in a picture or a PDF as something to read, not something to obey. So:

• It will never remember a preference because a document said so. The things it remembers about how you run your venue come from you telling it, in your own words, in the chat. (See It remembers your ways, above.)
• If a price is blurred, cut off or ambiguous, it says so and asks — rather than guessing a number and putting it in front of you to approve.
• A photograph is evidence of what you sell. It is not the final word on what you charge: the card still shows you every price before anything changes.

Put a photo on one of your products

Send a photo of a dish and the assistant can put it on that product, so it shows on your tills and on your ordering pages.

Add the photo the same way, then tick Use as a product photo under it. Say which dish it belongs to, in your own words: "put this on the Cheeseburger".

When you tick it, you will see this:

It goes in your picture library when you send, where anyone with the link can open it. That is how your tills and ordering pages show it.

That is worth reading twice, because it is the one thing here that is hard to take back. A product photo has to be public. It is the same as any picture you add on the Products page, and it is how a till or a customer's phone is able to show it at all. So it is your choice, not a guess we make: leave the tick off and the photo stays private, like every other file you send.

Only photos can be ticked. A PDF cannot be a product photo.

What happens next

• You get the usual card to approve, showing the photo it will use and the dish it goes on. Nothing changes until you press Approve.
• If that product already has a picture, the card shows you the old one and the new one side by side and says plainly that it replaces it.
• If you have three burgers, it will ask which one rather than guess.
• Changed your mind after approving? Undo it from your change history and the old picture comes back, exactly as it was.
• Tills show the new picture at their next refresh, like any other menu change.

Things it will not do

• It will not put a photo on a product you did not name.
• It will not go and find a picture from anywhere else. It can only use a photo you sent on that message.
• It cannot make a photo private again once you have sent it as a product photo. If you change your mind, undo the change and remove the picture on the Products page.

Files you send without that tick are stored privately, and they are deleted along with the conversation when it drops off your list.

Send it a spreadsheet, and import it right there

The same paperclip takes a CSV — the spreadsheet you would otherwise upload on Products → Import. Pick it and the whole import happens in the conversation, without going anywhere else.

You get a card in the chat showing exactly what the file will do:

• the menu it will build, section by section, with your own product names and prices so you can read them back;
• how many products will be created, and how many skipped because you already have something with that name;
• anything that must be fixed first, and anything merely worth a look — like a column we don't recognise, or a VAT rate you haven't set up;
• an Import button. Press it and it's done, right there.

Afterwards the card turns into a summary with Undo this import. That removes everything the import created, and touches nothing else — so if it wasn't what you expected, one press puts it back.

A few things worth knowing:

• A spreadsheet here can be up to 1.5MB. That is comfortably more than a 1,000-row menu, but for a very large catalogue use Products → Import, which takes bigger files.
• Sending a spreadsheet does not use up one of your daily questions. It is read on your own device, not by the assistant.
• It is the same importer as Products → Import, with the same rules and the same undo. Your import history lists it either way.

What the assistant is told about your spreadsheet

Unlike a photo, a spreadsheet is never read by the assistant itself. It is opened on your own computer, and all the assistant is told is a short summary: how many products, what the sections and menus are called, and what kinds of problem the file has.

It is never told what is in your rows — not a price, not a description, not a product's details. So you can ask "does this look right?" and get a useful answer, without the contents of your file going anywhere.

How much one message can carry

One message can hold up to 16,000 characters — about four pages — so a whole pasted menu fits, and the same limit applies whether you type on the Assistant page or in the corner of any other page. Go over it and the assistant tells you underneath the box, with your text still in place: trim it or send it in parts, nothing is lost. When you carry on a conversation ("go ahead with step 2"), the assistant keeps a generous chunk of each earlier message in mind, so a big paste doesn't fall out of the conversation one step later.

What it will not do

Some things stay in your hands on purpose:

• Taking an allergen OFF a dish. It can add one — only where your own recipe says so, see below — but it can never remove one. That stays yours, on the Ingredients page. It will also never tell you a dish is free of something.
• Setting up a kitchen screen. It can change which screens a dish prints at — see above — but creating, renaming or retiring a screen is the Stations page. It also cannot see or change the older rules that route a whole section at once, so if a dish prints somewhere it cannot account for, that is why.
• Renaming or re-measuring sizes, and moving a section between sets. It can now build a size set from nothing, put it on your sections and price the whole shelf in one card; reprice a size across the board by a rule ("doubles are 70% more"); put a number on one size of one product — including a size the section offers that the product is not sold in yet ("Not sold → £x"); turn an existing choice list into real sizes; and stop selling a product in a size ("only sold in pints"). All of that is above. What stays on the Sizes page: renaming a set, changing how much stock a size takes out once it exists, and switching a section from one set to another (that throws away the old set's prices, so it has its own confirmation there).
• Choosing your default VAT rate. It can make a new rate and put products on it — see above — but which rate counts as your default is what keypad and custom-amount sales fall back to, so it stays yours on the Tax page.
• Rearranging a choice list, or choosing which option comes up first. It can add, reprice, rename and retire the options — see above — but their order and the preselected one are the Choice lists page. Renaming or retiring the list itself is there too.
• Deleting. It archives instead — the item disappears from your menu but your past sales reports still make sense. You can restore an archived item.
• Deleting a menu. It can make one and it can retire one, but nothing is ever hard-deleted — a retired menu is kept in full and you can put it back.

A note on choices

A choice list like "pork, chicken or lamb" is a single choice — staff pick one. It is not currently possible to force staff to pick one before ringing the dish up; that applies to choice lists however they were created, not just ones the assistant builds.

Related

• Create a product — doing it by hand
• Add-ons, bundles or modifiers — how choice lists work
• Build a menu — arranging what you sell into menus