Open Orders

Open orders (also called open tabs or open cheques) let you take a customer’s order, send it to the kitchen, and keep adding to it before they pay. POS Cafe uses Shopify POS draft orders for this: save the cart as a draft, load it again to add the next round, then check out when the customer is ready.

What you need

• The Save as draft tile on the Shopify POS Home screen. Add it with Add tile → Action → Save as draft, then tap Save.
• Somewhere for tickets to go. Epson and Star receipt printers and Fresh KDS screens receive the items each time a draft is saved or updated. A Shopify POS printer and Shopify’s built-in receipts don’t print when a draft is saved; to print a round on those before payment, use the Send to prep tile.
• Tables (optional). Set up dining areas and tables so staff can assign a table from the POS Cafe tile and every open tab is listed by table. See Table Management: Getting Started.

Start an open order

1. Open the POS Cafe tile and, if you use table management, tap Assign in the Table bar to choose the customer’s table.
2. Add the items as usual.
3. Tap Save as draft. The items are sent to the printers and Fresh KDS screens for their prep areas. If the table’s dining area has Add tables to POS draft orders turned on, the table name is added to the order so it’s easy to find in the drafts list. See POS Draft Orders.

Add to an open order

1. Tap Load draft and choose the order.
2. Add the next round with the POS Cafe tile.
3. Tap Update draft. Only the new items are sent to your printers and screens.

Tip

With the Send to prep tile you can send a round to the kitchen without saving the draft first, and send again later for only the new items. See Send to Prep.

Check out an open order

1. Tap Load draft and choose the order.
2. Tap Checkout and take payment as normal. To split the bill, use Shopify’s split payment at checkout.

Items already sent to the kitchen aren’t printed again at checkout.

See every open tab

The Open Tabs page in POS Cafe lists the open draft orders at a location, grouped by table.

If you don’t use table management

You can still tell drafts apart by adding a customer to the cart. Create a customer for each table (first name Table, last name the table number) and tap Add customer before saving the draft. Table management is the better option: it records the table on the order, lists tabs by table, and gives each table a QR ordering link.