1 · Set up an iPad

Do this once per iPad. Takes about ten minutes. You need the venue’s owner email and password and a manager PIN.

Before you start

• iPad on the venue Wi-Fi (the same network as the printers).
• iPad in landscape with rotation lock on. The app is landscape only.
• Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock: Never. The app locks itself after five minutes of no touches; iOS must not sleep underneath it.
• Settings → Wi-Fi → tap the venue network → Private Wi-Fi Address: off if the printers are on an IP allow-list. Otherwise leave it.

Install the app

1. Open Safari on the iPad and go to https://app.kesslpos.co.uk/install-kessl.html.
2. Tap Install. iOS asks to install “Kessl”. Tap Install again.
3. Wait for the icon to finish loading on the home screen, then open it.
4. If iOS says the app is from an untrusted developer: Settings → General → VPN & Device Management → tap the developer profile → Trust.

First sign-in

1. Connect via: leave Cloud selected. Only choose Local server if the venue has the on-property box installed and you were given its address.
2. Enter the owner email and password, tap Continue.
3. Pick the venue if the account has more than one.
4. You land on the unlock screen. See Sign in for how to get in from there.

The first sign-in downloads the menu, floor plan, printers and settings. Give it a few seconds before tapping around.

Allow local network access (needed for printing)

The first time the app talks to a printer, iOS shows “Kessl would like to find and connect to devices on your local network”. Tap Allow.

If it was dismissed or denied, printing silently does nothing. Fix it here:

• Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network → turn Kessl on.
• or Settings → scroll to Kessl → Local Network → on.

Then relaunch the app. You only have to do this once per iPad, but a reinstall resets it, so check it again after every reinstall.

Assign the iPad to an outlet (multi-outlet venues only)

If the venue runs more than one outlet (a restaurant and a bar, say — see section 11), an owner should assign this iPad to one from Admin → Devices, along with its default receipt printer. An unassigned iPad shows every outlet’s menu and floor plan; an assigned one is scoped to its own.

Check the printer

More (left rail) → Admin → Printing lists the venue printers. From the app, send a test: open any table, add an item, tap ↗ Send. The kitchen or bar ticket should print within a couple of seconds. If nothing prints, see Troubleshooting.

Updates

The app updates itself when it is fully closed and reopened. To force it: on the unlock screen tap ⋯ (top right) → Check for updates. The version line at the bottom of the unlock screen shows what is running (for example b51).

2 · Sign in & the lock screen

The lock screen is what you see whenever the iPad isn’t signed in — at power-on, after five minutes idle, or after you tap Lock in the left rail. It looks like one of two layouts your venue has chosen in Admin → Settings → Lock screen:

• Faces (default): a grid of everyone’s name, tap yours to go straight to the PIN pad.
• PIN-first: a big clock and the list of who’s currently on shift; there’s no face grid — just key your PIN.

Sign in

1. Tap your name (faces layout) — this skips the confirmation step below — or just key your PIN on either layout.
2. If you typed the PIN without tapping a name first, the app shows a “Continue as <your name>” card so you can confirm it’s you before it signs you in. Tap Not me if the wrong person shows up.
3. If the venue requires staff to be clocked in to use the till, the same card offers Clock in & continue instead — one tap clocks you in and signs you in together.

PINs are 4–6 digits and submit automatically the moment you’ve typed the right number of digits — no need to press anything else.

Clock in or out without signing in

Tap ◷ Clock in / out at the bottom of the lock screen and enter your PIN. One tap clocks you in, or out if you’re already on shift — you don’t have to open the app.

Other things on the lock screen

• ▤ Kitchen display: tap it, then sign in — you land straight on the kitchen display screen instead of the floor plan. (A kitchen-role PIN goes there automatically.)
• ⟳ Refresh: re-pulls the staff list if someone new was just added.
• ⋯ menu (top right): Check for updates, open Admin (web), open this Guides page, or Change venue / server.
• A pill in the top corner warns you if the iPad is ○ Offline or has ⚠ N unsynced changes waiting to reach the cloud.

