Scheduled orders

A scheduled order is placed now and cooked later. The customer picks a time slot at checkout, pays as usual, and the order waits. It only reaches the kitchen display shortly before the slot, so a 7pm collection does not sit on the pass from 4pm.

This is off until you switch it on, and it is set per branch — a branch that cannot absorb pre-orders simply leaves it off.

#Turning it on

Open Branches → the branch → Order ahead and switch on Accept scheduled orders. Five settings control how it behaves:

#Where slots come from

Slots are generated from the branch's working hours, in the branch's own timezone. That means:

• A day marked closed offers nothing.
• A split day — open 09:00–12:00 and 15:00–19:00 — offers no slots across the lunch break.
• A slot must fit entirely inside an open range, so a 30 minute slot is never offered at 16:45 when you close at 17:00.

Change the working hours and the slots follow immediately. There is no separate schedule to keep in sync.

#Capacity

Orders per slot is how a kitchen protects itself. Set it to 6 and the seventh customer trying to book 12:30 sees that window marked full and picks another. Cancelled orders release their place.

The cap counts pre-orders only. Walk-ins and ordinary "now" orders are not counted against it, so treat the number as headroom you are willing to commit in advance, not total capacity.

#What the kitchen sees

Pre-orders do not appear in the live queue when they are placed. They sit in a Scheduled for later panel above the tickets, showing each order's number, item count, and due time with a countdown.

When the lead time is reached the order moves into the normal queue and behaves like any other ticket — same statuses, same one-tap advance. Nothing about the lifecycle changes; only the moment it starts.

#Cancelling

A customer can cancel their own pre-order from the order page right up until it reaches the kitchen. After that the kitchen has committed and the customer has to call, exactly as with a normal order.

Staff can cancel a scheduled order at any time from Orders. Cancelling returns stock and releases any discount redemption, as usual.

#Finding pre-orders

On the Orders list, the Timing filter narrows to scheduled orders only, sorted by when they are due rather than when they were placed. Each row shows a due badge, and the order page shows the slot along with whether it has been sent to the kitchen yet.

#If a branch closes

Switching a branch to temporarily closed stops new bookings straight away, and slots stop being offered. It does not cancel pre-orders that were already accepted — those still reach the kitchen at their lead time, so you can see them and decide. Cancel the ones you cannot cook and the customer is refunded through the normal refund flow.

#Where customers see it

The time slot picker appears at checkout on your website and in the mobile app, on every theme. Customers who want their food now are not slowed down: Order now stays selected by default and the picker only expands if they choose to schedule.

Staff taking an order in the dashboard get the same choice on the point of sale order form.