Glossary

Terms this guide uses precisely, and the pairs that are easy to confuse.

The pairs worth separating

These cause more confusion than any single term, so they are listed together.

This	Not this
Sales — everything customers ordered.	Platform earnings — your share of it.
Accrued — earned, recorded.	Settled — actually moved.
Offline terminals — tills keep working in an outage.	Pay at the counter — a payment method.
Classifications — how a restaurant is found.	Menu — how a dish is described.
Deals — the platform's discounts.	Coupons — a restaurant's own.
Platform commission — what you take from an order.	Tax — what the customer pays the state.
On hand — what is physically there.	Available — what can still be sold.
Password — signs in to the dashboard.	PIN — unlocks a shared screen and authorises at the till.
Suspended — switched off, reversible.	Deleted — gone.
Waitlisted — still waiting on an answer.	Cancelled — called off.

A

Agreement — a standing arrangement at a gateway that charges a subscriber each term. Distinct from a saved card, which pays one term and does not renew.

All day — the running count of every outstanding item across all kitchen tickets.

B

Branch — a separate restaurant sharing one owner's login.

Business model — marketplace, my own restaurants, or franchise. Every install starts as a marketplace and you change it under Settings; it decides which screens exist at all.

C

Covers — guests, as opposed to bookings or orders. Ten bookings can be eighty covers.

Cover (stock) — how many days an item lasts at your recent rate of use.

Cron — the scheduler. One entry on your server that runs the platform's timed work.

D

Dog — a dish that sells poorly at a thin margin. Remove it.

Drip — an automated email sequence triggered by customer behaviour.

G

Give-back rate — a loyalty reward's value as a share of the spend needed to earn it. Your real discount rate.

Guest checkout — ordering without an account. No loyalty, not in your customer list, not contactable afterwards.

H

House account — a customer's tab at one restaurant: bills charged to it at the till, paid down later, capped by a credit limit. A tender, never a storefront payment method.

L

Lift — how much larger a basket is with a coupon than without. The measure of whether a coupon earned its keep.

M

Merge / combine code — tables sharing a code are treated as one unit.

Menu engineering — classifying dishes by units sold against margin: star, plough-horse, puzzle, dog.

P

Placement — a sponsored slot on the storefront, sold by the month.

Plough-horse — sells well at a thin margin. The most profitable thing to fix.

Puzzle — good margin, sells poorly. Sell it harder.

R

Reserved (stock) — committed to live orders and not available to sell.

Royalty — a franchise fee taken from a branch's takings. Distinct from commission.

S

Safe drop — cash banked mid-session so the drawer does not hold too much.

Segment (customers) — everyone, active, at risk, or new. At risk is measured against each customer's own rhythm, not a fixed number of days.

Serving time — a reusable window attached to a category or a dish. A dish inherits its category's unless it names its own.

Star — sells well at a good margin. Protect it.

Station — where a dish is cooked, and which kitchen screen it reaches.

Store credit — prepaid money a customer holds at one restaurant, loaded at the till or given back as a refund, and spent on later bills there. The restaurant's liability, not a payout.

T

Take rate — platform earnings as a share of sales. The figure that shows growth on low-commission plans.

Tender — the method a payment was taken by.

Turn time — how long a table stays occupied. Twenty minutes off it is an extra sitting.

W

Webhook — a message from a gateway telling the platform something happened. Missing webhooks are behind most "paid but shows unpaid" reports.

Z

Z-report — the record produced when a drawer session is closed: cash summary, takings by tender, and every movement.