Using Abacus, your dockets print to each printer based on a product’s assigned Printer Location. For example, you might set up your coffee orders to send to a “Coffee” Printer Location, and food orders to send to a “Kitchen” Printer Location.

(Psst… If you don’t understand any of this, check out our Printer Locations article first!)

However, there may be cases where you want your coffees to send to a specific printer, based on the location of the device you sent the order from. For example, if your cafe spreads over 2 floors, you probably only want your upstairs orders to send to the upstairs kitchen, and the downstairs orders to send to the downstairs kitchen - even though they both have the exact same menu. That’s when Locations for POS come in!

NOTE: Locations for POS cannot be used in Restaurant Mode

A Location is where your Point of Sale device (or waiter pad) is located. Here are some examples of locations you might create for POS:

Order docket goes directly to Printer Location, based on what Printer Location is assigned to it.

Order docket gets redirected from the first Printer Location to another Printer Location, based on the Location of the POS.

You can think of the first printer location as a sorting location (e.g. kitchen or drinks), and the final printer location as the actual printer location (i.e. physical place).
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Here’s what you would basically do:

That's it! When you put through an order, it will send to the actual Printer Location corresponding to your POS Location.

Now, let's go through the steps in detail...

This article assumes that you are already familiar with printer locations.

Go to Print Settings > Printer Locations

You will need to have already set up all your products to their respective printers (e.g. cappuccinos go to the "Drinks" printer location, sandwiches go to the "Kitchen" printer location).

This isn't taking into account whether any printers are upstairs and downstairs yet; you are simply sorting what kind of printer the docket should go to (e.g. food or drink).

If you haven't done this much yet, do that first by following these instructions.

At the moment, we're talking about this part of the process (highlighted):

3. You will be redirected to a new Location Details page. Enter the Location Name, e.g. "Upstairs POS"

4. Save.

5. Close.

6. Repeat steps 2-5 until you have created your desired Locations.
​Note: you cannot delete locations, although you can rename them.

This is the part of the process we are talking about (highlighted):

2. Add one printer location for each actual printer. Click New Printer Location and enter its name.

In this example, we have 4 actual printers:

Don't worry if it looks like you're doubling up!

Note: Don't attach the actual printer locations to your products. They should already be attached to the sorting printer locations (e.g. kitchen).

3. Upon refreshing, your Printer Locations will organise themselves into alphabetical order. Click the arrow next to an original Printer Location to expand extra options.

4. Click Add New Record. Each "record" is basically a rule to redirect printing.

5. In this example, we're going to make 2 redirection rules for kitchen printing:
i) if an order is made upstairs, the docket must print from the upstairs kitchen printer
ii) if an order is made downstairs, the docket must print from the downstairs kitchen printer

6. Select the Location. This is the first part of the rule, i.e. "If an order is made here..."
7. Select the Target (Printer) Location. This is the second part of the rule, "... print the docket here."

8. Repeat for all of your Locations.

This is the part of the process we are talking about (highlighted):

9. If you have 4 printers (1 drinks printer upstairs, 1 drinks printer downstairs, 1 kitchen printer upstairs, 1 kitchen printer downstairs), you will end up with something like this:

That's all the rule-setting done. Now you just need to make sure your ordering devices (POS or waiter pads) are set for the right locations!

2. Go to Device Options. Set the Location of your ordering device.

3. Repeat for all other ordering devices. If you're using Abacus POS in Restaurant Mode (i.e. with table maps), you will only need to sync on the Master POS. If you're not using Abacus POS in Restaurant Mode, you need to sync on every iPad individually.

4. On your Master Abacus POS, connect all of your printers. You must connect to the actual Printer Location, instead of the sorting Printer Location.
(See Set printer locations on the POS (iPad) under Printer Locations).

You will only need to set these printer locations on the Master POS iPad (and not any other iPad) if:

If either of the above conditions are not met, you will need to set these printer locations on every iPad individually.

Don't forget that you can rename your printer by pressing the name at the top of the popup!