The complete PlateDash guide

PlateDash is a complete restaurant POS that runs on the phones and screens you already own — no terminals, no hardware to buy, no contracts. Guests scan a QR code on their table and order from their own phone; your waiters take orders through staff QR cards and a PIN; delivery and takeaway run through your own commission-free channel; the kitchen works from a live board on any screen; you accept orders, take cash and print bills from the dashboard; and the day closes with one scan of the X-Read ledger. You keep your menu, your prices and your money; we just run the service.

The shortest path from paper to ordering looks like this:

1. 1

   Create your account

   Sign up with your email and your restaurant's name. Your public menu link is created automatically.
2. 2

   Pick a plan

   In Settings, choose Starter or Pro. Payment takes a minute and your dashboard unlocks instantly.
3. 3

   Upload your menu

   Photograph your printed menu or upload the PDF. The AI reads items, prices, sizes, descriptions, tags and allergens into drafts.
4. 4

   Review and publish

   Check what the AI found, fix anything, then press Publish. Only the items you approve go live.
5. 5

   Print your QR codes

   Create one QR per table, download and print, and stick one on each table. Guests can now order.

Every step below is covered in detail in its own section — use the sidebar to jump straight to what you need.

1. 1

   Create your account

   On the login page, sign up with your email and your restaurant's name. We email you a confirmation link — click it once and your restaurant is created automatically the first time you sign in.
2. 2

   Pick a plan

   In Settings → Billing, choose Starter ($50/month) or Pro ($99/month). Payment is the activation — there is no free trial, but also no setup call and no waiting. The moment payment succeeds, your dashboard unlocks.

You never type your menu in. On the Menu page, drop in a photo of your printed menu or the PDF from your designer. The AI reads it in seconds and turns it into structured drafts: items, prices, sizes, descriptions, tags and allergens.

1. 1

   Open the Menu page

   This is the first screen you see after signing in — the upload box is at the top.
2. 2

   Upload photos or a PDF

   Take clear photos of each menu page, or upload the PDF directly. You can add several files in one go; each one is processed with its own progress bar.
3. 3

   Give the menu a name

   Something you will recognize later — Lunch, Dinner, Drinks. You can have as many menus as you like.
4. 4

   Wait a few seconds

   The AI extracts every item it can find. If the service is briefly busy, the upload retries automatically — you never need to re-upload.

Nothing the AI reads ever goes live on its own. Extracted items land as drafts — visible only to you in the dashboard, never to guests.

Scroll through the drafts, fix a price or a spelling where needed, then press the orange Publish button on the menu. A dialog lets you tick exactly which items go live — publish everything at once, or just the ten items you checked. Drafts stay drafts until you say otherwise.

After the first publish, the same flow covers menu changes: add new items as drafts, review, publish. Your guest menu only ever shows what you approved.

On the Menu page, click any item to edit it in place. You can change the name, price, description, sizes, tags and allergens — no re-upload needed for small changes.

Sizes and variants

Items that come in sizes (Small / Medium / Large, or 6-piece / 12-piece) get variants: each variant has its own label and price, and guests pick one when ordering. Add, edit or remove variants on the item itself.

Sold out without deleting

Run out of something mid-service? One toggle marks the item unavailable — it vanishes from the guest menu instantly and comes back with the same toggle tomorrow. No deleting, no re-adding.

Categories and multiple menus

Items live inside categories (Starters, Mains, Desserts), which you can add, rename and reorder. A restaurant can have several menus — Lunch and Dinner, Fast Food and Desserts — and every QR code, delivery QR and staff QR opens all of them: guests pick from a menu picker, and can combine items from different menus into one order. Renaming or adding menus never breaks printed codes.

Items with photos sell better. Click an item, add a photo from your phone or computer, and it appears on the guest menu within seconds.

You do not need to worry about file size: photos are compressed automatically in the browser before upload — resized to a sensible resolution and converted to modern WebP — so pages stay fast even on slow restaurant Wi-Fi and guest 3G. Images are served from a global CDN, not from your database.

The QR Codes page creates print-ready QR codes that link each table to your menu. Each code encodes a unique URL like platedash…/m/your-restaurant/table-5 — that URL is how an order knows which table it came from.

1. 1

   Create codes

   Make a single code (Table 5, Patio 2) or a whole range at once (Tables 1 to 20). Each code gets its own label, which prints under the QR so staff and guests can read it.
2. 2

   Every code opens all your menus

   Have a lunch and a dinner menu? No setup needed — every QR opens your menu hub and the guest picks. You can rename menus, add new ones or reorganize any time; printed codes keep working and never go stale.
3. 3

   Download and print

   Download the PNG — the label you see in the dashboard is exactly what prints. Stick one on each table, and test-scan one with your own phone before service.

