ZynixServe M-Starter POS

1. What is M-Starter

ZynixServe M-Starter POS is a mobile app (Android phones and tablets, and any web browser) for restaurants that get online orders. It is the Starter plan of ZynixServe.

• Orders arrive from Ownly and ring on your phone or tablet.
• The kitchen ticket prints automatically on a thermal printer, with big bold order number and dishes, even with the screen locked.
• You accept or reject, tell the kitchen how long it will take, mark food ready and handed over.
• Menu control: switch a dish off the moment it runs out, or for the rest of the day.
• Three logins per restaurant: admin, waiter and kitchen.
• Reports for the admin: sales, missed orders, best dishes.

2. Getting started (first day)

ZynixServe creates your restaurant and gives you the admin login (a mobile number or email, and a password). Then:

1. Sign in with your mobile number or email and password. Change the password in Settings → Change password.
2. The Get started card on the Orders screen shows what is left: restaurant phone and address, dishes, printer test, Ownly.
3. Add your dishes in the Menu tab, one by one, or all together from a spreadsheet (see Menu).
4. Connect the printer and print a test ticket (see Connecting the printer).
5. Add your staff: Settings → Logins. Add a waiter and a kitchen login.
6. Connect Ownly: when your Ownly access is ready, Settings → Ownly connection. Until then you can try everything with test orders.
7. Choose how orders are handled: Settings → Order handling (see Handling orders).

3. Admin, waiter and kitchen

Every restaurant has up to 3 logins (the admin counts as one). Each person signs in with their own mobile number or email and password.

The kitchen screen shows only Preparing and Ready and rings when a new order arrives to cook. The waiter sees everything about orders.

Admins add logins in Settings → Logins, choose waiter or kitchen, and can switch a login off or set a new password for it. Need more logins? Contact us.

4. Handling orders

The tabs

• New: waiting for you. The phone rings until you act. After 3 minutes it turns red: "Accept or reject now".
• Preparing: accepted, being cooked.
• Ready: food is ready for pick-up.
• History: everything finished, rejected or cancelled. Search by order number, name or Ownly id, and filter by day.

When an order arrives

1. Tap Accept. Choose how long it will take. The time is already chosen from your dishes (the slowest dish in the order) and marked Suggested.
2. The kitchen ticket prints right then. A rejected order never prints, so nothing is cooked by mistake.
3. When the food is done tap Food ready, and Handed over when the rider or customer takes it.

To refuse an order, tap Reject and choose a reason: item out of stock, too busy, store closed, or other. The customer's platform is told.

Auto-accept

In Settings → Order handling the admin can switch on Auto-accept. New orders are then accepted by themselves, go straight to Preparing and print at once. The time comes from the dishes. Leave it off if you want to check every order first.

Preparation time

Each dish can have its own preparation time (Menu → the dish). Dishes without one use the restaurant's default time (Settings → Order handling, 20 minutes at the start).

If the customer cancels

You see an alert. If the kitchen already had the order, a big CANCELLED, STOP slip prints so they stop cooking it.

Counter orders (POS tab)

Use POS for people at your counter or tables. Dine-in: start an order (choose a table if you use table numbers), tap dishes, send to the kitchen, add more rounds later, then bill and pay. Take away: tap dishes, choose how they pay and place the order: the kitchen ticket and the customer's bill print together. A dish with sizes (Half, Full) or extras (Extra curd) opens a small chooser. Tax, service charge and discount are set in Settings, POS and billing.

Filter the orders list

The Orders tab shows every order. The row of buttons under the tabs (All, Dine-in, Take away, Ownly) shows only one kind, with the number still waiting.

Store open or closed

The Open / Closed button at the top right tells Ownly whether you are taking orders. Close it when you stop for the day.

Reprint

Tap Print on any order to print the ticket again.

5. Menu and dishes

Add a dish

Menu → the + button. Enter the name, price, preparation time (optional), veg or non-veg and the category. Use + Category to make categories like Starters, Main Course, Drinks.

Mine and Ownly: one menu, two lists

At the top of the Menu page there are two tabs. Mine is what you sell at your own place: dine-in and take away. Ownly is your list for online orders. The dishes are the same, but each place can have its own setting, so a mistake in one never changes the other. You can also reach them from the three lines at the top left.

• Show or hide: a dish only sold on Ownly is switched off at the counter (open the dish, "Sell at the counter"). A dish you do not want on Ownly is hidden in the Ownly tab.
• Ownly price: tap a dish in the Ownly tab and type its Ownly price, or leave it empty to use your price. Change all Ownly prices adds one percentage to everything (for example +15%) and shows an example first.
• Packaging charge (Settings, POS and billing) is added to take away bills only. Ownly orders come with Ownly's own price and packaging, so nothing is added to them.

Out of stock

When Ownly is connected, switching a dish off in Mine first asks where: everywhere (you ran out), dine-in and take away only, or Ownly only. "Everywhere" then asks for how long. Switching it on again brings it back where it was off.

Pause dine-in or take away

At the top of the Mine tab, switch Taking dine-in orders or Taking take away orders off when the kitchen is too busy. The POS then refuses new orders of that kind until you switch it on again. To pause Ownly, use the switch at the top of the Ownly tab (or the Open / Closed button).

Use the switch next to a dish. When switching off, choose for the rest of today, until tomorrow morning (6 am) or until I switch it on. The dish comes back by itself. Inside a category you can switch all its dishes at once. Ownly is told, so customers can't order it. Waiters and the kitchen can do this too.