Locking and switching users

• Lock (bottom of the left rail) returns to the unlock screen. It also happens by itself after five minutes without a touch.
• Switch user (your name above Lock) changes who is signed in without closing any open checks.

3 · Take an order

Everything here is on the left rail, which is on every screen.

Table service

1. Floor plan → tap a table. Enter covers. The check opens.
2. Categories are on the left of the menu: Food and Drinks, then the sub-menus down the left rail, plus a search box and your ★ favourites. Tap an item to add it; tap it again for another.
3. Modifiers pop up when an item has them. Notes: tap the line, then Note.
4. ↗ Send sends food to the kitchen printer and drinks to the bar printer in one go. Items already sent are marked; only new items go.
5. Tap ← Floor plan to leave the check open and go to another table.

Seats and courses

The check can be grouped four ways — tap the grouping control above the ticket: Seat, Course, Product or Time. Assign a seat to a line from the item’s detail; courses fire in order from the same place a manager uses to hold or fire the next course.

Quick serve (counter, bar, takeaway)

Quick serve on the left rail: no table needed. Tap items, then either Pay now (the order goes to the kitchen/bar as the payment completes), ↗ Send without paying, or ▤ Add to tab to put it on an open tab or start a new one (the items are sent when you attach; the tab is settled later from Tabs).

Bar tabs

Tabs → ＋ New tab (name or card). Add orders to the tab from the table or from Quick order. Close & pay settles everything on the tab. Handing a set of tabs to someone else at shift change offers All my tabs (hand over everything at once) or Choose tabs… (pick specific ones).

Is my order started?

Kitchen on the left rail shows the kitchen display read-only for servers: each ticket says Waiting in kitchen or Being prepared. On your check, lines show SENT, PREPARING or SERVED. If the kitchen flags a line (item unavailable, delayed, or a note) it appears on the line and pops up as an alert wherever you are.

Moving a table or a check

Open the check → Move → pick the new table. Everything on the check — items, courses, seats — moves with it.

4 · Payment & tips

Print the bill before paying

On the payment screen the receipt is on the left. Tap 🖨 Print bill to print a copy marked NOT PAID for the table.

Take payment

Open the check → Pay. The amount due is always at the top of the right pane, with tip chips beside it; the big green button at the bottom completes the sale. Pick a tender from the grid:

• Cash: key the amount given on the numpad (or tap a quick amount); change due updates live. Complete sale records it and repeats the change on the confirmation. A venue that accepts foreign cash shows those currencies as extra tender options — the change policy (local change back, or change in the same foreign currency) is set by the owner.
• Card (terminal): take the card on the terminal, then Record card; add the auth code if you like.
• Account: regulars with a house account (see Guests). Search the customer, confirm, and the check goes on their account.
• Gift card: enter or scan the code.
• Room: hotel guests, only offered where a property-management connection is set up (section 13). Verify the guest, then charge to the folio.
• Split: equal, by item, by seat, or a custom amount. Each share carries its own tip (“Tip on this share”).

Tenders the venue hasn’t set up appear greyed with a reason.

Print bill and ✎ Adjust sit at the top of the receipt pane. Adjust holds the promo code, an email address for the receipt, and discounts (whole bill or one line, manager PIN).

Payment goes through the kitchen check first: anything not yet sent is sent before the sale completes.

Tips

Tip chips sit beside the amount due (percent or custom). Suggested tips are worked out on the net food and drink value, with the tax and service charge that are already inside the price taken out, so guests aren’t asked to tip on tax. The venue can switch this to the ticket total in settings.

Tips are kept completely separate from sales and the till — they’re never counted as drawer cash. A cash tip is set aside for you at the moment of the sale; a card tip is paid out later by a manager. See what you’re owed under End of shift.

Receipts, reprints & the Pay screen

Pay on the left rail (this used to be called Receipts) is also where you go to find and reprint a past check: search by order number, table, guest, room or amount, or filter by Open / Today / Week / All. Tap a receipt to view or Reprint. A manager sees extra shortcuts here too — see section 8.

