In peak service you can't afford to let anything slow you down. So if your customer is choosing to order before they arrive for pickup, from their table with a digital menu, or even for delivery, Lightspeed can help keep things moving.
Let all your orders flow directly into your Lightspeed POS so your staff don't have to worry about more devices than they have to. With Lightspeed all your orders can easily be accepted, or even sent straight to production. Efficiently manage your online availability as well as your end-to-end workflows by using any of our ordering integrations to centralise workflows.
This guide covers how to manage online orders and your availability from Lightspeed POS.
What’s in this guide?
Managing your online availability
Letting orders Pass-Thru to production
Before you begin
You will need:
- A paid Lightspeed plan
- At least one active ordering integration
- Enabled and setup Order Types
Managing your online availability
Sometimes you need to slow things down to maintain control in service. With Lightspeed POS you can easily update your prep times or stop orders coming through when you reach capacity.
Temporarily disable Online Orders
- Select Online from POS
- Choose All or individual channels
- Select update to confirm
Order Workflows
When a customer places an order online from an app on their phone, your website or from a device in your venue, there are 2 things that can happen. The first is that your staff will be alerted to a new order and choose to either Accept or Reject the order.
Accepting orders on POS
- A new order alert can be seen and heard
- Select Orders
- Open the new order and select Accept or Reject
Note: If you choose Reject, you can select a reason
Letting orders Pass-Thru to production
The second way to manage orders is to have orders accepted automatically and let them go straight to production. If you would like to do this, be sure to enable Pass-Thru Printing first.
This will need to be enabled in Lightspeed and in your ordering integration's settings. Not all ordering integration are compatible with Pass-Thru Printing, so it is best to confirm with your Account Manager first.
Once this is setup, all orders will be automatically accepted on POS. This will free up staff so they can focus on in store guests and other operations.
When an order is ready
Sometimes it's best to let customers know when an order is ready to be collected. However, sometimes you don't want any extra steps after an order has been accepted and paid for.
When choosing an ordering integration, it's best to talk to your Account Manager who can recommend one that will best suit your needs.
For those who would like to let customers know their order is ready after it has been accepted with the steps above.
- Open Orders
- Select Pending
- Open Order
- Select Ready
When an order is collected
For some venues it's important to track when a delivery driver or customer collects their order. With Delivery and Pick-up orders your staff can easily see which orders are due to be collected and with a swipe and tap can mark as complete.
- Open Orders
- Select Online Orders
- Swipe the order being collected
- Select Update to 'Complete'
Choose when to complete online orders
You can choose to have orders complete manually, or when they are marked as ready, or automatically complete after 15 or 30 minutes or end of trade. Auto-complete is recommended for high-volume venues.
Head over to Site Information in Back Office and scroll down to find Online Ordering Settings.
Choose from:
- Delay the completion of orders - Orders will still appear on the online orders list view for review, but will auto-complete after 15mins /30mins / end of service.
- Complete orders when marked ready - Orders will be removed from the online order list view immediately and can only be found in the History tab.
-
Swipe to complete - Control when an order is handed to a customer. You will need to swipe all orders to remove them from the list. Orders older than 7 days will automatically be removed.
Adjust Prep times
Adjusting your prep time buys your kitchen some much needed time without having to stop accepting orders or removing products.
1. Hit Online
2. Use the dropdown to select the prep time
3. Hit update
By default, the prep time is set to 10 mins. the minimum you can select is 0 mins and the maximum is 90 minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
All my orders keep rejecting, my ordering partner says they receive "403 Due to popular demand we are temporarily not taking online orders."
This is a very specific error message that only fires off if the Online Ordering kill switch has been enabled on POS. To disable the kill switch, click 'Online' in the top right of the screen, untick Disable All Orders, then click update.
Can customers pay for online orders using cash?
No. Your customer needs to enter an online payment method at the time of purchase e.g. PayPal or GooglePay.