Most counters close an order in the time it takes to hand the food over. A forty-cover dining room in Kochi does not: one table collects a separate kitchen chit for every round it orders across two hours, and is totalled only when somebody asks. Then that total is divided between the people sitting at it.
Doors at noon, the real service from 19:30. A forty-cover room in Panampilly Nagar asks the till to do four things across a sitting, and the first of them bills nothing at all.
The till shows a grid of tables, each one marked Occupied or Available.
A steward taps Table 7 and types how many are sitting. That opens a session — a record with no total on it. A table holds one open session at a time, so tapping it again hands back the session already running instead of quietly starting a second one beside it.
Each round is its own kitchen chit, against the same table.
Starters and drinks go as one chit. Twenty minutes later the mains go as a second. A dessert at 22:10 is a third. Every chit prints twice — a kitchen copy with the table name in bold across the head of the ticket, and a guest copy — and each ages on its own on the kitchen board, which is what a coursed sitting looks like from the pass. Add an item to a chit already sent and the kitchen gets a supplement ticket; pull one off and it gets a void chit marked do not make, each carrying its edit number.
Every chit on the session totals into one figure on the Bill Summary.
Service charge, a tax amount, and either a typed discount or a coupon code — the coupon overrides the typed figure when both are there. Nothing has been closed. The guest copies printed at each round are what the table has in front of it; the consolidated total is a screen the steward is holding.
Three people paying separately is three portions against one bill.
Person 1 in cash, Person 2 and Person 3 by UPI. Each portion carries its own method, is collected one at a time, and is labelled per person by default or with a label you type. The portions have to add up to the outstanding balance exactly. One consolidated payment then carries the table, so the ledger is credited once rather than three times. A table can also be closed with the payment left pending, so a regular settles later. Then the table goes back on the board.
Both of these exist because two hours is longer than a system’s patience usually runs. They are the reason an open bill is safe to leave open.
An order that reached the kitchen and was never paid for is normally swept up after a while, which is the right answer for a counter order nobody came back for. An order sitting on an open table is excluded from that sweep by name. A table that has been eating since 19:30 is never cancelled underneath the floor.
The host board refuses to free a table while anything on it is still cooking or still owed, and it says which of the two it is. Available means nobody is holding the table and the till has no open bill on it — one definition, read the same way at the door and at the counter.
Worth saying plainly, because it is the opposite of what the quote usually looks like, and it changes what a dining room without a queue has to buy.
Included. The table grid, opening a session, sending each round as its own chit, Generate Bill, the split, Settle & Close and voiding a table all sit behind the POS billing permission the counter already owns. A restaurant with tables and no queue outside runs its whole floor on what it has.
An add-on, and it buys the door: the printed QR, the tokens, the parties ahead, the WhatsApp on joining and again when a table is ready, and the seating maths below. Worth it the first Saturday people are standing outside, and not before.
Splitting one bill between the people sitting at the table is included as well, in Payments & Wallet.
One printed QR that never changes, and a set of rules about who gets the next table. The rules are the part nobody writes down, so here they are.
All of it is Host & Tables. Staff on shift are pushed a note when a table opens and again when it closes.
A menu that has to be cooked to order asks two things of the catalogue that a counter menu never does.
A choice group can be required or optional, single or multiple, with a minimum selection, a cap on distinct choices, a cap on total quantity and a number included free. The kinds it can be given include meat temperature and spice level. That is the difference between a modifier list and a steak order the kitchen can read.
In Menu & Catalog.
Steps grouped into prep, cook, plate and hold, each with a target temperature and a critical flag, plus a plating photograph, allergens, a yield and a holding instruction. So “hold at 65 °C” is a number on a step that somebody answers, not a line in a manual nobody opens. The kitchen at one location may override the group’s procedure for a dish, which is what a second room on a different range actually needs.
In Menu & Catalog.
A checklist that opens by itself before service, answered with numbers, a yes or no, and photographs. Push a figure past the limits set on it and the platform raises a corrective action, filed against whichever version of the SOP was in force that evening. It is the holding instruction printed on the dish, asked one shift earlier.
When the pass is behind, switching the branch to busy or critical stretches the promised ready time on the pickup channels by a buffer you set. The floor is untouched — the counter always works — and the restrictive modes demand a reason that is audited afterwards.
In Counter & Orders.
A high-ticket plate hides a thin margin better than a cheap one, and a room that closes at midnight closes its drawer at midnight too.
A recipe ingredient can point at another dish you make in-house — the sauce, the stock, the masala — and carry its own wastage percent. Recipes attach to modifier and variant options as well as the base plate, and can be held per branch. Plate cost recomputes from the weighted average you actually paid, so the margin on the menu is the one being earned rather than the one budgeted in March.
Service charge, the cash portions of every split bill and any table closed pay-later all arrive at one close when the room finally shuts. The drawer starts where yesterday left it, the expected figure tracks the service as it runs, and the notes and coins written down have to reconcile against the cash actually counted before the close will save.
In Daily Close.
A dine-in order is created with its payment deferred, so reward points on a table accrue when the table is settled rather than when the food reached it. Daily deals run per branch on the weekdays and hours you choose, which is how you price a Tuesday lunch without discounting a Saturday night.
In Rewards & Deals.
Any date range with orders, gross, refunds and net; every order listed and searchable; profit and loss by day, week or month. Order type is a column on each row and on the CSV, so the two halves of a room that also does counter trade separate without a second report.
A steward, a captain and a manager do not need the same buttons, and a room with a public review page cannot afford to find that out on a Sunday.
A table that has already sent chits can only be voided against the cancel permission, not the ordinary billing one. Pay-later, refunds and status overrides are each their own grant. So a steward opens tables and bills them all night without ever holding the right to void one, and the permission list reads like the floor does.
In Staff & Roles.
A complaint is raised against one order with up to three photographs, opens with a countdown, is answered in a single thread, and escalates itself to refund-due if the countdown runs out. Guest star ratings average into a badge on your storefront, which is where an unanswered table ends up otherwise.
Eleven of them, and the first is the question you came to ask. Better to lose the demo now than the second month later.
Should any of them be the hinge your room turns on, tell us during the call. That list is how the build order gets decided.
The table session is a counter record, so every module the counter already writes to can read the table without anybody exporting anything.
Categories, sections, choice groups and imports — one catalog every channel reads.
UPI, card and cash on one tender line, settling into a wallet you can draw on.
A waitlist your guests join by QR, and a floor board that reads the counter’s open bills.
Hand the order to the RestoMama rider network and let the guest watch it come.
Guests browse the menu and order inside a WhatsApp chat. It lands in your order list.
Tell us about your restaurant and the workflows you want to launch first.
We will take one dinner rush the whole way — ring a bill, print the KOT, call the token, mark the payment, dispatch the order, pay the agent and read the day close. On your menu, with your zones, in about thirty minutes.