The Delivery QR — business cards for online orders

Above your table codes sits the Delivery QR. It encodes your menu link with delivery mode switched on — anyone who scans it lands straight in the ordering cart set to Delivery, enters their address, and places an online order. It needs no table, never expires, and is free of the table cap.

1. 1

   Download the PNG

   Use it anywhere — posters, fridge magnets, social posts. It opens your menu in delivery mode on every scan (requires delivery turned on in Settings → Delivery).

2. 2

   Print business cards

   Tap the printer icon on the Delivery QR card, then Print 10 business cards (A4)— a standard sheet of ten 3.5 × 2 inch cards, each with the QR, your restaurant name and a "Scan to order delivery" line. Cut along the dashed borders and hand them to customers.

How far do you deliver?

In Settings → Delivery → Delivery area, enter your restaurant's postcode and how many kilometres you are willing to deliver — for example 5 km. That's it. When a customer orders delivery, they type their postcode; if they are inside your area the order goes through normally, and if they are outside it they are told politely: "Our delivery covers within 5 km — you are 8 km away" — and offered takeaway instead, with their cart kept intact. You can leave the area empty to deliver everywhere, and you can change or remove it any time.

Rewards on your delivery cards

In Settings → Delivery → Rewards you choose a thank-you for your delivery and takeaway customers — for example 10% off, $2 off, or a free item— and you can limit it to orders under or over an amount (like 10% off orders under $30, or a free drink on orders over $30). Your existing delivery QR card carries this automatically: every customer who scans it sees a small banner with your offer at the top of your menu, and the discount is applied by us when the order is placed — there is nothing to type, no codes, no new cards to print. The saving shows on their bill, on your Orders page, and in your daily X-Read ("Rewards given") so you always know what the thank-you cost you.

A guest scans the table code and your menu opens instantly in their browser — categories across the top, photos, prices, tags and allergens, with an item detail sheet for anything they tap. No app store, no sign-up, no password.

More than one menu

If you run several menus (Fast Food and Desserts, Lunch and Dinner), guests first see a menu picker — a card per menu with its item count. They open one, add items, tap All menus to go back, pick another, and keep adding: everything lands in one cart, producing one order and one bill. Items from every menu arrive together on the same kitchen ticket.

With a single menu there is no picker — the menu opens straight to the items, exactly as before.

They add items (picking a size where you offer one), open the cart, enter their name and phone number, add a note for the kitchen if they like, and choose how to pay — cash at the table, or card if you have online payments switched on. Card payments run on a secure Stripe page and the guest returns to a confirmation with a proper invoice.

If the same table orders again — drinks later, dessert after — the new items simply join the table's running bill. One table, one bill, automatically.

Sold-out items stay on the menu with a clear Sold outbadge — guests see what you have, just can't order it. Every order gets a simple daily number (#1, #2, #3) that restarts each morning at your midnight, shown on the bill, the kitchen ticket and your board; the printed date keeps every day's tickets unambiguous.

Delivery lets guests order from home or the office. They pick their items, choose Delivery, enter their address and phone, and the order lands on your Orders page (and Kitchen board on Pro) with the address printed on the bill and kitchen ticket. Available on both plans.

There are two ways in: your Delivery QR — the code on the business cards you hand out, which opens the menu already set to delivery — or your public menu link, where the guest picks Delivery in the cart.

1. 1

   Turn delivery on

   In Settings → Delivery, switch delivery on (available on both plans). Guests then see a Delivery option in the cart on your public menu link.

2. 2

   Set your delivery fee

   Enter a flat fee — it is added on top of every delivery order and shown to the guest before they order. Set 0 for free delivery. The fee prints on the bill and appears in your monthly report.

3. 3

   Choose how delivery guests pay

   Cash on delivery and online card payment are configured separately from dine-inin the same card — turn on what your delivery operation accepts. Online needs a connected Stripe account (see Stripe setup).

4. 4

   Hand out your Delivery QR

   On the QR Codes page, print the Delivery QR as a sheet of ten business cards — customers scan and land straight in delivery mode. Full instructions in the QR section below.

Where you see delivery orders

On the Orders page, delivery orders show a blue Delivery chip with the full address on the card, and the Dine in / Delivery filter tabs let you watch only delivery orders during a busy night. The printed bill carries a Deliver to line with the address and a Delivery fee line above the total, and the kitchen ticket prints a big DELIVERY heading with the full address so the packer knows exactly where it goes. Your monthly report counts delivery orders, delivery revenue and collected delivery fees in the same single view.

