Print profile help

[MarkSpiegelman]

Please help me understand print profiles.

We have Square Online and 4 POS stations to take orders.  Our menu categories, for example, are "hot foods" and "cold foods."  All menu items can be ordered via Square Online or local POS.

Online or in-person orders for all menu items should be printed out on our front-of-the-house

printer.  Think of these as receipts.

Online or in-person orders for hot foods should be routed to the kitchen KDS device, and individual corresponding order tickets should be printed on the cook station printer.  Here, a sticky label order ticket can accompany each dish until it reaches the front of the house.

Do I need one or more print profiles to accomplish this?

Appreciate any guidance!

-Mark

[ryanwanner · Accepted solution]

Alrighty @MarkSpiegelman ... you ready for a deep dive here?

You're going to need a few profiles for your setup, which sounds like it's quite similar to the setup I had when I had my brick and mortar store up and running. Please note that I am assuming you're set up as a counter service establishment, where customers come to a central POS device to place orders. This assumption would also ring true if you have wait staff but a central POS device where customers come to pay their bill. Basically, think about it as you have one central POS device that drives all the orders. If you have waitstaff that carry their own banks, the profiles may be a little different but you can see the thought process. This also assumes that every printer on your network can be seen by every POS device.

Profile 1: Will handle online ordering. You only want one of your POS devices to have this profile or you'll get multiple online orders.  I recommend setting the central POS device (your FOH device) with this profile. All Online Tickets will print full order tickets here. This profile should be linked to your FOH printer

• Receipts: On (if a central cash drawer or if you want all receipts at this specific POS)
• In-Person Order Tickets: Off unless you have specific categories that need to print at your FOH printer.
• Online & Kiosk Order Tickets: On. Have all feasible categories print here. This way you get a master ticket with all the items ordered on it. This ticket will be your last check before handing the meals off to the customer to make sure you don't miss anything.
• Order Ticket Stubs and Void Tickets: depends on your situation. I had both of these disabled.

Profile 1a: Same as Profile 1 but have the Online & Kiosk Order Tickets section set to off. All remaining POS devices should use this profile, and this profile should be linked to your FOH printer as well.

Profile 2: For all your Hot Foods. Your main POS device (the one that uses Profile 1 above) should have this profile linked to your cook station printer.

• Receipts: Off
• In-Person Order Tickets: On with all kitchen categories enabled.
• Online & Kiosk Order Tickets: On with all kitchen categories enabled.
• Order Ticket Stubs and Void Tickets: depends on your situation.

Profile 2a: Same as Profile 2 but have Online & Kiosk Order Tickets section set to off. This profile should be linked to your cook station printer and be used by all remaining devices.

If you have a separate printer for cold foods, you'll need to create Profile 3 and Profile 3a for the cold food printer.

As for the KDS, it is its own beast. You'll have to configure the KDS to display the categories you want it to display on it, and I recommend enabling the online orders there as well, with categories that match the kitchen printers.

Clear as mud, eh? 🙂 It's a lot for sure, but once the profiles are configured correctly it's a breeze. Profiles like this also allow for switching printers on the fly without having to reinvent the wheel: just point the profile at the new printer. (Great for when a printer goes down!!)

[MarkSpiegelman]

Ryan wins the best of the best of the best award. Thank you so much, sir.