Kitchen display

The Kitchen display is the screen your kitchen works from. It shows the active dine-in tickets grouped by how far along they are, so the team always knows what to make next and front-of-house can see what’s ready.

The kitchen display comes with the Restaurant add-on. If you don’t see Kitchen in your Sales menu, it isn’t on your plan — contact Swann Software to add it.

What’s on the board

The board has three columns — Received, Preparing, and Ready — and each open ticket sits in the column that matches its status. Every ticket card shows:

• The order number.
• How long it’s been waiting (e.g. 12m, 1h 05m).
• The number of items and the total, plus any note on the order.

Within a column, the oldest ticket sits at the top, so working top-down means working the longest-waiting guest first. The board refreshes itself every few seconds, and immediately whenever you move a ticket.

Move a ticket along

A ticket flows one step at a time, in order:

1. A new ticket lands in Received. Press Start preparing to move it to Preparing.
2. When the food is up, press Mark ready to move it to Ready.
3. A Ready ticket shows Awaiting collection and has no further step.

You can only move a ticket forward one step — there’s no skipping or going back, and tapping the step a ticket is already on does nothing.

How tickets get here, and when they leave

A ticket reaches the kitchen when an order is started for the kitchen — a tab opened against a table, or a Takeout order. Either way it arrives in Received the moment it’s started. See Tables & floor service. (A Delivery order isn’t a kitchen ticket — it runs on its own delivery track.)

Marking a ticket Ready does not clear it from the board — it stays in the Ready column so front-of-house can see it’s waiting to go out. A ticket leaves the board when its order is settled at the register, which closes the order and frees the table.

Keeping guests posted

When there are orders ready for collection, a summary at the top of the board shows how many are preparing and how many are ready, with their order numbers — a quick counter-side glance at what’s waiting to go out.

Each guest can also follow their own order on their phone: every restaurant order has a guest order-status page that tracks it from received to ready, so they know when to come up without asking.