Takeaway lets guests order ahead and pick up at your counter — no table, no address. They pick their items, choose Takeaway, enter their name and phone, and pay cash at the counter or online. The order lands on your Orders page and Kitchen like any other, with a purple Takeaway chip and a takeaway filter tab.

Turn it on

Settings → Takeaway: flip the master switch and choose how pickup bills are paid — cash at the counter, online when ordering (needs Stripe connected), or both. Guests only ever see the options you enable, and every choice is re-verified server-side at order time. Your staff can also place a takeaway from their staff-QR screen for phone orders.

The Orders page is your service screen. The second a guest places an order it appears with a sound alert — no refreshing, on any device you leave open.

Accept first, then cook

New cash orders arrive as New and wait for one tap: Accept sends them to the kitchen, Reject kills a prank order before anyone cooks it. This gate exists so a fake order never reaches your kitchen. Online card orders skip the gate — a verified payment is already proof of a real customer, so they land directly on the kitchen board.

The life of an order

Accepted orders move through Preparing → Served → Completed with one tap each. Every order card shows the table, the guest's name and phone, items with sizes and notes, the running total, and whether it is paid or unpaid.

One table, one bill

A second order from the same table never creates a second bill — items merge into the table's active order and the total updates. When the party pays and leaves, complete the order and the table is clean for the next guests.

Every order card has two print buttons, designed for standard 72mm thermal printers but working on any printer:

Bill — the customer receipt: items with prices, quantities, the total (plus the delivery fee and a Deliver toaddress line on delivery orders), and your restaurant's address, phone and a footer note (a thank-you line, your Wi-Fi password, a GST number) from Settings → Print info.

Kitchen — the kitchen ticket: big, clear item text with sizes and notes, and no prices— exactly what the chef needs, nothing they don't. Delivery tickets print a big DELIVERY heading with the full address, so the packer knows where it goes. The Kitchen button is available on New, Confirmed and Preparing orders — so even without the Pro Kitchen Display, a paid online order that lands confirmed can still get its ticket printed (re-print any time if the first one is lost).

Auto-print when the kitchen marks an order ready

Switch on Auto-print kitchen ticket on Mark Ready in Settings → Personal Information. From then on, whenever the kitchen taps Mark Ready, the kitchen ticket prints automatically — staff pack the order and put the ticket in the bag, so the waiter or driver immediately sees the table or delivery address.

1. 1

   Set the thermal printer as the default

   On the kitchen device, make the thermal printer the operating system's default printer (Windows: Settings → Printers & scanners; the browser prints to it without asking).

2. 2

   Open the kitchen board in kiosk Chrome

   Create a Chrome shortcut with the target chrome --kiosk --kiosk-printing --app=YOUR_KITCHEN_URL and sign in once. In kiosk-printing mode Chrome presses the print button for you — every Mark Ready prints silently, no dialog.

3. 3

   Without kiosk mode it still works

   Any normal browser prints the same ticket — the print dialog just opens and staff press Print. Nothing else changes.

On the Orders page, pick a month and open the Monthly report: order counts, revenue, average order value, paid versus unpaid, cash versus card (with cash received and change returned), dine-in versus delivery (orders, revenue and delivery fees), tax collected, and a day-by-day breakdown — printable or saveable as a PDF straight from the browser.

The report reads from fast monthly rollups, not raw order scans, so even a busy restaurant's year-end summary opens instantly.

The Daily X-Read is the classic POS end-of-day cash audit. From the Orders board (owner or cashier), open it for any date: revenue, orders, cash versus card totals, tax collected, an hour-by-hour strip, and the staff cash ledger— every staff member's orders, the amount they placed, how much was collected, and what is still open. At shift end, every staff row should show Open at zero: that is your drawer reconciled. Print it as a PDF for your records.

Some guests prefer not to order from their phone. With Staff QRs (QR Codes page), each waiter gets their own named QR protected by a 4-digit PIN: they scan it, unlock with their PIN, and land on their staff portal — their own shift view — or jump straight into taking an order. No guest name or phone is needed — the order lands on your board like any other, marked with a bold STAFF badge, cash is collected at the table, and every ticket and bill shows who placed it.

1. 1

   Create a staff QR with a PIN

   QR Codes → Staff QRs → type a name (e.g. Waiter Ahmed) and a 4-digit PIN → Add. Download the PNG or copy the link and give the code to that person only. The PIN can be changed or removed anytime from their card.

