How to Get Online and Delivery Orders Straight Into Your POS

You need an ordering platform that is integrated with your POS, so each order lands on the till by itself, prints in the kitchen and counts in your sales and stock. Re-typing from a tablet works at low volume, but it breaks at rush hour. Before you sign anything, ask how the menu syncs, what happens when the POS has a fault, and whether the orders show up in your reports.

This post is about the workflow. For what each delivery order actually leaves you after commission, read our post "Talabat vs Your Own Online Ordering".

Every app sends its own tablet. Each one chimes differently, and none of them talks to your till. So a person has to read every order and type it in again. That is where the mistakes start.

• Missed chimes: one tablet rings under the noise, and the order sits until the driver arrives.
• Wrong items: the cashier picks the wrong size or forgets a modifier while typing fast.
• Menus out of sync: you raised a price in the shop, but the app still sells it at the old one.
• Sold-out items still orderable online, so you call the customer or cancel.
• Stock that never moves for delivery orders that were not typed in.
• Reports that miss delivery sales, so you do not know your real best sellers.

Most shops end up mixing them. The big apps may not connect to your POS at all, so you keep their tablets and re-type, while a connected platform handles the rest.

"Integrated" can mean anything from a full two-way link to a PDF menu upload. These questions show the difference in ten minutes.

• Menu: does it sync one way or both ways? If I change a price on the POS, when does it change online?
• Branches: can each branch have its own price, and can a branch hide items it never sells?
• Promotions: do my discounts go online? Can I choose which ones, so a staff discount never becomes a public code?
• Faults: if the POS is offline, closed or has an error, is a paid order lost, retried or held?
• Status: when the kitchen marks an order ready, does the customer see it?
• Kitchen: does the order print by itself and reach the kitchen screen, with no one pressing send?
• Numbers: does the order count in my sales reports and deduct stock, like a counter sale?
• Money: is a paid online order kept apart from my cash drawer, so the cash count still adds up?

Outale is connected to one ordering platform: Tafadal (tafadal.co). Talabat, Snoonu and Keeta are not connected. Their orders are entered on the till by hand. Outale does not run an ordering website of its own and does not take online payments.

• Menu, one way: Tafadal pulls your menu from Outale. You edit it in Outale, not in two places.
• Branch prices: a branch that charges a different price sends its own price.
• Items a branch never sells: switch the item off at that branch and it is refused online there.
• Promotions: off by default. You switch each discount on for Tafadal and give it a code. Discounts limited to some items or with a minimum spend cannot be sent.
• On the till: new orders join an online-orders queue with a chime, marked PAID or COLLECT.
• Kitchen: orders print automatically when a kitchen printer is set up, and appear on the kitchen screen.
• Status, both ways: when the kitchen accepts or bumps an order, Tafadal is told (once your café's web address is saved on the connection, part of setup). When Tafadal's board moves it, the kitchen screen moves too.
• Reports and stock: a paid order is recorded as a sale, deducts stock and shows on its own line in the Delivery Partner Summary, kept out of expected cash.

When things go wrong: a paid order that arrives with no shift open is held and recorded the moment the next shift opens. If the system has a fault, Tafadal is told to retry, and a retry never charges twice. If a held paid order is still refused, it is listed on the dashboard with Retry and Mark handled, so someone acts on it.

1. 1Before service, open the shift, so online orders land as sales straight away.
2. 2Check the online-orders chime is not muted, and turn the tablets up.
3. 3Print a test ticket on the kitchen printer.
4. 4Switch off anything you have run out of, on every channel, not only one.
5. 5Give one person the job of tablet orders that are not connected, so nothing is typed twice or skipped.
6. 6Read PAID or COLLECT before handing a bag over.
7. 7Bump orders on the kitchen screen as they leave, so the customer sees ready.
8. 8After close, check the delivery sales against each app's own report.