Get ready to wow your customers with excellent table service. Lightspeed's Courses Add-on streamlines your service flow, course timing, and production printing for your kitchen - perfect for venues of all sizes, from small restaurants with 2 courses to full-service restaurants and a degustation menu.

Automatically assign products to courses, and waitstaff can send course calls, docket updates, and additional instructions to the kitchen with just a tap. And you’ve got complete control of how you’d like to set up the printing system for this.

This guide covers enabling Courses and the fundamental settings to customise this add-on for your workflow.

What's in this guide? 

Enable Courses Add-on
Customise courses
Configure docket printing
Selling with Courses
Frequently Asked Questions

Enable Courses Add-on

1. From the Add-ons Page in Lightspeed Back Office, find the Courses add-on

2. Enable this Add-on by clicking on the orange Enable Courses button

Customise courses

You can now create your courses. You have full control over how many courses you’d have and what they’re called.

1. From the same Courses Add-on page, select Configuration

You will see that there is already a default course called Now - this is typically used for orders that are called immediately (e.g. drinks, appetizers)

Note - When you start with this add-on, all the product categories will be assigned under Now - this is only because you have no other courses yet.

Note - Even when product categories are assigned to a course, staff can easily override this and manually assign products to a different course (e.g. stuffed mushrooms as the main course instead of being an appetizer) - by tapping on the course first (e.g. main course) and then on the product (e.g. stuffed mushrooms). Easy!

2. Select Add Course and enter the name of the course you’d like to add

3. Now that you have created your courses, here is a cheat sheet of what you can do to customise them:

To enter a product category under a course

• Enter the name of the product category on the space beside the course name. Once you start typing, available product categories will appear in the drop-down menu.
• Categories assigned to another course (except Now) CANNOT be entered.

To remove a product category from a course

• You can use backspace OR select the x beside it.
• When you do this, the category will go back to being assigned under the Now course - because all products need to be assigned to a course and Now is the default.

To reposition the order of the courses (A on the image below)

• Drag and drop the course using the double-headed arrow beside it.

To remove an entire course (B on the image below)

• Select the trashcan icon beside it.
• When you delete an entire course, all the product categories under it will be assigned to Now

To remove ALL product categories under a course (C on the image below)

• Select the x within the box where the category names are.
• When you select this, all removed product categories will be assigned to the default course, Now

4. Select Save Changes below and you’re done.

Configure docket printing

Now it’s time to make sure that the printing of your dockets is aligned with your workflow.

1. From the same Courses Add-on page, scroll down to SEQUENCE OF SERVICE

You will find three options:

Print all items immediately & call away verbally - this sends the whole outline of the courses (see A in image below) to the kitchen after the waitstaff selects Send. That’s it. This is best for restaurant venues that do not have a printer system for order dockets and therefore cannot communicate with the kitchen except verbally.

Print all items immediately & call as needed on POS - this sends the whole outline of the courses (see A in image below) to the kitchen after the waitstaff selects Send. Once the bell icon is selected on the POS to call the course, this will print a docket to alert the kitchen (see B in image below). This is best for restaurant venues that have a printer system for order dockets.

Print items only as their course is called - this DOES NOT send the outline of the courses to the kitchen. This only sends dockets of individual courses as they are called (when the waitstaff hits the bell icon on the POS). This is best used for quick service environment wherein food is already made and does not require much further preparation.

2. Scroll down further to PRINT UNCALLED ITEMS WITH CHANGES

You will find three options:

Print uncalled items and changes since last printed - this means sending new production dockets with remaining uncalled items and changes summarised in the footer (see C in image below)
Print changes only since last printed - this means sending the summary of changes on a separate instruction docket (see D in image below)
Disable change summaries - this means having new items print on their own docket. No summaries whatsoever

Selling with Courses

1. As you select items from the menu, you will find that they automatically get assigned to their corresponding courses - no matter what sequence you select them.

Note - For one-off situations, you can easily override to which course a dish will be assigned to. Simply tap the course on the order summary - then tap the dish. This will manually assign the dish to the selected course.

2. Select Send (see image below) when the order is finished. This sends the whole outline to the kitchen for them to prepare -  but this would depend on how you’ve set up your printing configurations.

3. Use the bell icon (see image below) to call courses or individual dishes. This will also print a docket depending on your printing configurations.

Note - The Now course is automatically called because these are orders that are brought to the customer ASAP. As for the rest of the courses, you can select the bell icon to call a whole course or individual dish.

Note - the elegant & power-saving dark mode is now available on POS. Check out this guide on how you can activate it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do all products need to have an automatic course?

Once you enable Courses, all product categories need to be assigned to a course. If they are not assigned to another course, they will automatically fall under the default course called Now.

Are there any add-ons that can cause compatibility issues?

Courses is not compatible with the Group Ordering add-on, and can cause issues with printing if they are both enabled on the same site.

Is this add-on only for fine dining venues?

Courses has the versatility to be customised for all kinds of establishments with table service - so it’s not just fine-dining venues. You get to set up how many courses there are and what they’re called. You can even set up what gets printed and when in alignment with your Courses configuration and workflow.

What else can I do to deliver a better dining experience?

Need more hacks to make your table service more efficient? Check out Lightspeed’s Tables Add-on. You can assign orders to tables and allow your staff to oversee everything from an intuitive digital layout.

Looking for more settings to help your waitstaff focus on their own orders? Check out Staff Level Order Control