2. 2

   Your waiter scans and unlocks

   Scanning opens a PIN pad. After the correct PIN, the staff portalappears: today's orders (pending, in progress, completed), paid/unpaid status, invoice details on tap, and a daily + monthly report of their own numbers. Every request is verified against the PIN on the server — a wrong PIN shows nothing.

3. 3

   Take an order

   Take order in the portal opens the menu in staff mode: type the table, add items, enter the PIN, send. The order follows the normal flow: New → Accept → Cooking → Ready.

4. 4

   Remove access instantly

   When a staff member leaves, hit Remove on their card — the QR stops working immediately. Treat printed staff QR cards like keys, and keep PINs private: anyone holding both can place orders for your restaurant.

Settings holds your restaurant's identity: the display name guests see, and your public menu URL — platedash…/m/your-name — which is created automatically from your restaurant name at signup.

The same card holds your print info (address, phone, footer note) that appears on every printed bill.

Set your weekly hours once in Settings → Opening hours: open and close time per day, days off, and your timezone. Overnight hours like 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM are fully supported — the system understands that 1 AM belongs to yesterday's service.

Outside your hours, guests can still browse the menu but can't order; the menu shows a clear message with your next opening time. No more "sorry, we're closed" conversations.

The instant switch

For the unexpected — a private event, a holiday, an early close — flip the Open switch in the same card. It overrides the schedule instantly, and flipping it back on returns you to the normal hours. Guests always see the truth.

If your region taxes restaurant food, Settings → Tax adds it to every bill. Set a short label (GST, VAT, Sales tax — whatever appears on bills in your country) and your rate. New orders show the tax line on the cart, the guest invoice and the printed bill, and the total the guest pays includes it. Online card payments charge the tax as its own checkout line.

1. 1

   Enable and set your rate

   Settings → Tax → switch on, type the label and rate (for example GST at 5%), Save. Only orders placed after that include tax — old orders keep their original amounts.

2. 2

   Where the money goes

   The tax is added to the food subtotal (delivery fees are not taxed) and paid to you with the rest of the order. Your Monthly report and Daily X-Read show the total tax collected for your returns.

Online payments are bring-your-own-key: guests pay by card directly into your own Stripe account. PlateDash never holds your money — the payment settles with Stripe like any card payment you take today. The connection uses a Stripe restricted key, which limits exactly what PlateDash can do with your account.

Step 1 — Get your Stripe account ready

Create or log into your account at stripe.comand finish Stripe's business onboarding (business details and your bank account) so Stripe can pay out your money. Use your live account only — actual guest payments need a live-mode key; a test-mode key cannot take real money from cards.

Step 2 — Create the restricted key in Stripe

Make sure your Stripe dashboard is in live mode (the Test mode switch off) — live keys are what take real payments. Then:

1. 1

   Open Developers → API keys

   In your Stripe dashboard, click the Developers button, then API keys, then click “Create restricted key”.
2. 2

   Pick the second option — “Powering an integration you built”

   Stripe asks why you are creating the key and shows three choices. Select “Powering an integration you built — include it in your website or app's code to call Stripe's APIs”. PlateDash is your own integration, not a third-party plugin and not an AI agent, so the other two options are wrong for this.

3. 3

   Enter the website details

   Stripe asks for the third party the key is for — that is PlateDash. Fill in:

   Name	PlateDash
   URL	https://www.platedash.pro

   Copy and paste both exactly as shown, then continue.

4. 4

   Check “Customize permissions” before creating

   On the next screen, tick the Customize permissions for this key checkbox — this is where you lock the key down. Leave it unchecked and Stripe grants broad defaults, which is not what you want.
5. 5

   Set exactly two permissions

   Permission	Setting	Why PlateDash needs it
   Checkout Sessions	Write	To create the secure card-checkout page when a guest pays online.
   Coupons	Write	To create the discount coupon when a guest uses your delivery rewards card — the saving shows on the Stripe card page exactly as it does in your menu.
   Webhook Endpoints	Write	To register one webhook on your account — this is how your kitchen learns a payment succeeded. Created automatically when you connect.
   Everything else	None	Leave every other permission off. PlateDash cannot touch payouts, refunds or your balance.

6. 6

   Create the key and copy it

   Stripe shows the key once — copy it right away. A live restricted key starts with rk_live_ (test keys start with rk_test_).

Step 3 — Connect in PlateDash

1. 1

   Paste the key in Settings → Payments

   Press Connect. PlateDash validates the key by registering its webhook on your account — if the key is wrong or a permission is missing, you get a clear error and nothing is saved.
2. 2

   Switch Online payments on

   Guests immediately see a Pay by card option at checkout. Cash stays available as long as you want it.

