Online Ordering is an add-on to your Abacus Point of Sale.

It means that your customers can place an order through a webpage (which is mobile-friendly!) and that order will appear on your POS.

In order to set up Online Ordering, click the green banner on the backend, and you will be guided through the self-onboarding process.

Note: before proceeding, please ensure you have entered a store address on the Company Profile. This address will be displayed as the pick up address for customers and will also be used to validate if delivery is possible to a customer's address.

After you have onboarded yourself, you can then change the settings in the Online Ordering backend section.

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Your customer can "check in", registering their contact details when dining in. Our Guest Check-In report can help you with tracing those who have been physically present at your store, though it should not be used for marketing or promotional purposes.

Only guests who have opted into marketing will be added to your customer database for marketing purposes.

Follow these instructions to add Guest Check-In to your business.

As soon as an order comes through to your POS, you will also be able to see your customer's name and mobile phone number, so you can call them on your store phone if necessary.

Press the order's STATUS button or the customer's name to see the address for delivery orders.

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These orders are managed in the Online Orders screen of Abacus POS, and do not appear in your Held Orders or Point of Sale screen.

Please ensure that you are only running one Master POS for your online orders. You must have Abacus POS open at all times to receive online orders.

2. All online orders are shown here. To see order details, tap the order itself.

3. You need to either accept or reject each order. Tap the NEW status button to expand the popup.

4. In the popup, tap ACCEPT. The status will update to "ACCEPTED".

If you REJECT an order, you will be prompted to enter a reason why, and this reason will be sent to the customer.

OPTIONAL SETTING: You can also switch on POS setting A10. Auto confirm online orders if you want all online orders to be automatically accepted, which means you will skip this step. Dine-in orders are always automatically accepted.

5. Go to the In Progress tab to see all orders that you have accepted and are working on.

You can reprint all the orders displayed by pressing Print All.

When you have finished preparing the order, update the status as READY.

6. When your order has been delivered, or it has been picked up by your customer, update the status as COMPLETE. (See also: DoorDash integration)

OPTIONAL SETTING: You can also turn on the POS Setting F2. Auto complete accepted orders, so that as soon as you accept any order, it will be immediately marked as complete.

All completed orders for the day can be found in the Completed tab.

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To set up your delivery fees and delivery areas, go to Online Ordering > Configuration.

To set your delivery fees:

To set up your delivery areas:

Note: we recommend you do not have overlapping postcodes.

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The estimated delivery/pickup time depends on how long it typically takes for your kitchen to prepare an order (plus the delivery travel time).

If you set a preparation time and delivery buffer, you set your customer's expectations so they can only place an order at a time that you will be able to make.

Set the preparation time for:

In each order, the highest number will be taken as the preparation time, e.g. if you have a 20 minute preparation time set in your online orders, but your doughnuts have a 30 minute preparation time, then the system will recognise you need 30 minutes instead of 20.

Setting a preparation time will also delay the printing, so if you take 10 minutes to prepare an order, the docket won't print until 10 minutes before the pickup time.

This can also be set on the POS (Online Orders > Preparation Time).

A Delivery Buffer (Online Ordering > Configuration) is the extra amount of time you need notice for, when an order is specifically for Delivery. It gets added on to your Order Preparation Time for delivery orders.

For example, it may be 12:00pm and your customer wants to place an order.

If you have an Order Preparation Time of 10 minutes, a Delivery Buffer of 15 minutes, and the customer lives a 5 minute drive away, the soonest they can expect their delivery will be at 12:30pm (12:00pm + 10 minutes preparation + 5 minutes driving + 15 minute buffer).

This gives you a little extra wriggle room to jump into the car and navigate the streets before your customer expects their order!

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When your customer submits an order, they can see an Order Tracker that shows the progress of their order across multiple stages:

If you choose not to use an Order Tracker, your customer will instead see different screens depending on the status of their order.

Note: If you have F2. Auto complete accepted orders turned on, your customer will not see an order tracker.

Change this at any time in the Online Ordering Configuration page.

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Customers receive an email from your restaurant when their order has been accepted or rejected.

There is also an option to send customers an email when their order is received; that is, the restaurant acknowledges the order, but has not yet accepted it.

The order acknowledgement email will look like:

To send acknowledgement emails to customers, go to Online Ordering > Configuration.

Tick the Order is received checkbox.

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To refund an order, go to your Order History, swipe left, then tap REFUND.

Select ONLINE for online orders to be refunded through the online transaction, otherwise you can opt to refund in CASH or ONLINE PAYMENT.

The online refund will take 3 days to process.

Your customer will receive an email with the refund reason (given the refund was made in POS 2.8.16 or later).

You can also process refunds on the backend:

3. Tick the items that you want to refund, add a Refund Reason, then click Confirm Refund. You can also select whether or not to include the deliver fee, and if you want to apply an administration fee.

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You can update the status of each product based on whether it is popular, new, or sold out, by updating the status on your POS.

Popular products will be highlighted at the top of the menu.

If you want to change anything on your Online Ordering Menu, go to Online Ordering > Menu:

You can:

Make sure you click Publish after all changes and to perform a Master Sync on your POS.

You can also reach this page via the POS Menu list page:

See also: Optimising your menu for web online ordering

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When your customer checks out, they will be prompted to either select a time from dropdown intervals, or a delivery time slot, depending on what you have set up.

Delivery time slots can be customised for each different postcode, e.g. you deliver from 8:00am-10:00am for postcode 3000 only.

Note: You need to create time slots for all postcodes, otherwise those postcodes will not have any available times for delivery.

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Any holiday surcharges you have already set will be automatically applied in online ordering.

Check out this article to set up bank surcharges for online orders.

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In your invoices, online orders will have the payment type as Abacus Payment.

Go to Online Ordering > Invoices for the names of your customers for each online order. This includes all those who placed an order online, even if they check out as a guest (without logging in).

Note that customers who place online orders as guests will appear in this table but are not registered in your customer database.

You can also filter your sales reports by the Online Ordering order type.

See also: How you get paid for online orders

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