Outlets Overview
Outlets is where a property sells beyond the room: a restaurant, a bar, a guest shop. Each outlet takes its own orders or sales, settles them on the spot or charges them to a guest's room, and reports alongside room revenue.
What an outlet is
An outlet is one place that sells. It owns its own catalogue, tax and service-charge stack, payment methods, receipt layout, printers, and even its own trading currency. A property with two outlets keeps two independent configurations, and a property can run several outlets of the same type.
Every outlet appears by name in the Outlets group of the sidebar, with its screens nested under it. Pick the outlet there to work in it. To add one, use the + button on the Outlets group heading, which opens the outlet setup.
Outlet charges are separate from hotel charges
An outlet's charge stack is configured per outlet and does not inherit the property's booking charges. See Taxes & Charges.
Outlet types
You choose the type when you create an outlet. Two types are available today:
- Restaurant: table service with a floor plan, a kitchen display, a menu with modifiers, and inventory with recipes. A bar or a pool bar runs as a restaurant outlet.
- Guest Shop: a retail counter that sells products from a catalogue and tracks their stock, with no tables or kitchen.
Restaurant outlet screens
A restaurant outlet has seven screens under its name in the sidebar:
| Screen | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Cashier | The floor plan and order pad: open a table, add items, send to the kitchen, settle. |
| KDS | The kitchen display: live tickets by station, with cook timers. |
| Menu | Items, categories, prices, prep times, and modifier groups. |
| Inventory | Stock on hand, receiving, counts, and recipes that deduct from stock. |
| Reports | Sales, settlements, items, methods, voids, cost of goods, and day close. |
| Reconciliation | Ledger invariant checks, run nightly or on demand. |
| Settings | Outlet identity, currency, charges, payment methods, receipt, online ordering, printers. |
Guest Shop screens
A guest shop has Sale, where a sale is rung up and settled, Products, the items the shop sells, and Stock, the on-hand count for each product, changed by receiving, adjusting, or counting it. Its Reports and Settings screens are shown but not yet in use; they arrive in a later update and will work the way the restaurant ones do.
Permissions
Every outlet screen is gated on View Outlets (outlets.view), and the actions within them are gated separately, so a server can take orders without being able to void a fired line or read a sales report:
- Take Orders (
outlets.takeOrders): open tables or sales, add lines, send to the kitchen. - Settle Bills (
outlets.settle): take payment and close an order. - Void Items (
outlets.voidItems): void a line that has already been fired, and void a whole order. - Manage Menu (
outlets.manageMenu): edit items, categories, modifiers, and shop products. - Manage Stock (
outlets.manageStock): receive, adjust, and count inventory or shop stock, and edit recipes. - View Reports (
outlets.viewReports): the Reports and Reconciliation screens. - Kitchen Display (
outlets.kds): the KDS, and advancing a line's cooking state. - Manage Outlet Settings (
outlets.manageSettings): everything on an outlet's Settings, and creating new outlets.
Grant these on a role under Users and Roles. Outlets is a plan module: a property without it has no Outlets group in the sidebar.
How outlet revenue reaches the hotel
A bill settled at an outlet is that outlet's revenue. A bill charged to a room posts to that stay's folio, so it is settled at check-out with everything else. Reporting rolls both up with room revenue, which is why the outlet's charge stack and revenue categories have to be right before you trade. See Folios.