Till Order Cards

On the till's Tabs screen, every open order shows as a card. Till Order Cards is where you decide what those cards show (the table or tab name, how long it has been open, the total, the items, allergens and more) and how they look.

Find it under Store settings → Till Order Cards.

Your layouts

A layout is a named card design. You can keep several, say one for lunch and one for a busy evening, but one layout is live at a time. The live layout is the card every till draws.

From the list you can:

• Edit a layout to open it in the editor.
• Set live to make a layout the one your tills use. The change reaches your tills within a few seconds; no restart needed.
• Duplicate a layout to try a change without touching the original.
• Delete a layout you no longer need. You can't delete the live one: set another layout live first.

Start from a design

Under Start from a design there are four ready-made cards, each drawn exactly as a till would draw it:

| Design | Good for | | --- | --- | | Headline | The name first and the total at the bottom. | | Receipt | Every item, with prices and options. | | Timer | How long the order has been open. The top turns light amber after an hour and amber after two. | | Ink band | A black top row, with allergens up front. |

1. 1

   Pick a design

   Click one. A new layout is made from it, named after the design, and opens in the editor.

2. 2

   Name it and save

   Give it a name you'll recognise, then click Save in the top bar.

3. 3

   Set it live

   Click Set live when you're happy. Until then your tills keep the card they already use.

The new layouts page

We're rolling out a new version of this page, one venue at a time. If yours has it, the page looks a little different and does a little more. The editor and your saved layouts are the same.

Your layouts shows each layout as a row with a small picture of its card, how many sections and components it has, and when it was last changed. The live one is marked Live on tills. Click a row to open it in the editor.

At the end of each row:

• Set live on tills (the tick) makes that layout the one your tills use. If the card has nothing on it yet, you're asked first, because your tills would show blank cards.
• Duplicate makes a copy and opens it. The copy is named "(copy)", then "(copy 2)" and so on.
• Rename changes the name without opening the editor.
• Delete removes it. The live layout has no Delete: set another layout live first.

Above the list:

• Search layouts narrows the list as you type.
• Export downloads the list you can see as a spreadsheet file (CSV).
• Tick the boxes on two or more rows to delete them together with Delete (2). The live layout can't be ticked, so it can never be deleted this way. Clear unticks everything.

Making a new layout

1. 1

   Click New layout

   It's at the top right of the page.

2. 2

   Pick a starting point

   Choose Headline, Receipt, Timer or Ink band (the same four designs as above), or Blank to start with an empty card.

3. 3

   Name it

   The name starts as the design's name. Type your own if you'd like.

4. 4

   Click Create & design

   The new layout opens in the editor. It isn't live until you set it live.

The editor

Opening a layout fills the screen with the editor. The card in the middle is the card you are editing: what you see is what your tills draw.

• Components (left): everything a card can show, grouped (order details, people, time, money, kitchen, items, guest, layout), with a search box. Drag one onto the card, or click it to add it to the selected section (the last section if none is selected). Entries marked Soon can't be added yet.
• The card (middle): click a section or a component on it to select it. Drag components around the card to rearrange them: while you drag, the section they'll land in is outlined with Drop into Section N, and a bar shows where they'll go. Drag a component back onto the list on the left to take it off the card. Under the card, One-row section and Two-row section each put a new, empty section at the bottom, already laid out that way.
• Settings (right): what you can change depends on what is selected.

Move the pointer over the card to see how it is built. The section under the pointer gets an outline and a small black label, for example Section 2 · 2 rows, and the component under it gets its own outline and its name. A section that shares the colour of the one above says so (joined to Section 1). When you select a component, its section stays outlined so you can see where it sits.

With nothing selected you set the card's own colour, either One colour or Changes with the order.

With a section selected a small 1 row / 2 rows switch appears on the section itself, on the card, so you can turn any section into two rows without looking for the setting. In the settings on the right you can:

• see and remove the components in it;
• lay it out as One row or Two rows (each with a left and a right side). It's the same choice as the switch on the card;
• Share colour with the section above, so the two read as one coloured block;
• set its Background: one colour, or colour rules;
• choose a Fill (inside the card, or edge to edge like a kitchen ticket header) and a Line underneath. Fill can only be picked once the section has a background colour or a line, because until then there is nothing to run edge to edge;
• move it up or down, duplicate it, merge it with the section below, or delete it.

