Phone & Computer Apps
Everything in MenuBaton works in a web browser. Alongside it there are four apps you install, each for a job a browser does less well: carrying the restaurant in your pocket, keeping years of orders, printing kitchen tickets, and letting customers order on a tablet.
Which app does what
| App | Runs on | Signed in by | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| The phone app | Android, iPhone | The manager, chefs, staff and cashiers | Each person's own screen on their phone: the manager pages, the kitchen board, the serving board or the cashier screen. |
| The desktop app | Windows, Mac | The manager and cashiers | The manager pages on a computer. It downloads every order and keeps it, so its Statistics can reach back to your first order, while our servers keep only 90 days. Also a cashier screen with receipt printers. |
| MenuBaton Kitchen Printing | Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone and iPad | The printing account | Prints your kitchen tickets. |
| MenuBaton Station | Android and Apple tablets and phones | Your manager email and the change table password | Customers order, and pay, on it at a counter or a table. |
- One sign-in per account. Each account can be signed in on one device at a time — the printing account on up to four. Signing in somewhere new first tells you where the account is already signed in, and closes that one only if you go ahead. MenuBaton Station doesn't count towards this.
- Languages. The apps you install are in English. The web apps — the Restaurant Portal, the kitchen, staff and cashier screens, and your customers' menu — offer the languages you turn on in Settings.
The phone app
One app for everyone who works a shift. On its sign-in screen, choose Manager and enter your email and password, or Kitchen / Cashier and enter the restaurant URL, the account name and the password. The account's role decides the screen it opens on.
Manager
The manager pages, from the menu at the top left: Dashboard, Menu, Tables, Take Away, Orders, Accounts, Printers, Services, Credits and Invoices. On the phone, the Menu page only marks dishes sold out, Tables shows your tables and their QR codes without changing them, and Take Away holds the QR code and the pause and busy buttons. Orders does everything the portal's does, refunds included. See The manager apps compared for every page.
Chef
The kitchen board, with Incoming and Cooking: Start Cooking takes a dish, and Mark Ready hands it to your staff. The Menu button marks dishes sold out and back In Stock, while Chefs can mark dishes sold out is on in Settings.
Staff
The serving board, with Ready to Serve and Delivering: Take It claims a ready dish for you to carry, and Mark Served confirms it reached the table. Taking an order for a table and your Served History are in the staff display in a browser.
Cashier
The cashier screen: every order of the last 90 days in one list, with the sort, Go to date and Complete all orders. Tap an order to mark it paid, complete it, print or cancel its kitchen ticket, or show its receipt. Buttons at the top open the Menu (to mark dishes sold out), Take Away (pause and busy) and the receipt printers on this phone. See Receipt printing at the cashier.
The printing account can't use the phone app: it signs in to MenuBaton Kitchen Printing instead.
The desktop app
For Windows and Mac. On its sign-in screen, choose Manager and enter your email and password, or Cashier and enter the restaurant URL, the account name and the password.
- Signed in as the manager, it has Dashboard, Menu, Tables, Take Away, Orders, Statistics, Accounts, Receipt Printers, Services, Credits and Invoices. Settings, receipt format, payment accounts and your subscription are changed in the Restaurant Portal.
- Signed in as a cashier, it has Orders, Menu (to mark dishes sold out), Take Away (pause and busy) and Receipt Printers, which can also print to a printer plugged into the computer by USB.
- When a newer version of the app is out, a line at the top of its window says so.
Your order archive
Our servers keep your orders for 90 days. The desktop app downloads them to its computer and keeps every one, for as long as you keep the computer. It downloads new and changed orders when someone signs in, whenever Statistics opens, and every 30 minutes while it is open, and every 12 hours it checks the last 90 days for anything it missed. You don't have to press anything.
The app can keep only what it has downloaded. The first time it is signed in, it downloads the last 90 days — anything older is already gone from our servers — and from then on everything new. So install it when you start, and sign it in at least once every 90 days: an order it never downloaded is lost once it is 90 days old. The day totals in the Dashboard's History are kept either way.
- The app's Orders page lists the archive and the last 90 days as one list: Go to date reaches any day you have. An archived order opens read only, and its receipt can still be shown, printed and downloaded — without a QR code, which works only while we still hold the order.
- Each restaurant's archive is one file, kept in
Documents/menubaton_order_history. History Location on the Orders page moves it to another folder or disk. The app won't keep the file in a folder that OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud or another cloud service syncs — that can corrupt a file in use — but offers to save a backup copy there instead. - If the folder you choose already holds this restaurant's history, you choose which one to use: Use the one there, or Replace it (the old file is kept beside it, renamed).
Statistics
Statistics charts every order the desktop app has downloaded — your whole history, back to your first order if the app has been signed in since you started — not just the 90 days our servers keep. Choose Orders (every order that wasn't cancelled) or Income (what was paid), and Week, Month or Year: each bar is one week, month or year, and the chart opens on the newest, so scroll left for older ones. The top chart is the whole restaurant; pick a dish under By menu item to see its own. ↺ Refresh downloads the newest orders first.
Every Dashboard — on the web, the phone and the desktop — also has History: each day's orders, cancellations, revenue and dishes for the last 30, 90 or 365 days. We keep those day totals for good, even after the orders themselves are gone.
MenuBaton Kitchen Printing
The app that prints your kitchen tickets, on a computer, phone or tablet in your restaurant. It signs
in with your restaurant URL, the account name printing and your manager password (or the
printing account's own — see The printing account). How to
add printers is in Set up kitchen printing.
- It keeps printing with nobody signed in. Once a device has been signed in, it goes on printing after its sign-in runs out. A phone then says "This device prints kitchen tickets with nobody signed in." Sign in again only to see or change the printers.
- On a Windows PC or Mac, closing the window leaves it printing in the system tray (the menu bar on a Mac), and it starts again by itself when the computer restarts. The tray's Stop printing and quit stops it until the next restart; tickets meanwhile go to your other printing devices.
- On Android, it starts printing again by itself after the phone restarts, once the phone has been unlocked. Keep it on charge.
- On an iPhone or iPad, it prints only while the app is open on screen. After a restart, opening the app is enough — nobody needs to sign in.
- To stop a device printing for good, sign it out. Changing the printing account's password signs every printing device out.
MenuBaton Station
The ordering app for a tablet at a counter or on a table. It has a guide of its own: MenuBaton Station.