5 · Voids, comps & corrections

Void an item

Tap the line on the check → Void → pick a reason (customer changed mind, ordered by mistake, unavailable, other). If the item was already sent to the kitchen or bar, a manager PIN is needed to confirm.

Comping an item

Discounts

From the payment screen’s ✎ Adjust, a manager picks one of the venue’s configured discount rules (percent or amount off, whole bill or a line) and confirms with a PIN.

Age-restricted items

A paid check needs changing

Pay → open the receipt → Refund / void payment (manager PIN). The check reopens; then edit, or Void order. See section 8 for the full refund flow.

6 · End of shift & time clock

My shift report (live view)

Shift (left rail) → 📄 My shift report shows your running totals for today: sales by payment method, checks closed, covers, cash taken, tips taken this shift and tips still owed to you, discounts, voids and refunds, plus any of your tables still open. This view is read-only and keeps updating all shift — nothing is saved by looking at it.

Closing your shift (the Y-report)

When you’re actually done for the day, use 🧾 Close my shift (Y-report) from the same Shift screen. Unlike the live view above, this freezes your numbers as a permanent record:

1. Live tab shows the same numbers as “My shift report” with a Close my shift button at the bottom.
2. Closing is refused if you still have open tables — hand them over or move them to a tab first; the app tells you which ones.
3. Once closed, it’s saved. The History tab lists every shift you’ve closed, newest first — tap one to see the frozen snapshot exactly as it was at close.
4. Closing your shift is self-service — it never needs a manager PIN, since it doesn’t move any money. It’s just your permanent timesheet-style record.

A manager or owner sees an All staff toggle on the History tab, to review anyone’s past closes, not just their own.

Clocking out

Clock (left rail) → Clock Out. If you’re on a break, this also ends it. Clocking out is refused while you still have open tables — the app offers a close-out list to hand them over first. If you’re owed tips, a confirmation shows the cash and card amounts and reminds you a manager hands those over separately (see section 7).

Breaks

From Clock, Start Break / End Break. If the venue sets a minimum break (for example 15 minutes), clocking back in early is refused and the screen says how many minutes remain.

7 · Manager: cash drawer & X-Report

Opening the drawer

Shift → count the starting float (and any foreign-currency float the venue accepts) → Start shift. The drawer stays open until it’s counted and closed. Only one drawer can be open per venue at a time from the iPad — see the note below if your venue runs more than one till.

Cash in / cash out

From Shift → ＋ Cash in or － Cash out: enter the amount, a reason, and (if it’s a foreign currency) which one. Use this for a bank drop, a payout, or a correction — never for a sale.

Opening the drawer without a sale

From the Pay screen’s manager shortcuts, “Open drawer” pops the till with a manager PIN and a required reason — it’s logged as a cash movement so it shows up on every report.

X-Report — a mid-shift snapshot

From Shift’s drawer actions, or right after closing the drawer, View X report shows today’s sales by payment method, gross/net revenue, tax, service charge, tips, discounts, voids and refunds, and whether any tables or tabs are still open. It’s just a read — nothing is locked, and you can pull it as many times as you like during the day.

Closing the drawer — blind count

Close drawer (end of day) asks you to count all cash in the drawer (float included) without being shown what’s expected — that’s the blind count. Submit it, and the expected figure, your counted figure, and the variance (balanced / over / short) appear together. A cashier needs a manager PIN to close; a manager or owner can close directly. Closing is refused while any table or tab is still open.

Till report

A manager can pull 🧾 Till report any time the drawer is open: opening float, cash sales, cash in/out, cash refunds, and the running expected cash, plus sales by method for the session and any foreign-currency breakdown.

Tips owed

Shift → 💰 Tips owed lists everyone with cash or card tips outstanding. Pay cash / Pay card records the hand-over — it never touches the drawer, since tips were never till money.