With a component selected you set its own options (for example, whether items show their options, notes and prices), its row in a two-row section, its text size, weight, side and text colour. A few settings are left out where they could never show: a Sent badge is always amber and allergen pills are always red and bold, so they have no text colour (pills no weight either), and a divider line takes its section's colour. Anything you had set there before is kept.

For the Items component, Lines to show (3, 5, 8, 12 or All) is how many lines the list may take on the card. Modifiers and notes count as lines: an item with two options on their own lines and a note takes four. When the lines run out part-way through an item, its last line ends in …, and anything that didn't fit shows as + N more. This keeps one busy tab from turning into a very tall card.

Colour rules

Changes with the order colours a section (or the whole card) by what is happening on the tab: for example "open longer than 2 hours → amber; or if open longer than 1 hour → light amber; otherwise grey". Rules are checked top to bottom and the first one that matches wins; Otherwise is the colour when none do. You can have up to 8 rules.

A new rule starts as one that matches the sample order on screen, so you see it work straight away. Under each rule the editor tells you what it does on that sample: it sets the colour, an earlier rule wins, or it doesn't match. When it isn't the one in use, Show on … takes you to a sample order it does colour. Table stage is lists your own table stages; for a stage no sample is at, Show Table 7 at … puts the sample table there.

Undo, save and leaving

Undo and Redo are in the top bar (or press Cmd+Z / Shift+Cmd+Z; Ctrl on Windows). Save is greyed out until you change something. If you close the editor with unsaved changes it asks before throwing them away.

Preview on till shows the till's Tabs screen with the sample orders (repeated to fill ten cards), all drawn with your layout and lined up the way Cards on the till says. Back to editing returns to the editor.

Tile size (with nothing selected) only changes that preview, so picking one opens it. Each till mode sets its own tile size; it isn't saved with the layout.

How cards line up on the till

Cards are not all the same height: a table with a long order needs more room than an empty bar tab. Cards on the till, in the top bar next to Preview on till, sets how your tills line them up. Unlike the tile size, it's saved with the layout, so every till using this layout lines cards up the same way.

| Choice | What the till does | Good for | | --- | --- | --- | | Tidy rows (the default) | Cards sit in rows. Every card in a row is as tall as the tallest one, and its last section (the total, the covers) sits at the bottom, so rows line up. | Most venues. Easy to scan across. | | Packed columns | Each card goes in the column that is shortest so far, like a stack of tickets. No gaps under short cards. | Busy screens with very different orders. | | All one size | Every card is the same height, the size the layout can need at most. Items stay within their lines (at most 12). | Venues that want a fixed grid. |

Pick one and the editor opens Preview on till for you, because that is the only place the arrangement shows. Check it, then Save. Switching between them may scroll the till's Tabs screen back to the top.

Checking a layout before it goes live

Above the card you can switch between seven sample orders: a table, a tab whose bill has been asked for, a bar tab open for three hours, a web takeaway, an empty bar tab, a £112 table with options and notes on several items, and a party of ten with a deposit and a long £264 order. Switch between them to see how the card copes with each. Tables in the samples sit at your own table stages.

Nothing you change is silent. The part of the card you changed is ringed for a moment. If the sample on screen can't show what you just picked (a deposit on a tab with no deposit, more lines on a short order), the editor switches to a sample that can, tells you (Switched to … to show this) and offers Back to …. If you select a component the sample has nothing for, a note above the card says Not on this sample with a one-click show on …. Choosing a sample never counts as a change to your layout, and undo never moves it.

Two things are always on, whatever the layout: a tab whose bill has been requested gets an amber outline, and an empty tab gets a dotted outline.

Older tills

A till running an older version of the app can't draw every part of the new cards. It shows the closest match it can: the name, order type, total, time opened, item count, covers and a short list of items. Nothing stops working while you update.

What's next

• Running the till — how terminals work day to day.
• Using the till — a staff walkthrough — what staff see, including these order cards.
• Splitting a bill on the till.