Letting customers order from their phones
Let customers place orders on their own phones from your kiosk link (off by default): what they see, the From a phone tag, order limits, and cancelling unpaid phone orders.
Overview
Normally only a paired kiosk tablet in your shop can place an order. Any other browser, such as a customer's phone, can design and save, then finish at the counter. If you turn on phone ordering, customers can also place the order on their own phone, from your kiosk link. They still pay at the counter.
It is off by default. It suits shops with too few tablets, a busy counter, or a stall at an event, where a queue at one tablet slows everyone down.
Turn it on
Owners and admins go to Settings → Kiosk → Orders from phones, tick Let customers place orders from their own phones and save.
Then anyone who opens your kiosk address (/kiosk/{your-workspace}) on a phone or computer can place an order. There is no QR code or in-store code to show, and nothing to set up on the phone: share your kiosk link however you like (a sign, your website, a message). The welcome screen no longer says "This browser isn't a shop kiosk", because every browser can now order.
Why this is safe to leave on: nothing is made until the customer pays at the counter. A phone order waits in Awaiting payment like a tablet order, and goes into production only after you take payment.
Turning it off takes effect at once: phones go back to saving designs to finish at the shop, and a phone that tries to submit is told "Orders can only be placed on a paired shop kiosk. Save your design and finish at the shop." Orders already placed stay in the queue.
What the customer does
They design on their phone just as on the kiosk, then fill in Your details on the review step and submit. A design saved earlier can be finished and ordered on the phone too.
- Contact details are required. A phone order needs a name and a phone number or email ("Enter your phone number or email to submit."), on top of whatever your Customer details setting asks for. A phone number needs its area code.
- Their receipt comes to them. If they give an email, the receipt (the order number and the link to their approved design) is emailed to them. Where texts are on (Let customers text their receipt), a customer who gives only a phone number gets it by text instead; the phone field then shows the consent text mobile carriers require ("By choosing SMS you agree to receive texts about this order (your receipt and when it's ready). Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out."). See Paperless receipts.
- They come to the counter to pay, showing the receipt QR code on their phone or telling you the order number or name.
A phone never behaves like a shop tablet: it has no idle reset (the customer keeps their design if their screen locks), it never prints a receipt, and a saved-design code stays on its screen.
What staff see
- "From a phone". The order queue and the order page show a From a phone tag, and the order's approval record says "Placed on: the customer's own phone". The CSV export has a
placed_fromcolumn (kioskorphone), and the API and webhooks sendplacedFrom. - Check who it is when they come to pay. Scan the QR code on their phone or search the order number or name, as for any order (see Managing Orders), and mark it paid.
- The ready text. With Text customers when their order is ready on, a customer who chose a text gets one when the order moves to Ready for pickup (see Order statuses).
Order limits
So that one phone can't fill your queue, phone orders have lower limits than a paired tablet:
- 3 orders every 10 minutes from one phone's browser;
- 30 orders an hour from one network (a shop's or venue's Wi-Fi counts as one network);
- and the limit every unpaired browser has, 20 orders every 10 minutes from one network.
A paired tablet can place 120 orders every 10 minutes. Phones on your shop's or a venue's Wi-Fi all count against that network's 30 an hour, so on a busy day keep a paired tablet on hand: its orders don't count against the phone limits.
Cancel unpaid phone orders automatically
Some customers order and never come to pay. Tick Cancel unpaid phone orders automatically (also off by default) and choose Cancel after (hours): 1 to 168 (one week), 24 by default. A phone order still awaiting payment after that long is cancelled, with the reason in its history, and an Order Status Changed webhook is sent. An order paid in the meantime stays paid.
Tablet orders are never cancelled for you. Unpaid orders of either kind waiting a week or more still get the Stale tag in the queue.