Add many dishes from a spreadsheet

1. Menu → ⇪ Import / export (admin only).
2. Tap Download template (or Copy template on Android), fill it in Excel or Google Sheets, and save it as CSV.
3. Choose the file (or paste the rows). You see what will happen before anything is saved: new dishes, updates, new categories, and rows that will be skipped with their line numbers.
4. Tap Import.

Columns (the first row has the headings):

name,price,category,veg,prep_minutes,available
Masala Dosa,90,Breakfast,veg,12,yes
Chicken Biryani,280,Main Course,non-veg,30,yes
Filter Coffee,30,Drinks,veg,,yes

• name and price are needed. The others are optional. Other headings such as rate, dish name, section, type and cook time are understood too.
• Dishes already on your menu (same name) are updated; only the columns in your file change. You can switch updating off.
• Up to 2000 dishes at a time. Export my menu gives you the current menu as a file to edit and import back.

6. Thermal printers that work

M-Starter prints kitchen tickets on 80 mm (3 inch) thermal receipt printers that understand ESC/POS, the standard language of receipt printers.

Buying a printer

• Look for: 80 mm, thermal, ESC/POS, Bluetooth and/or USB, auto-cutter.
• Buy 80 mm thermal paper rolls (they print without ink).
• It must be a printer you can pair in the phone's Bluetooth settings, like a Bluetooth speaker.

7. Connecting the printer

Bluetooth (most restaurants)

1. Load paper and switch the printer on. Close the cover.
2. On the phone or tablet: Android Settings → Bluetooth, find the printer and pair it (the code is usually 0000 or 1234).
3. In M-Starter: Settings → Auto-print → Thermal printer → Choose a printer, tap your printer.
4. Tap Print a test ticket. A ticket should come out.
5. Check that Background printing says Running. If it shows Allow background use (battery), tap it and choose Unrestricted, so Android does not stop the app.

USB cable

Plug the printer into the phone or tablet with a USB-OTG cable, allow access when Android asks, then choose it in the same place (it shows as USB).

Printing from a Windows computer (browser)

A counter PC can print too. The computer's printer receives the same big bold ticket as the Android app.

1. Connect the thermal printer to the PC by USB and install its Windows driver. In Windows Settings → Printers it must show as ready (not "Offline"), and be set as the default printer. Print a Windows test page to check.
2. Use Chrome or Edge. To print without a pop-up for every ticket, close the browser and start it from a shortcut whose Target ends with --kiosk-printing, for example "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --kiosk-printing.
3. Open M-Starter in that browser and sign in. Settings → Auto-print → Windows printer. Tap Print a test ticket.
4. Keep that browser window open (it can be minimised) while you take orders.

Tablet and PC both connected to the printer

The same printer can be connected to the tablet by Bluetooth and to a PC by USB. Both can be signed in with printing on. M-Starter makes sure each ticket prints once: a device must ask the server for a ticket before printing it, and only one device gets it.

• In Settings → Auto-print on each device, choose its role: This is the main printer (prints right away) or This is the backup (waits about 12 seconds).
• Recommended: the tablet is the main printer, the PC is the backup. Normally the tablet prints. If the tablet's printer connection fails (printer off, Bluetooth problem, app closed), the PC prints the ticket instead, automatically.
• If both are set to "main", one of them prints; you cannot tell in advance which.
• Each order shows which device printed it, for example "Printed · Samsung SM-X110" or "Printed · Windows browser".

Good habits

• Only one device should be connected to a Bluetooth printer at a time.
• Keep the tablet plugged in and the app signed in. Orders print with the screen locked and the app closed.
• The notification "M-Starter is printing orders" is normal: it keeps printing alive.
• If the printer is off, out of paper or has its cover open, the ticket waits and prints by itself when it's fixed. After 5 minutes it shows "Print failed" with a Retry print button.
• If paper runs out in the middle of a ticket, the app notices and prints the whole ticket again once you load paper.

8. Settings (admin)

• Order handling: auto-accept on or off; default preparation time.
• Restaurant details: name, phone, address.
• Logins: add a waiter or kitchen login, switch off, set a new password.
• Ownly connection: store id and keys from Ownly, and the address Ownly sends orders to.
• Sync activity: what was sent to Ownly (accept, reject, ready, stock, store status).
• Change password and a test order alert sound.
• Auto-print: choose the printer, print a test ticket, see background printing.
• Reports tab: today's sales, last 7 or 30 days, missed orders, top dishes.

9. Plan and payment

• Every restaurant starts with a free trial. A banner counts down the last days.
• When the plan ends there are 3 grace days where everything still works, with a warning.
• After that the app becomes read-only: you can look at orders and the menu, but not change anything until you choose a plan. Orders from customers are still recorded.
• To subscribe: Settings → Plan → choose monthly or yearly → Choose this plan. ZynixServe contacts you to complete payment and switches your plan on.

10. Refer a restaurant

Know a restaurant that needs online orders and kitchen printing? Give them your referral code (Settings → Refer a restaurant → Share). When they join ZynixServe with your code and pay, you get 50% off your next renewal. The full terms are on the sign-in page, under Terms and conditions apply.

11. Problems and answers

12. Contact us

Email support@zynixserve.com. Please tell us your restaurant name, the app version (shown at the top right of the sign-in page) and what you see on the screen.