With Lightspeed Restaurant, you can manage your online orders by consolidating every pickup, delivery, and table order from your online menus into a single POS device. This keeps operations simple by removing extra devices and ensuring orders move smoothly from order acceptance to production.

This article guides you on managing online orders and controlling availability directly in your POS.

What’s in this guide?

What you'll need
Managing online order availability and prep times
Configuring order completion settings
Updating online order status 
Frequently asked questions

What you'll need

• An active Lightspeed Restaurant subscription. 
• An account or subscription to an online ordering platform.
• The Order Types feature enabled in Back Office.

Managing online order availability and prep times

Handling your online orders efficiently is essential during peak periods. Lightspeed Restaurant allows you to temporarily disable incoming online orders or increase prep times so your kitchen can keep up without compromising service.

Check with your third-party online ordering support team to ensure they get notified of any changes to prep times or online order availability made in the POS. 

Temporarily disable online order availability

Temporarily disabling online order availability can be done on the POS when demand surges and production pace becomes overwhelming. This helps you stop new orders from coming in once you've hit capacity. 

To temporarily disable online order availability:

1. On the POS, click Online. 
   
2. Under Temporarily disable, select the checkbox to disable availability for Bopple or All online orders. 
3. Click Update. 
   

Adjusting prep time

Adjusting your prep time gives your kitchen more time to manage demand while still allowing orders to continue flowing. By default, the prep time is set to 10 minutes. The minimum you can select is 0 minutes, and the maximum is 90 minutes. 

To adjust your prep time:

1. On the POS, click Online. 
2. Under the Adjust prep time dropdown, select the desired prep minutes. 
3. Click Update.

Configuring order completion settings

You can set orders to complete in several ways, including manually, automatically after 15 or 30 minutes, when they are marked as ready, or at the end of the trading period. Auto-complete is recommended for high-volume venues. 

To configure order completion settings: 

1. Log in to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. From the navigation menu, select My site > Site Information.
3. In the Online ordering section, locate Choose when to complete online orders. Here, you can configure how online orders are marked as completed.
   • Delay the completion of orders: Orders remain in the Online orders tab for additional time for review before automatically being tagged as complete after 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or at the end of service, based on your selected timeframe.
   • Complete orders when marked ready: Orders are removed from the Online orders tab immediately once marked as ready. The order can only be accessed later in the POS History section.
   • Swipe to complete: Orders must be swiped manually on the POS to remove them from the list. Orders older than 7 days are automatically removed. 
     

Accepting orders on the POS

When a customer submits an online order, the system follows one of two workflows depending on your configuration. Either the staff are notified and must choose to accept or reject the order on the POS, or the order is sent directly to production without requiring manual confirmation.

Automatically accepting orders

To allow all online orders to pass directly to production without manual approval, you'd need to enable pass-thru printing. Once enabled, all online orders are automatically accepted on the POS. 

Not all ordering integrations are compatible with pass-thru printing. It is advisable to first confirm compatibility with your Lightspeed Account Manager or with your third-party online ordering support team. 

Manually accepting orders 

Manually accepting orders allows you to review each incoming order before it enters production. This helps address any special requests from customers or make adjustments before the kitchen begins preparation. Manually accepting orders is required if pass-thru printing is disabled. 

To manually accept orders on the POS: 

1. On the POS, click Orders. 
   
2. Under the Orders tab, select the online order to open the order summary. 
   
3. Select Accept. 
   
4. (Optional) If you select Reject, select a reason or add a note as to why the order is being rejected. 
5. Select Save. 
   

Updating online order status

Updating order status is essential for keeping your POS organized and ensuring customers receive timely notifications for their online orders. If the Complete When Paid (CWP) feature is disabled in your online ordering platform, staff must manually update orders on the POS for customers to receive notifications. When CWP is enabled, the order status updates automatically.

When the CWP feature is enabled in your online ordering platform settings, any online order is automatically completed and moved to the POS History tab. If both pass-thru printing and CWP are enabled, orders are sent directly to production and are marked completed without requiring any manual intervention.

Order pickup notifications

Pickup notifications are available for manually accepted orders when the CWP feature is disabled. You can mark an order as Ready once it’s prepared and ready for pickup. 

To send order pickup notification: 

1. On the POS, click Orders. 
   
2. Under the Pending tab, select the order to open the order summary. 
   
3. Select Ready. 
   

Marking an order as complete

Once an order is picked up, you can mark it as complete. Manually completing orders on the POS ensures they count toward your daily sales and don't accumulate in your open orders which can slow down the POS. 

To mark an order as complete:

1. On the POS, click Orders. 
   
2. Under the Online orders tab, swipe the transaction to the right to view the option to mark the order as completed. 
3. Click Update to 'Completed'. 
   

Frequently asked questions

What's next?