8 · Manager: end of day & refunds

End of day (Z-Report) — locks the day

From Shift’s drawer actions, 📊 End of day (Z-Report) opens a dedicated screen — no need to leave the iPad or open a laptop:

• Shows the day’s revenue summary (gross, tax, service charge, tips, net), operations (orders, covers, average ticket), adjustments (discounts, voids, comps, refunds), orders by type, and payments by method.
• Lock & Close Day freezes the Z-Report for good — it’s the one that can’t be re-run once locked. It’s blocked while any table or tab in the venue is still open; the screen names exactly what’s still open.
• You can enter a counted cash figure and notes before locking, for a venue-wide reconciliation on top of the per-till blind counts above.
• 🖨 Print Z-Report sends it to the venue’s active printers.

The X-Report (section 7) and the Z-Report show the same kind of numbers — the difference is that an X-Report is a snapshot you can pull any number of times, while the Z-Report’s lock is final for that day.

Approvals servers will ask you for

A manager PIN unlocks these on the spot (the approval is good for one action and expires after two minutes):

• Void an item that’s already been sent, or a whole unpaid check
• Comp an item (from Admin → Orders — see section 5)
• Discount a check
• Refund or void a payment
• Close the cash drawer and view the X-Report
• Lock end of day
• Unlocking a table, or overriding a price

Refunds & corrections

Pay searches every check in the venue, from every iPad.

• Refund / void shortcut on the Pay screen jumps straight to a payment lookup without needing to find the check first.
• Open a receipt → Refund / void payment → pick the payment, amount and reason. A refunded check reopens.
• Void order is only offered on checks that are not fully paid. To cancel a paid check, refund it first, then void it.
• Reprint sends the receipt to the receipt printer again.

Shift-report history

On the Close my shift (Y-report) screen’s History tab, switch to All staff to review anyone’s closed shifts, not just your own. The same history is also visible from the Admin dashboard’s Shift Handovers page.

9 · Guests, house accounts & reservations

Reservations

Reservations (left rail) shows the book for the day. Use ‹ › to move days.

• ＋ New reservation for phone bookings: name, phone, party size, time, notes.
• Online requests arrive as REQUEST. Tap Confirm.
• Seat jumps to the floor plan with the party selected; tap the table and the check opens with the right covers.
• No-show and Cancel keep the record but free the slot. Show finished reveals seated and cancelled bookings.

Guests and house accounts

Guests → search a customer. From the card:

• Enable house account, set a limit (or none). Once enabled, servers can charge a check to the account with the Account payment method.
• Settle · cash / card when the customer pays down the balance. The last transactions are listed underneath.
• Loyalty points and gift cards are looked up on the same screen.

10 · Admin dashboard tour

The Admin dashboard is the web control panel behind the iPad app — reachable from any browser, or from inside the app via Admin in the left rail (signs in with your manager or owner PIN). The sidebar is grouped:

• Overview — Dashboard (owner/manager): today at a glance.
• Operations — Orders, Floor Plan, Waitlist, Reservations, Tabs, Menu, Menus & Hours, Inventory, Recipe Inventory, KDS Stations, Customer Display.
• Guests — Customers, Loyalty, Gift Cards.
• Team — Schedule, Time Clock, Tips, Shift Handovers, Staff, Roles, Devices, Outlets.
• Finance — Reports, Cash Drawer, Tip Pool, Discounts, Promo Codes, Pricing Rules, Tax Rates, Currency Rates, Audit Log.
• Online — Storefront, Table QR.
• Integrations — PMS Config, Printers.
• Configuration — Locations, Security, Settings.

Most pages are owner/manager only; a few (Orders, Floor Plan, Waitlist, Reservations, Tabs, Time Clock, Shift Handovers) are open to everyone with dashboard access, and Guests-section pages open to cashiers too.

11 · Setting up the menu, floor plan, outlets & staff

Menu

Admin → Menu: categories, items, prices, images, variants, modifiers, tax mode per item, and which kitchen/bar station an item routes to. Set a minimum age here too, but see the caution in section 5 before you do — the app has no way to clear the age check yet.

