Overview
Welcome to Paytronix Online Ordering!
This article will provide you with the steps you need to complete in order to go live with online ordering. Most of these steps are really quick and easy (5-10 minutes tops), while there are a few that may take longer depending on the details of your organization.
You do not need to complete these steps in order. We simply lay them out in the order that we follow because it is what makes most sense to us. Feel free to jump around and set things up at your own pace.
Step 1: Adding to Your Website
One of the first things you want to do is to add your online ordering menu link to your website. Your restaurant starts in "Pre-launch" or "Coming Soon" mode, which means that nobody can actually place an order until you decide you are ready.
Why would I want to do this right away?
Most restaurants don't have very consistent repeating web traffic. A potential customer may visit your site to see that you do not offer online ordering and won't come back again to check for several months. Coming Soon/Pre-launch mode allows you to let people know that you have online ordering coming soon and helps to create interest.
Most importantly, this allows people to enter their email addresses so that they can be notified when your online ordering does go live. This will give you a nice little boost of traffic when you are ready to launch.
How do I do this?
We make this a very simple process by providing you with a wizard based on how you want to go about this step. You can select to have instructions automatically emailed to your web professional, to add the code yourself, or to have our team do it for you.
Simply navigate to Publish > Add to Your Site and make your selection. We will provide the details from there.
Step 2: General Settings
Your General Settings page is one of the first things to set up. It has a wide variety of questions on it, but most of them should be simple to answer. These are the little details that determine exactly how your online ordering will function when guests visit your site.
We will not go into detail about most of the fields, as they are pretty self-explanatory, but here are the things that are mandatory:
Restaurant Name
Phone Number
Website
Sales Tax
Order Types - Most restaurants will select at least Takeout and possibly Delivery, but go with whatever is applicable for your location.
Location Section - Enter your street address & zip code in the first two boxes and click the Look Up Address button. This will fill in the rest, including the time zone & latitude/longitude.
Working Hours - These hours should be configured no matter which order types you accept. Please keep in mind that people can order up until the close time. So, if you close at 9 pm and have a lead time of 30 minutes, your customers can order up until 9 pm for a due time of 9:30 pm. If you do not want to allow this, make sure you adjust the closing time so you stop taking orders 15 or 30 minutes earlier than your closing time.
Delivery Hours - if you have selected delivery as an order type option, you will see the Delivery Hours section. This works the same as the initial Working Hours section from step 7. Set this up to include the hours that delivery is available as an option.
There are a few other things that need to be set up on this page. These are not considered "required" as you could save the page without them, but they are very important.
Logo & Header Image - Without adding these images, the top banner/header will be just a plain dark grey bar.
Upload a high resolution logo without a background. This will be placed in the top-left of your menu, above the categories.
Upload a large image (should be at least 2000 px in width). This image will be placed at the top of your order page. Most restaurants just use a food image and our system will display a slice of it, depending on the size of device a customer is on.
Lead Times - Please see Step 3 to learn all about your options here.
Advance Orders - a majority of restaurants check this box. This means that someone can order for later today or for another day in the future. Without this, people will only be able to place orders for "ASAP" when you are open.
Closed Days - this is a calendar where you can mark any holidays or other days that you are closed for so people cannot place orders on those days.
Once the above items are filled out, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Save Settings" button.
Step 3: Lead Times
Lead Times are a very important configuration for your restaurant. There is a base lead time above the Location section. Here, you will set the lead time for your average, non-busy days/times. So, if it takes 15 minutes to make food when you don't have a busy line, then that is what you will insert into these fields.
What about busy times? If you are using a tablet for receiving orders, you can easily change the lead time immediately, as needed. Simply click on the current promised time, up in the top right of the screen, and you will be given options to adjust this time.
If you are using any other method of receiving orders, you will want to consider some alternatives.
No matter which method you choose for setting your lead times, nearly every restaurant should take advantage of the option to "Add Time by Order Size." With this setting, you can set additional prep time for orders over a certain $ amount. You can set multiple thresholds, depending on what works best for you.
For example, you can say:
Orders from $40-$60 should add 5 minutes
Orders from $60-$80 should add 10 minutes
Orders from $80-$100 should add 15 minutes
Anything over $100 should add 20 minutes
This helps you to accommodate for larger orders that cannot fit into your base lead time.
Step 4: Other Settings
Menu/Checkout Settings
Under Settings > Menu/Checkout Settings, there are some things you may want to take note of.
We do recommend leaving the Special Instructions on at the beginning. This will help you see what things your customers want to see added to your online ordering so that you can continue to refine your online menu. We even have a report that allows you to see all the Special Instructions over a specific period of time so that you can make some informed decisions about your menu configuration.
