Online Orders

Where: Operations > Online Orders
Who can use it: Permission online_orders.view. The page is hidden on SureScreen (menu board only) plans.
Open this page in SureTill

Online Orders is the live inbox for orders that were not taken at the till. It loads the most recent 200 orders whose source is the app (your website), web or kiosk. New orders appear by themselves with a sound, so you can leave the page open on a screen near the kitchen.

The page works with the branch you have selected at the top of the app. Switch branch to see the orders of another branch.

How an order moves

• Pending (shown as NEW): the order has arrived and nobody has answered it yet. The card has a red outline.
• Accepted: you pressed Accept. The order is confirmed and has been sent to the kitchen.
• Preparing: the kitchen is cooking it.
• Ready: the food is ready. Delivery orders go on to Out for Delivery, takeaway orders go to Completed.
• Out for Delivery: a rider has the order.
• Completed: delivered or collected. The page also treats the server status delivered as Completed.
• Cancelled: you rejected it, or it was cancelled elsewhere.

Step by step: accept a new order

1. Open Online Orders. New orders are on the Active tab and on the New tab.
2. Click a card to open the order on the right. Check the customer, address, items, notes and the payment badge.
3. Under Estimated Prep Time choose 15, 20, 30, 45 or 60 min. The page starts with the Default Prep Time from Settings (30 if you never changed it).
4. Press ACCEPT. The order is confirmed, sent to the kitchen screen, and a kitchen ticket is printed.
5. You can also press ACCEPT directly on the card. It uses the prep time that is currently selected.

Settings: the window that opens.

Tip

A website order that the customer chose to pay by card does not appear here until the card payment is confirmed. While the customer is still on the payment page the order is hidden, so it cannot be accepted or cooked by mistake. Look at the payment badge anyway: a paid order shows the green PAID badge.

Tip

Website orders also raise a New order popup with Accept and Reject on every admin and POS screen. Either place works. The popup is described in the Storefront orders article.

Step by step: reject an order

1. Open the order and press the red X button next to ACCEPT (or the X on the card).
2. Confirm in the Reject Order box. The box says the customer will be notified, and for a paid website order that the card payment will be refunded.
3. The order moves to the Cancelled tab with the reason ‘Rejected by restaurant’.

Tip

A website order that is waiting for your acceptance is rejected the same way as in the New order popup: it is cancelled and a paid card payment is refunded through Stripe or PayPal. If the refund does not go through you see Refund needed: refund the payment yourself in Stripe or PayPal. For other orders on this page, such as kiosk orders, rejecting only cancels the order. If such an order was already paid, the box warns you and you must refund it separately.

Step by step: move an accepted order along

1. Open the order. The big button at the bottom shows the next step.
2. Accepted: press START PREPARING.
3. Preparing: press MARK READY. A receipt is also sent to the printer at this moment.
4. Ready and delivery: press OUT FOR DELIVERY. Ready and takeaway: press COMPLETE ORDER.
5. Out for Delivery: press DELIVERED. The order becomes Completed.

Use the RECEIPT and KITCHEN buttons at the very bottom of the order to print the receipt or the kitchen ticket again at any time.

Step by step: pause or close online ordering

1. Look at the status bar at the top. It reads Online Ordering: ACTIVE, PAUSED or DISABLED.
2. Press Pause to stop taking new orders at once. Press Resume to start again. This saves immediately and needs no extra Save.
3. For lasting changes press Settings, change the fields, and press Save.

Tip

Pause and Resume only show while online ordering is enabled. Your website asks the server whether ordering is available before it lets a customer order, and shows your Pause Reason as the message.

Every setting explained

Settings panel (Settings button)

Setting	What it does	Default
Online Ordering	Master switch for the branch. Disabled means the website reports that online ordering is off.	Enabled
Auto-Accept	When on, website orders are accepted without anyone pressing Accept: they go to the kitchen and a kitchen ticket prints. Card orders are accepted after the payment is confirmed. When off, staff accept each order.	Manual
Default Prep Time (min)	Preparation time handed to the website. Allowed 5 to 120. It is also the prep time the Online Orders page starts with when you accept an order.	30
Min Order Amount	Smallest order subtotal the website allows. Checkout refuses a smaller order with a message. Zero means no minimum.	0
Pause Reason	Text shown to customers while ordering is paused, for example Kitchen full.	Empty
Acceptance Hours	One row per day, Monday to Sunday. Click Open or Closed to switch the day. For open days set the opening and closing time. Outside these hours the website reports that you are outside online ordering hours and checkout refuses new orders. A customer can still book an order for a later time.	09:00 to 22:00, every day open
Save / Cancel	Save stores all fields for the active branch. Cancel closes the panel.

Page controls

Control	What it does
Status bar	Shows ACTIVE (green dot), PAUSED or DISABLED (red dot).
Pause / Resume	Switches the paused flag at once.
Settings	Opens the Settings panel above.
Tabs Active, New, Done, Cancelled	Filter by state. Active counts pending, preparing, ready and out-for-delivery orders. The number in each tab label is the count.
Search	Finds orders by order number, customer name or address.
LIVE	Reminds you that the list updates by itself.
Channel buttons	All, Web, Foodpanda, UberEats, Direct, Kiosk. The channel is taken from the order. Orders from your own website are shown as Web.
Statistic cards	Pending, Preparing (accepted plus preparing), Ready, Delivery (out for delivery) and Revenue. Revenue is the sum of completed orders in the loaded list.
Order card	Source icon, order number, age, status, customer, address, order type (Delivery, Takeaway or Dine in), item count, PAID badge, total.
Order panel	Customer details, items with variation, add-ons and special instructions, price breakdown (subtotal, tax, delivery fee, discount, total), notes, assigned rider, prep time buttons, action buttons.

Notifications

• A new order raises a short three-tone sound and a message ‘New Online Order’ with the order number while the page is open.
• The sound also plays when the number of pending orders goes up after a refresh.

Tip

Orders from Uber Eats are handled on their own board with Uber’s accept and deny rules. See the Uber Eats article.

Related articles

• Website orders
• Uber Eats
• Delivery
• SureCall