Design a printer ticket

A printer ticket is the chit that prints at a printer station. You design it on a free canvas, choosing the paper width (58, 72 or 80 mm) when you create it. Each ticket shows a thumbnail preview and how many elements it has.

What you can put on a chit

The canvas is block-based: you add sections, choose a column layout for each (one column, or two/three columns in various splits), and drop blocks into them. For a kitchen chit the blocks are deliberately kept to what a kitchen needs:

• Order info — order details like the order number, table/area, date and time, covers, order type (dine in / collection), pickup time, customer name, the device, or the cashier. Pick which detail each block shows.

• Items — the list of items on the order, with their quantities and choices. An Items block can optionally be filtered, two ways:

  • By top-level menu category (e.g. Food only, or Drinks only), so one chit shows a FOOD section and a DRINKS section.
  • By course (e.g. Starters only, or Mains only), using your own course names, so one chit reads STARTERS then MAINS then DESSERTS instead.

  Either way the recipe is the same: add one Items block per section, filter each, and put a Text heading above it. Anything not covered by a filter still prints: it goes to an unfiltered Items block if the ticket has one, or into an extra section added at the bottom — a dish can never drop off a chit because of a filter.

• Text / note — fixed text you type in, e.g. a heading or a standing instruction.

• Divider — a horizontal line to separate sections.

• Spacer — blank vertical space for breathing room.

Drag blocks to reorder them, click one to select and edit it, and switch a section's column layout to reflow its blocks. The canvas shows a scaled preview of the printed chit as you build, using sample order data (including a few real item names from your menu) so it reads true. There's also a test print so you can send a real chit to the printer before going live.

Create a printer ticket

1. 1

   Click New printer ticket

   Pick a starting point — Classic kitchen chit, Compact chit, Pass chit or Blank canvas — each shown as a true print preview. Then give it a name and pick the paper width. 72 mm is the standard.

2. 2

   Design it

   The canvas editor opens. Lay out the ticket, then save.

3. 3

   Assign it to a printer station

   Open a station set to print, and choose this ticket as the layout for one of its ticket slots. A printer station needs both a printer and a layout before it will print.

From the printer-ticket list you can also duplicate, rename and delete a ticket.

The new Ticket editor

We're rolling out a new version of the Ticket editor, one venue at a time. If yours has it, the list page and the designer look different and do a little more. Your saved tickets are exactly the same, and they print exactly the same.

The list

Each ticket is a row with a small picture of the chit, the stations that print it, its paper width and when it was last changed. A ticket a station prints with shows 1 station, 2 stations and so on.

At the end of each row: Test print, Duplicate (the copy is named "(copy)", then "(copy 2)" and so on), Rename and Delete. Above the list, Search tickets narrows it as you type, Export downloads the list as a spreadsheet file (CSV), and ticking two or more rows lets you delete them together.

The designer

• Components (left): Items, Text / note, Divider, Spacer, and every order detail as its own entry — Table, Station, Date & time, Covers, Order number, Order kind, Pickup time, Customer name, Device, Cashier / server and Guest note. Type in the search box to find one. Click an entry to add it, or drag it onto the paper.
• The paper (middle): the chit, drawn exactly as it prints, with sample items from your menu — one from each of your categories. Move the pointer over it to see how it is built: each section gets an outline and a small tab with its name, and each block shows its name. The buttons above it switch between a table order, a takeaway and a long order.
• Settings (right): one level at a time — the whole ticket, then a section (columns, alignment, spacing), then a block (size, bold, and for Items the category and course filters).
• Test print is in the top bar and in the Ticket settings. Your latest change is saved first, so the chit that prints is the one on screen.
• Preview on paper shows the ticket printed for three sample orders.

Every setting you change shows on the paper, and the block you changed flashes an outline so you can see where.

• Only these categories and Only these courses on an Items block: the paper shows the dishes that block keeps. Dishes no Items block picks up are drawn greyed at the bottom, marked as the extra section the printer adds, so nothing is ever missing from a chit.
• The guest note: if you haven't placed the Guest note block, the paper shows the note greyed where the printer puts it (above the first Items block). Add the Guest note block to put it somewhere else.
• If a detail has nothing to print on the sample order you're looking at (Table on a takeaway, say), the paper shows a placeholder with a link such as show on Table order.
• Medium and Large text are greyed out inside a column, because a row of columns prints as one line.

Related

• Design a KDS screen layout — the other layout kind.
• Set up printer stations — where to pick this ticket.
• Register a kitchen printer — the printer side.