Industries · Food and beverage
A dining room is a timing problem wearing an apron. Tickets have to fire in course order, checks have to split the way the table actually sat, and the batch has to close after the last cash-out — not before it.
The service, end to end
Not a feature list. These are the six places a full-service floor goes wrong, and what has to be true for it not to.
Apps fire on seating, entrees fire on the expo call, and a four-top that ordered two apps and three entrees must arrive as one plate-up. When coursing lives in the server's head instead of the ticket, expo runs the pass by shouting.
Six people, four cards, one shared bottle. Seat numbers attached at ordering make that a regrouping. Systems that split by dividing the total hand back even shares and a receipt nobody recognises.
A tab opened at seven and closed at midnight has outgrown the hold placed on it. Incremental authorisation is what keeps the close from declining, and it is a setting some floors have never had switched on.
Written tips are added to authorised checks until the batch is sent. If the batch is scheduled before the last server cashes out, those adjustments are a chargeback conversation instead of a deposit.
Servers, bussers, bar and food runners each take a share, and the share is a function of hours in the pool period. What settles and what distributes should reconcile in one report, not in a spreadsheet a manager keeps privately.
Three tablets on the pass, three menus that drift apart, and a line cook re-keying orders during the rush. Injection into the same ticket stream is what removes the re-keying, and it is the single biggest accuracy fix on most floors.
Buying guide
Seven questions worth asking any provider, us included. Bring the answers back and compare them side by side.
Ask for the exact time and whether a manager can push it after a late private party. A batch that closes on a schedule nobody can touch is the most common cause of missing tips.
A handheld that has to walk the card back to a fixed terminal is a table-side ordering device, not pay-at-table. Ask to see one taken to a table and closed there.
Get the list by name. Coverage varies by market and by POS version, and the answer is often "two of your three".
Ask whether the terminal stores and forwards, what the stored limit is, and who carries the risk on a decline after the fact. Every answer here is a trade-off; the wrong one is not knowing.
Hardware you have paid for and staff already read is worth protecting. Ask specifically which of your existing units are supported, by model number.
Modifier trees, recipe links and seat mappings represent months of work. Ask for the export format before you need it, not after.
Funding timing shapes a restaurant's week more than most operators expect. Ask for the day-by-day pattern including weekends and holidays.
Questions
Yes, until the batch closes. A card-present restaurant authorises the check amount and captures the adjusted total at settlement, so the tip line written on the slip is added during the adjustment window that ends when the batch is sent. If your batch runs automatically at 2am and your late tables cash out at 2.15am, that window is the thing to move, not the terminal.
Seat numbers ride on the item, not the check. The line fires to the kitchen printer or expo screen grouped by course, and the split happens at payment time by regrouping items that already carry a seat. If the POS splits by dividing the total instead, you get even splits and no itemised receipt, which is the version guests argue about.
The pre-auth placed when the tab opened is the only thing standing behind it. It holds a nominal amount, expires on its own schedule, and does not guarantee the final total. Incremental authorisation raises the held amount as the tab grows, which is what keeps a large tab from being declined at close.
That depends on which POS is driving the kitchen. Handhelds that carry their own EMV reader can run alongside a fixed station on most modern platforms, and on some legacy systems they cannot without replacing the whole floor. We check the actual system in your dining room before saying yes.
By declared hours worked in the pool period, applied to the tips captured in that period. The POS holds the pool math and the payroll system pays it out. The number that matters is the reconciliation between what the batch settled and what the pool distributed, and it should be one report, not two systems compared by hand.
Talk to someone who has worked a pass
Four fields. A person reads it, looks at what you are running now, and comes back with what they would actually change — which is sometimes nothing.
We will implement whatever is right for you — including keeping what you have. If your kitchen display works, your staff know the screens and the only real problem is one setting on the batch, we will tell you that and fix the setting.
Payco · Industries · Food and beverage · Restaurants
Both are open to anyone, and both can be done on a Monday when the room is closed.
Last updated: 2026-08-17
