Guest ordering

Retail Extensions · App · checked 2026-10-29

Guest ordering is for a restaurant, a café, a bar, a quick-service counter or a hotel's restaurant that serves with iVendNext POS. Your guests order for themselves: they scan the QR code on their table, read your menu on their phone and send an order, which appears on that table's check on every till, waiting for your server. At a counter, a guest orders on a kiosk tablet, is shown an order code and pays at the counter. Your staff stay in charge: the app never sends anything to the kitchen and the guest never pays in the app. This page covers what the app adds, how to set it up, how your staff and guests use it, and how to remove it.

What it does

The page asks the guest for no name, phone or e-mail. A note the guest types for the kitchen is kept on the check line, like any note.

What you set up first

1. Set up your floor if you have not: your sections and tables (Retail Floor Section, Retail Floor Place). On the store's register (its POS Profile), tick Table Service and list the menu's Item Groups (list each group: a group's sub-groups are not read). A dish's choices are its own Retail Option Groups.
2. Install the app from the App library (see About Retail Extensions). The install adds the codes, the settings, the table card, the roles IVENDNEXT GOR Manager and IVENDNEXT GOR Integration, the Make code button and its service (switched off), and the app's own user, ivendnext_gor@integration.invalid, which works through the API only.
3. Open that user (search Desk for User) and, in this order: keep Is Desk User and tick Is POS User; choose any Shift Profile; choose a Retail Permission that allows, under Open Checks, only open a check, add to a check and see the checks (make one if you have none); add one row for each store to the store access table (each store once), with its register there; Save; then press Generate Keys. Without Is POS User, saving drops the store row and every order is refused. Never give this user write on Floor Section, or send to the kitchen: a guest's order must wait for your staff.
4. In Role Permissions Manager, give IVENDNEXT GOR Integration Read on Item, POS Profile and Retail Option Group, so the app can read your menu. Give IVENDNEXT GOR Manager to whoever makes and prints the codes, with Read and Select on Retail Floor Place and Select on Warehouse. For a manager of one store, add a User Permission on Warehouse for that store, so they reach that store's codes alone.
5. Fill in the settings (below).
6. In Retail Extension Subscription, open the app's service, read what it sends, tick the consent and switch it on. In Retail Desk Action, switch on Make code. If the App library asks, press Connect again on the app.

Settings

Search Desk for IVENDNEXT GOR Settings and add one for your company, with a row for each store whose guests order with the app:

For a kiosk, the register at the counter that takes the payment has Table Service ticked too (a tab is claimed only there) and rings the app's register's service mode. Tick its call numbers if you call orders by the number on the receipt.

Codes

Search Desk for IVENDNEXT GOR Code.

1. Press + Add: the kind Table, the store and the table; or the kind Kiosk, the store and a name (for example By the door). Save.
2. Press Make code. To make many at once, tick them in the list and press Make code there.
3. Press Print and choose IVENDNEXT GOR Table card: print it and stand it on the table. For a kiosk, open its Link on the kiosk's tablet in a full-screen kiosk browser, so the address is not on show: a kiosk link copied from the tablet lets anyone open unpaid tabs until you press Make code again.
4. If a code leaks (a photo of a card posted online), press Make code again on that code and print its new card: the old card stops working within 15 seconds, and no other table's card changes. A code record you duplicate prints Press Make code first until you press Make code on it. Changing a code's kind, store, table or kiosk name also stops it working until you press Make code again, so a card never orders for another table.

How your staff serve it

• At a table, a guest's lines show on the check under the course Guest order. When your server's own lines are waiting too, Send asks which course to send, so the server sees the guest's order first. When the guest's lines are the only ones waiting, Send sends them as usual: read the check before you press it. A dish you cannot make is removed at the till like any line. The table pays at a till as any check.
• A table with two bills open takes no orders from phones until your server merges or pays one.
• At a kiosk, the counter finds the tab on the till's floor under Tabs by its code (Kiosk 7KQ2M) and takes the payment. Call the order by its code, or by the receipt's call number if the counter register prints call numbers: the guest is told to keep the receipt.

Where it shows

In Desk: the codes and the settings. On the guest's phone or the kiosk: the menu and the order. On the till: the guest's lines on the table's check, or the kiosk's tab, waiting to be sent and paid.

What leaves your iVendNext

Your guests' phones and kiosks call the app's service at guest-ordering.ivendnext.app (hosted by CitiXsys in the United States). The service reads, with the app's own user, the code, your settings, the register's menu (its item groups, items, choices and prices) and the store's floor, and writes each order through your till's open-check door. On Make code, iVendNext sends it the codes' record names, the user who pressed and the language, and it writes each code's number, link and QR code. It keeps no order and no guest's details; it keeps your site's key from the connection until you remove the app.

Limits

• A guest's lines show on the till under their course and note, not as the guest's own.
• A guest at a place one party is already using (a bar counter, a shared table) joins that party's bill: give each party its own place, or switch Orders from the tables off for shared places.
• A card works whenever its store takes orders, after closing too: switch Orders from the tables off at closing.
• A kiosk tab a guest walks away from stays open: a cashier with change any line and close an empty check removes its lines and closes it. If your register refuses the last close of the day while checks are open, clear them first.
• One order a table every 15 seconds: a second phone at the table waits a moment.
• A check the app opened can be left empty (a dish the till refuses at the add, or an order sent again after the bill was paid): close it at the till. A till opening a check at the same moment as a guest's first order can leave two bills at the table.
• The menu is your register's listed item groups, at most 300 dishes, without pictures, allergens or sold out.
• A check the app opens has no party size: your server sets it at the till.
• Reinstalling the app means making and printing every card again. To stop one card, press Make code on it.
• A dish with no price on the register's price list shows 0.00 on the menu.
• Ordering needs a connection to iVendNext.
• Desk shows the records with the app's prefix, IVENDNEXT GOR.

How to remove it

1. Pay or close every check the app opened: once the app is removed, a check it opened can no longer be changed.
2. In the App library, find the app under Installed and press Details.
3. On the app's record, press Export and uninstall and confirm. iVendNext first exports your codes and settings to a file.
4. iVendNext removes the codes, the settings, the table card, the roles and the app's user. Your sales stay. The printed cards stop working.