Printing the bill and paying – transaction status
When the dining table becomes free
Dining table management in Hospitality helps you improve your service by offering a status structure around order taking for dining tables that makes it easy to see what is going on with the orders and whether there is a need to take action.
The Dining Table Status Cycle Diagram
The dining table has an overall status – Free, Seated, Occupied, or to be Cleaned.
When the state is Occupied:
- There is an active order associated with the dining table. The kitchen status of this active order shows how the order production is progressing in the kitchen, and its transaction status shows whether the bill has been printed for the order or the order paid.
When a dining table is changed to Free/To Be Cleaned, the next order with open transaction status becomes the active order. If there is none, the active order is removed from the table.
The dining table shows:
- Dining table status - Free, Seated, Occupied, To be Cleaned.
- The active order.
- Kitchen status of the active KOT for the active order.
- Not Sent, Error, Sent, Started, Finished, Served.
- Transaction status of the active order - Open, Bill Printed-Not Served, Bill Printed-Served, Paid-Not Served, Paid-Served.
Service flows
With the hospitality service flows you define the flow for your dining table service. You may want to seat guests before you take orders and you may or may not want to put the table into the To Be Cleaned status when the guests have left.
Opening and closing with no activity
To understand what happens if the sales POS is opened up with a new transaction and closed without any activity, see On Opening the Sales POS and Closing With No Activity.
Alerts
With the service flow you can set up alerts to remind the waiter to go to the seated table and take the order, to send items to the kitchen, to follow up on orders that are not getting finished in the kitchen, to check whether the guests need something, and to take payment after handing out the bill.
Note: If expeditor is not in use, KOTs are manually served when finished in the kitchen. The dining table shows the Ready to be Served status and when pressed, the pop-up shows an option SERVE TABLE. The waiter presses SERVE TABLE to change the status of the table to SERVED.
Note: Items that are sent to a printer station are contained in a separate KOT. When items are printed to a KDS printer, the printer KOT receives the status Not Printed. What happens next depends on how the POS Terminal that prints the KOT is set up. The Printer KOT Status after Sent field on the POS Terminal card, the Hospitality FastTab, controls this. The options are:
- Ready to Be Manually Served - The NAS gives the KOT the status Ready to be Served when the production time of the item with the longest production time has passed. When the KOT is the active KOT, the dining table is marked as Ready to be Served. The waiter must then press the table and select SERVE TABLE. Then the KOT is marked as Served and the next KOT in line becomes the active KOT, if found.
- Served - The NAS gives the KOT the Served status directly. The KOT’s status goes from Not Sent to Served. If the KOT was the active KOT, the next KOT in line becomes the active KOT, if found.
Printing the bill and paying – transaction status
Typically, all KOTs are served by the time the guests receive the bill and pay. The kitchen status is Served:
- When you print the bill for the transaction, the order transaction status becomes Bill Printed-Served.
- When you pay for the transaction, the order transaction status becomes Paid-Served.
If not all KOTs are served when you print the bill, the transaction status becomes Bill Printed-Not Served. And similarly, when you pay for the transaction, the order transaction status becomes Paid-Not Served.
Warning: When the active order status becomes Bill Printed, there are restrictions on what can be changed on the order. This refers to adding items, splitting and transferring.
Settings for the hospitality type control the handling of adding items, splitting can only be done by a manager and transferring requires manager and only the order as a whole is transferred.
When the dining table becomes free
When your guests pay at their table, the dining table becomes Free (or To Be Cleaned) when the order is finalized by payment. This is reflected in the service flow.
When your guests leave the table after receiving their bill and pay by the cashier, you can set your service flow up in such a way as to open up the dining table for seating and order taking when the bill has been printed.
See also
How to: Use KDS Coursing for Your Fine Dining Restaurant