Floor plan

Admin → Floor Plan: drag tables onto the layout, set seat counts and shapes. Every iPad on the venue shares the same plan (unless it’s scoped to one outlet — see below).

Outlets

Admin → Outlets: if the venue is more than one concept under one roof (a restaurant, a bar, a pool bar, room service…), create an outlet for each — name, short code, type, and its own printer routing rules. Then assign each iPad to its outlet from Admin → Devices (also where you set that iPad’s default receipt printer). A venue with zero or one outlet configured behaves exactly as before — nothing changes until you add a second one.

Staff & roles

Admin → Staff: add people, set their role and a 4–6 digit PIN. The iPad signs someone in the instant their PIN is complete, so avoid two people sharing a PIN. Admin → Roles lets you define custom roles on top of the base set (owner, manager, cashier, server, runner, kitchen).

Settings worth knowing

• Settings → Pricing: “Prices include tax” and “Prices include service charge” decide whether tax is inside the price or added on top.
• Settings → POS: idle lock minutes (default 5; 0 = never) and lock-after-payment.
• Settings → Time clock: Require clock-in to sign in and Minimum break (minutes). Managers and owners are exempt from the clock-in rule so an admin can always get in.
• Settings → Lock screen: faces + PIN (default) or PIN-first with a large clock and the on-shift list.
• Printing: one printer can serve receipt, kitchen and bar, or split them by role — see section 14.

12 · Reports & exports

Admin → Reports has a tab for each view:

• Daily summary — revenue, covers, average ticket for a date range.
• Product mix — what sold, by item and category.
• Servers — sales, tips and covers per staff member.
• Voids / discounts — who voided or discounted what, and why.
• X-Report and Z-Report — the same interim/locked views described in section 7 and section 8, viewable from a browser as well as the iPad.
• Export CSV — every order in a date range, with status, amounts, payments and server, as a CSV download.

13 · Room charge (PMS) & multi-currency

Connect a property management system

If the venue sits inside a hotel or resort, Admin → PMS Config connects Kessl to the property’s PMS so guests can charge food and drink straight to their room. Enter the connection details your PMS provider gives you (region/host, property ID, and the charge code the restaurant posts against), then Test Connection and save. Once it’s connected and active, the iPad’s payment screen offers Room as a tender: staff look up the guest, confirm, and the charge posts to their folio automatically — no manual paperwork.

Multi-currency

If the venue takes foreign cash (common near a border, or in a resort with international guests):

• Admin → Settings: list the accepted currencies, and choose the change policy — hand back change in the venue’s own currency, or in the same foreign currency the guest paid with.
• Admin → Currency Rates: enter the exchange rate for each accepted currency against the venue’s base currency. Keep these current — the iPad uses whatever rate is stored here to convert a foreign cash tender.

Card payments are never taken in a foreign currency — foreign cash is a cash-tender feature only. Cash drawer reports (section 7) break out foreign cash separately from the base-currency count.

14 · Printers and kitchen

The iPad prints directly to the printer over Wi-Fi (no server in between). Any ESC/POS thermal printer with an Ethernet or Wi-Fi port works (Epson TM series, Star, and most generic 80 mm printers).

Network

• Give the printer a fixed IP on the venue router (DHCP reservation by MAC address). If the IP changes, tickets stop.
• Printer and iPads must be on the same Wi-Fi / LAN. Guest Wi-Fi with client isolation will block printing.
• Port 9100 (raw). Leave the printer’s own web page open in Safari on a laptop while you set up; it shows the IP and lets you print a self-test.

Add the printer in Admin

Admin → Printing → Add printer:

• Name (for example “Kitchen”), IP address, port 9100.
• Roles: tick what this printer does: receipt, kitchen, bar. One printer can do all three.
• Save, then Ping to check the iPad can reach it.

The app refreshes its printer list within a minute, or sign out and in.