By default, customers are allowed to type in special instructions on each of the menu items. If you want to rename this link or turn Special Instructions off altogether, you will want to set the first two fields on this page.
For Catering locations, Meal Delivery, etc. - ASAP ordering might not make sense. If this is the case, you can set "Advance Orders Only" to set. This will force them to pick a date/time instead of being able to pick ASAP.
If you do set it to Advance Orders Only, you have the option to "Ask Date First," at the beginning of the order.
There are obviously lots of other things you can do from this page. We have covered the basics here.
Delivery Settings
If your restaurant offers delivery, there will be some additional settings you need to configure. How far will you deliver? How much (if anything) will you charge to deliver? Will you require a minimum order size for delivery? Do you need to apply sales tax to delivery fees?
You can configure all of these options in General Settings, See Accepting Delivery Orders for specific instructions.
That should cover most everything you need for Delivery. If you have any questions on this, please contact us.
Step 5: Payment Setup
Online Ordering currently offers 3 different payment options:
Pay in Person (upon collection of food)
Credit Card Payments (prepaid online)
Gift Cards
You can choose to use one, two, or even all three options at once.
Pay in Person is on by default. If you set up a payment gateway for credit card prepay, you will have options to turn Payment in Person off or to limit it to orders under a certain amount. This is all done under Settings > Order Payment.
Online Ordering Payments
If you are using our payment processing, it is a very short and simple setup. Follow the instructions in Getting Started with Paytronix Payments with Online Ordering and you will be on your way to collecting payments in just a matter of minutes.
Payment Gateways (Credit Card Processing)
Most restaurants allow their customers to pay online with a credit card. In order to do this, you need to set up e-commerce with a supported Payment Gateway. See Which Payment Gateways do you support for Online Ordering? for more information.
Some of the things to keep in mind are:
You almost always need a separate gateway account from your in-house/swipe account for online/e-commerce purchases. So, whether you stick with your current gateway or not, you will still likely need to set up a new account.
Online/e-commerce rates are usually a bit higher than in-house/swipe accounts due to security and other configuration differences.
Setting up a new account with a 3rd party vendor can take several days or even more than a week, so it is a good idea to get this rolling as soon as possible.
Once you have your gateway account created and are ready to integrate it into your online ordering system, follow the instructions in Setting up payment methods for Online Ordering.
To set up your gift card account, navigate to Settings > Gift Cards and fill in the relevant information.
Now you are ready to accept your choice of payments.
Step 6: Adding Users
This step is a simple one. If you navigate to Settings > Manage Admins, you will see anyone listed as an admin on your restaurant. Most likely it is just you for now. If you do not want anyone else to have access to edit settings or make menu changes, then you do not need to take any further action.
However, if you want other staff, managers, etc. to be able to log in and adjust your restaurant, you will want to add their email addresses and names on this page.
Please be aware that anyone added here will also receive emails with feedback surveys, as well as any notifications of your tablet, POS integration, etc. going offline. You may want to let them know to set up an email filter so they can have access to admin functions without filling up their inbox.
Simple enough? Of course, let us know if you have any questions.
Step 7: Your Menu
The Online Ordering Menu Editor is a powerful tool for creating the different menu items which you can offer for online ordering. Here is a short video that will walk you through the basics of creating a menu using the Menu Editor:
Step 8: Order Notifications
Order Notifications
Order notifications are the different ways you want to receive your orders. Some restaurants select one method while others select a primary method with other methods as backup , as record keeping, or as a simple notification to let them know that a new order has been received. We offer multiple options and you can select as many of them as you would like. However, there are some combinations we would recommend against, such as a POS integration and a separate receipt printer app, as they could cause the kitchen to make the same order twice.
Primary Order Notification Methods
POS Integration - if you are using a POS integration, please reach out to us to gather instructions for your particular POS.
Order Notifier / Computer Notification - this pops up with a notification right on your computer screen. You can click the notification to see the actual order details. This must be installed on a Windows machine.
Receipt/Ticket Printer - this allows a ticket/receipt to automatically print when an order is placed. It needs to be installed on a Windows machine and can only print to printers available within Windows.
Fax - You can receive a fax with the details of your order every time one is placed. This can be set up under Settings > Receiving Your Orders.
Tablet - the tablet app is a great way to receive orders if you are not using a POS integration. It offers some additional features you cannot use with any other method of receiving orders.
Secondary Order Notification Methods
There are many ways you can receive secondary notifications. The following can be set up under Settings > Receiving Your Orders:
Phone Call
Emails
Text Messages / SMS