Help & answers

Words you'll hear

Restaurant software comes with its own vocabulary. Here’s every term you’ll run into in Menulisa, explained in one line — no prior experience needed.

The basics

POS — “Point of sale.” The till your staff use to take orders and payment. In Menulisa it’s just a web page on a tablet, phone or computer.
Terminal / device — a single tablet, phone or computer running the POS, connected (“paired”) to one of your branches.
Branch — one physical location. One restaurant account can run many branches.
Check (or tab) — one table’s running bill. You open a check, add items to it, then settle it when they pay.
Cover — one guest. “40 covers” means 40 people were served.

Fire — to send an order to the kitchen. Items sit in the cart until you fire them, so you can build a round and send it all at once.
Course — a stage of the meal (starters, then mains). You can fire one course now and the next later.
KDS — “Kitchen Display System.” The screen at the pass that shows fired orders to the cooks.
Bump — to clear a finished ticket off the kitchen screen. “Recall” brings it back if you bumped too early.
The pass — the counter where finished dishes are handed from kitchen to floor staff.

Tender — a way of paying: cash, card, or anything else you accept.
Settle — to finish paying a check so its balance reaches zero.
Float — the cash you put in the drawer at the start of a shift to make change.
Shift — one stretch of till use, from opening the drawer to counting it at the end.
Variance — the difference between the cash you expected in the drawer and what you actually counted.
Void — to cancel an item or payment (e.g. a mistake, or a dish sent back).
Comp — short for “complimentary”: an item given free, on the house.

X-report — a mid-shift snapshot of sales and cash so far, without closing the till.
Z-report — the end-of-shift summary printed when you close the drawer: total sales, payments by type, and the cash count.
Gross vs net — gross is the total before discounts; net is what’s left after discounts come off.
COGS — “Cost of goods sold”: what the ingredients in a dish actually cost you.

You don’t need to memorise these — every help article spells terms out the first time. Bookmark this page and come back whenever a word trips you up.

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