A printer is an essential piece of equipment in a restaurant. Whether you operate a small kitchen or manage multiple stations, you can send orders directly to the kitchen, barista, bar, or other production areas with a single tap.

This guide will show you how to configure your printers for quicker and easier transactions.

First, choose how you want to organize your production printing across your printers:

• All items to all printers: All printers print the same production docket with all products.
• Printer/Item Specific: Different printers have specific products assigned to print (i.e. a latte is sent to the barista printer while the hamburger is sent to the kitchen printer.
• Split or Duplicate Production Printing: A great workaround for when you have just one printer (or multiple printers) - you can print multiple dockets from one printer - these can be either identical or different - entirely up to you.

What's in this guide?

Before you begin 

All items to All printers| 1 minute

Printer/Item Specific | 3 minutes

Split or Duplicate Production Docket| 3 minutes

What's next?

Frequently Asked Questions

Before you begin

You'll need:

• Access to Back Office.
• To connect your printers to Lightspeed.

All items to all printers

All printers print the same order docket; products are all printed and not assigned.

1. From the Back Office, select My site (if you have more than one site, you will be prompted to choose one)
2. Select Printers

3. Under Production Printing, select All Items to All Printers

Printer/Item Specific

Different printers have specific products assigned to print. i.e. A piccolo latte will only be sent to the Barista Printer while the hamburger will only be sent to the kitchen printer. Products must be assigned to a printer in order to print. 

1. From the Back Office, select My site (if you have more than one site, you will be prompted to choose one)
2. Select Printers
3. Under Production Printing, select Printer/Item Specific.
4. Save to confirm
5. On the Printers page, scroll down to Network Printers in this Site
6. Next to the printer, select the settings cogwheel
7. From the list, tick the categories that you want this printer to print.

Blank box = the product or category is not assigned to the printer.

Tick = the product or an entire category is assigned to the printer.

Dash = only some products in the category are selected.

8. To select individual products within a category, use the down arrow to the right of the category to expand the selection. 

9. Select Save

Split or Duplicate Production Docket

Great workaround for when you have just one printer (or multiple printers) - you can print multiple dockets from one printer - these can be either identical or different - completely up to you.

By setting up split dockets, you can print order dockets for the grill station and salad station from one printer.

1. Go to My site (if you have more than one site, you will be prompted to choose one)
2. Select Printers
3. To duplicate a printer, select the copy icon beside that printer.
4. Enter a unique name for the printer(we recommend naming it after the station, like Kitchen-Salad or Kitchen-Grill)
5. Select Duplicate to confirm.

If you are using the Intelligent printing system, you will need to add duplicate printers using the Add Printer button. Rename the duplicate with the same printer name as the Intelligent Printer Server followed by a pipe symbol | and a label (e.g. Kitchen|food or local_printer|kitchen)

To split these dockets so that they print different products, follow the steps above to asssign printer-specific products.

What's next?

To create printing rules unique to each register, you will need the register-specific production printing add-on.

Want to go paper-free? Get rid of the dockets and manage order production on a bump screen.

Frequently Asked Questions?

In what order do products print on a docket?

Orders print in the order they are entered on POS unless you have assigned the products to a course. For Lightspeed Delivery and Lightspeed Ordering, products print in the order they are entered. 

Do I need an Intelligent Printer for this setup?

No, the examples above use Lightspeed App printing. If you are using Intelligent printing, duplicated or split printers need to be carefully named.

Can I create separate production printing settings for each register?

Yes, you can. This guide covers basic ways you can print order dockets. For more advanced customization, you can assign different printing rules per register with register-specific production printing.