Web orders and pre-orders
Orders placed through SSP Guest — the online menu — reach the kitchen in two stages. First someone has to accept them; then they behave like any other ticket, except that a pre-order waits off the board until it is time to start it.
Incoming web orders
An online order that nobody has accepted yet is not owed to anyone: the diner has been told we'll confirm shortly. Until it is accepted it waits in the Incoming web orders panel above the board, on every tab and every screen at the location (it is not filtered by station), with the reminder Not yet accepted — no food is owed until someone says yes. The panel is hidden when there is nothing in it and checks for new orders every 15 seconds.
Each card shows the order label, the customer's name, the requested time for a pre-order (For 6:30 PM) and the dishes. Two ways to answer:
Accept with a ready time. Tap 10m, 15m, 20m, 30m or 45m — this is the time the diner is promised, so pick what the board can honour — or tap Accept to use the location's configured lead time. The order moves onto the board as a ticket; its dishes read Ordered · Start until a cook starts them.
Turn it down. Tap ✕ and choose why: Too busy, Item unavailable or Closed. The reason decides what the diner is told. There is no free-text reason.
Both the KDS and the web-orders queue in SSP Manager can decide the same order. The KDS dims a card while its decision is being sent and re-reads the list after every attempt, so an order decided in Manager vanishes here. If the server answers that the order has already been decided, that is the end of it — do not decide again.
If an attempt fails for a reason the server did not state — the connection dropped, the printer step failed — the panel says The order may or may not have changed. Check the list before deciding again. Take it literally: wait for the list to refresh before tapping anything.
The Manager queue remains the main place to manage web orders; the panel is there so a kitchen without a manager at the desk is not left with a waiting diner.
Later today
A pre-order — an online order for a later time — is accepted now but should not be cooked now. Once accepted, it waits off the board and appears on the Active tab, under the grid, in a collapsed Later today strip: Later today · 2 · next in 35 min. It lists, for this screen's stations, every pre-order due to start within the next 24 hours:
- the order label and start time (when the kitchen should begin, computed from the prep times),
- the collect time the diner asked for,
- a countdown — in 35 min, in 2h 10m, due now — amber when the start is within 30 minutes,
- the item count and dish names.
Rows are read-only: no timers, no controls, no alarms, and they do not count toward the station's load. The order becomes a real ticket on the board, with its chime, when SSP fires it at the start time — an order for 8:00 PM with a 20-minute prep appears at 7:40. The strip refreshes every two minutes and is hidden when there is nothing scheduled.
What the diner is told
| Kitchen action | Diner is told |
|---|---|
| Accept | The order is confirmed, with the ready time you chose (or the requested time for a pre-order) |
| Turn down | The order was declined, with the reason you chose |
| Plate the dishes and release the ticket | The order is ready to collect — this is why a plated dish cannot be un-plated except by a recall |