Routing

Menu categories carry a station: kitchen items (hot, cold, expo) go to the kitchen role; bar categories go to the bar role. Set the station on the category in Admin → Menu. A venue with outlets can instead set printer rules per outlet in Admin → Outlets. Tapping ↗ Send on a check prints one ticket per station.

What a ticket shows

Station header, order type and table, server, time, course, the items in double-height with quantities, modifiers underneath, notes flagged NOTE, and an item count at the bottom. Reprints are marked.

Kitchen display (KDS)

An iPad signed in with a kitchen PIN (or a manager) works the display: Start ▶ marks the ticket as being prepared, DONE ✓ marks it served; both update the lines on the server’s check. Servers see the same screen read-only.

Tap a line on a ticket to tell the floor something:

• 86 — not available: the line is flagged on the server’s check, the server gets an alert, and the item is taken off the menu for the rest of the day (re-enable it in Admin → Menu).
• Delayed…: how many minutes; the server sees the delay on the line.
• Note to server…: free text.
• Clear flag removes it.

Local network permission (iOS)

Printing needs iOS’s Local Network permission for Kessl. If tickets never arrive and Ping fails from the iPad but works from a laptop, this is almost always it: Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network → Kessl on. A reinstall resets it.

Cash drawer

A drawer connected to the receipt printer’s DK port pops on cash sales. If it does not, check the drawer cable is in the printer (not the iPad) and that the receipt printer is the one marked with the receipt role.

15 · Troubleshooting

Try these in order. Most problems are one of the first three.

Nothing prints

1. Local Network permission. Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network → Kessl on. Relaunch the app. (A reinstall switches it off again.)
2. Same network? iPad Wi-Fi name must match the printer’s network. Guest networks block it.
3. Printer IP changed. Print a self-test from the printer (hold the feed button on power-up) and compare with Admin → Printing. Set a fixed IP on the router.
4. Admin → Printing → Ping. If Ping works and Send does not, check the category’s station and the printer’s roles.

Floor plan or menu is empty after sign-in

• Pull to refresh, or unlock screen → ⟳ Refresh, then sign in again.
• If it stays empty, fully close the app (swipe it away) and reopen. The download runs again at sign-in.
• Still empty: delete the app, reinstall from the install page, allow Local Network again.

“⚠ N unsynced” on the floor plan

Some changes could not reach the cloud. Tap it → Retry. If it keeps failing, the message says why; do not re-enter the payments — they are recorded on the iPad and will be sent.

Payment refused: “Age verification required”

The check has an item with a minimum age set in Admin → Menu. There is currently no screen anywhere in the app to clear this. Ask an owner to remove the minimum age from that item in Admin → Menu so the check can be paid — see section 5.

The app shows an old version

Unlock screen → ⋯ → Check for updates. If nothing changes, fully close the app and open it again; it checks for updates on launch.

“Offline” banner

The iPad has no internet. Cash and terminal-card payments keep working and queue. Gift card, room, account and reader-card payments need a connection. Kitchen tickets still print (they go straight to the printer). The cash drawer, X-Report and end-of-day screens all need a connection — they’re managed by the cloud and show a “needs connection” banner offline.

Wrong totals / tax on top

Admin → Settings → Pricing: check Prices include tax and Prices include service charge. Existing open checks re-price when they are opened on the payment screen.

A paid check needs changing

Pay → open it → Refund / void payment (manager PIN). The check reopens; then edit, or Void order.

PIN not accepted

• PINs are 4 to 6 digits; the app submits as soon as the expected number of digits is entered.
• Ten wrong attempts lock PIN entry for the venue for a while. Wait, or an owner can reset the PIN in Admin → Staff.

The iPad locked while a guest was paying

The idle lock is five minutes without a touch (Admin → Settings → POS to change). Unlock and reopen the check; nothing is lost.

Who to call

Screenshots help. The version line on the unlock screen (for example b51 · OTA 236d4482) tells support exactly what the iPad is running.