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Contact Tracing your Customers during COVID-19
Contact Tracing your Customers during COVID-19

How to set up a guest check-in with your digital menu

Rebecca avatar
Written by Rebecca
Updated over a week ago

In this article:

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To help with contact tracing, you can get customers to check in on their mobile phones when they visit your store.

Note that some states may require you to use an official government contact tracing system. Always check your local government's regulations and turn off the Abacus Guest Check-In if it is not permitted in your area.

There are three ways to use check-in:

  • Check in only: let your guests check into a table with their contact details. There is no menu.

  • Check in + Mobile Digital Menu: let your guests check in and browse your menu, but not place an order. Follow this Mobile Digital Menu guide first, then return to this guide to set up guest check-in.

  • Check in + Online Ordering: let your guests check in, browse your menu, and pay. Contact our team to get started, then return to this guide to set up the guest check-in.

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Open Your Store for Guest Check-In

  1. Go to Online Ordering > Configuration, and set your "store" to Open. Don't worry! Nobody will be able to place orders until you have shared the store's URL by following the next section of this article.

2. If you do not want customers to finalise an order online (i.e. you are using a read-only Mobile Digital Menu instead of full Online Ordering), scroll down to Order Types and make sure that all order types are unticked (delivery, pick up, eat in).

3. Click Save.

4. Go to Online Ordering > Opening Hours. Tick each day that you are open and fill out the start and end times, then Save.

NOTE: It is important that you save on this page, even if you already have opening hours set. This is what will make your online platform appear!

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Share the Guest Check-In via QR code

The kind of QR code that you share with customers will affect what steps your customers will need to do when they scan the QR code.

If you...

Download the sample QR code and use it as it is

If you...

Make your own QR code for every table using the downloaded QR code as a reference

Then customers will need to...

  1. Scan the QR code.

  2. Select which table they are at.

  3. Fill in their contact details.

Then customers will need to...

  1. Scan the QR code at their table.

  2. Fill in their contact details.

Their table number will be pre-selected.

Download the sample QR code

1. Go to Customers > Guest Check-In and click Download QR Code.

2. This will download a sample QR code to your computer.

Understand the sample QR code

Before making your own QR codes, let's understand what this QR code does and what you would need to change.

  1. Open the sample QR code that you downloaded

  2. Scan the QR code with your phone (use the iPhone camera on Apple phones, or Google Lens on Android phones)

  3. You will be directed to your online mobile ordering site.

You will see that Table Number 0 is selected. This is because in the sample, we have ?table=0 at the end of the URL.

Whatever number you place at the end of that URL will become the pre-selected table number that is registered when the user scans the QR code from their mobile phone.

When a Table Number is 0, that means that the customer has to select their actual table number themselves in the next step. When a Table Number is an actual number, that means that the customer does not need to worry about selecting a Table Number, as it is pre-selected for them.

Create your own QR code

1. Using the sample as a starting point, you will need to make a unique URL for each table.

You will end up with a list that looks something like:

  • https://w.abacus.co/Store/xxxxxx/?table=1

  • https://w.abacus.co/Store/xxxxxx/?table=2

  • https://w.abacus.co/Store/xxxxxx/?table=3

  • https://w.abacus.co/Store/xxxxxx/?table=4

  • https://w.abacus.co/Store/xxxxxx/?table=5

(Instead of xxxxxx, you will have your own unique code)

You can use any numbers or letters for your table, such as "1A", or even "bar".

2. Now, you need to create a QR code for each of those URLs. This is so customers can quickly scan the QR code using their phone, rather than having to type in that whole URL on their phones.

We recommend you use a QR code generator like https://qrd.by/

3. Print your QR codes and display them on each of your tables. Make sure that each QR code's URL ends in the correct number for that table, e.g. Table 2 should have the QR code with URL ending in ?table=2

4. Now, when your guest checks in using the QR code, it will record what table they were at.

Find the information on the backend:

  • All guest contact details are added to the Customers > Guest Check-In page

  • Only guests which have opted in to receive information and marketing promotions will appear in Customers > Customer Database

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