What happens on each online order

The guest pays on Stripe's secure page; the order stays hidden until Stripe itself confirms the payment to us (a signed webhook, cross-checked to the cent). Only then does the order appear — straight on the kitchen board, already marked paid, with the guest able to view a proper invoice. If the guest abandons the payment page, the hidden order cleans itself up and nothing reaches your screens.

Tips for your staff (cash & card)

Turn on Tips in Settings → Payments and guests see a tip row in their cart: preset percentages of the food subtotal (you choose them, e.g. 10 / 15 / 20%), an optional custom amount, or no tip. Cash tips are collected at the table with the bill; card tips are charged together with the order on your own Stripe account — the guest can still remove the tip on the Stripe page, and the order updates to the amount actually charged. Tips show on the bill, the guest invoice and the order card, and the Monthly report + Daily X-Read total them (cash and card separately). Tips are never part of the platform fee — the per-order fee stays on the food, tax and delivery total exactly as before.

The fee model is deliberately simple: one small flat fee per order — $0.15 per order on Starter, $0.10 on Pro. The same amount whether the guest pays cash or card. That is the entire commission story. No percentage, no currency conversion, no minimums.

How it is counted

Every order that reaches your kitchen carries the flat fee of your current plan, locked on the order at the moment it is placed — nothing changes afterwards. A second round merged into the same table bill is still one order, so one fee. Orders you never accept are never charged.

How it is charged

Once a month, on your billing date, the accumulated fees are added to your plan invoice and charged to the same card as your subscription through Polar. If that payment fails, access keeps working while the charge is retried for a grace period; your menu and cash orders keep working either way.

Where to watch it

Settings → Platform fees shows the running total for the current period, how many orders it came from, the exact date it charges, and a month-by-month history of past charges. You can verify every cent against the Orders report.

Settings → Billing → Manage billing opens your secure payment portal: update your card, download invoices, switch plans or cancel. Upgrades and downgrades apply immediately with proration handled by the payment provider; if you cancel, you keep full access until the end of the paid period. If a payment ever fails, you keep access while the provider retries — fix the card from the same portal.

Pro adds a dedicated kitchen screen. In Settings → Kitchen staff, create a staff account (email and a password you choose), share the login with your chef, and they open the Kitchen page — a full-screen live board with New, Cooking and Ready columns and a sound alert on every new order.

Staff accounts see only the kitchen board — no menus, no prices beyond the ticket, no settings, no billing. You can have up to 2 staff accounts, and removing one deletes its login completely, so a departing cook loses access on the spot.

A cashier account runs your complete order section in its own portal at /cashier: live orders with sound alerts, the Dine-in/Delivery filter, search (press Enter to search any order in the period), month and All-time views, accept/reject, cooking statuses, bill and kitchen-ticket printing, and the Daily X-Read for cash auditing. Cashiers can mark cash orders paid — recording what the customer gave and the change returned — but they see nothing else: no menus, QR codes, settings, or billing.

1. 1

   Create a cashier account

   Settings → Staff accounts → pick Cashier → enter an email and password → Add. Cashier accounts are available on every plan.

2. 2

   Their working screen

   The cashier signs in and lands on /cashier — the same order board you use, in a clean fullscreen shell. Everything about orders is there; nothing about restaurant management is.

Pro tracks stock per menu item. Open Inventory in the sidebar, press Track on any item, then enter the amount you physically have — the count sheet. From that moment stock deducts automatically the second you accept an order (or Stripe confirms an online payment), and an item that hits zero goes Sold out on your guest menu within a minute. Cancelling an accepted order puts the stock right back.

1. 1

   Track your items

   Inventory → Track items → press Track on each dish or drink you want counted. Variants (small/large) share one pool on the parent item — the standard restaurant simplification.

2. 2

   Save a count sheet

   After a physical count, type the real number next to each item — and set its Low at warning level (e.g. 5 means warn me at 5) — then press Save counts. Count 0 marks the item Sold out; any positive count brings it back.

3. 3

   Receive and waste

   Use Adjust on any tracked item: Receive adds a delivery (and brings a sold-out item back in stock), Waste removes breakage or spoilage. Every change lands in an audit ledger.

Low-stock and sold-out warnings

The count sheet badges items Low (at or below your Low at level) and Out (at zero), and an amber Stock warning strip appears across your dashboard whenever anything is out or running low — tap it to jump straight to the count sheet and reorder before the rush.

Every card in your dashboard has a small ? button with a one-line explanation of what it does — the fastest answer is usually right there.

For anything else, write to support@platedash.pro. Pro plans get priority replies during service hours.