Glossary
The words, in plain English.
Written from running a real food hall, not from a marketing wiki. Where a term names something HelchPOS does, it links to the page that does it — and where it names something we cannot do, the entry says so.
- Bump
- To clear a finished ticket off the kitchen screen. On the HelchPOS board a made ticket advances one step at a time — it can never be stranded, and never skips straight to done.
- Buzzer
- The numbered pager a counter hands a guest. The ticket carries the buzzer number, and "Ready — buzzer 97 called" is one tap.
- Collection code
- The short code or order number a guest quotes to pick up. Kiosk and QR orders get one automatically.
- Commission
- The percentage a food hall takes from each kitchen’s sales. In HelchPOS settlement it is calculated per kitchen on the payout run, itemised where the vendor can check it.
- Cover
- One seated guest. Also the verb: to cover a shift is to work it for somebody — cover offers here are judged by role, so the person picking up a chef’s shift can cook.
- EPOS / POS
- Electronic point of sale — the till. Ours runs in a browser on hardware you already own and fits one screen without scrolling.
- Food hall
- One venue, many independent kitchens, shared seating. The shape this product was built inside.
- Gross profit (GP)
- What is left of a dish’s price after its ingredients. Real GP needs recipe-level costing — a percentage typed into a spreadsheet is a wish, not a margin.
- Group tab
- Several guests ordering onto one running bill. Here a table can share a tab without a card being held — said plainly, because most systems hold one.
- KDS
- Kitchen display system — the screen that replaces the printer rail: every order, whatever channel it came from, with timers, courses and states.
- Kiosk
- A self-service ordering screen. In kiosk mode any tablet with a browser is one — the same live menu as the QR page, in big type, one question at a time.
- Meal deal (cross-vendor)
- A main from one kitchen and a drink from another for one price, split fairly between the two businesses underneath. Only a food hall can sell it, and few systems can account for it.
- Multi-vendor basket
- One guest basket holding food from several kitchens, paid once. Underneath it must become one ordinary order per kitchen or every report and refund afterwards is wrong — see QR ordering.
- Offline mode
- Trading with the internet down. HelchPOS cannot complete a sale offline — kitchen screens survive a drop and catch up, but the till needs a connection. Some competitors do this properly; the comparison table keeps it as our cross.
- Order ahead
- Ordering for a future time slot rather than now — the interval drink, the pre-shift lunch.
- Payout run
- The periodic reckoning that pays each kitchen: gross takings, minus commission, minus rent, equals owed. Ours records it to the penny — and says plainly that it records the payout rather than moving the money.
- Pre-paid tab / wallet
- Money loaded once and spent across a venue. A hall wallet here works at every kitchen from one balance.
- Recipe costing
- Every dish carrying its ingredient lines, so selling a taco takes the tortilla, the beef and the lime off the shelf and the margin is a number. The core of stock & margin.
- Service charge
- A percentage added to the bill for service. Configurable per venue here, alongside fixed and named charges.
- Settlement
- Working out whose money is whose after mixed trading — the central problem of a food hall, and the reason our money model splits at the order, not in a spreadsheet at month end.
- Split bill
- One bill paid in parts — equal ways, by item, or by amount. A real split lets each part use a different tender: cash half, card half, nobody voids anything.
- Standing rent
- A fixed charge a hall levies on a kitchen (weekly or monthly) regardless of sales. Here it lands on the payout run by itself, named with the dates it covers.
- Stocktake
- Counting what is actually on the shelf and reconciling it against what the sales say should be there. The difference is the honest number — theft, waste, or a recipe that lies.
- Ticket
- One order as the kitchen sees it. In a food hall one guest basket becomes one ticket per kitchen, each on its own board.
- VAT-inclusive pricing
- UK hospitality menus show the price the guest pays, tax inside. HelchPOS prices are VAT-inclusive at the item’s rate and receipts break the VAT out per rate, which is what makes them VAT receipts.
- Wait quote
- The time a guest is told their food will take. Honest ones come from stated kitchen capacity in orders per hour, not from optimism.
See the words in action.
The whole product is free to run — the fastest way to learn the vocabulary is a service.