Restaurant billing software should bill a peak-hour order in seconds, handle dine-in, takeaway and delivery on one screen, cost each dish from the ingredients you buy in bulk, keep billing when the internet drops, and close the day with a report your accountant can use. Test all five with your own menu before you pay.
At a glance
| What you need | How to test it in a demo | Pass mark |
|---|---|---|
| Fast billing | Bill five real orders from your busiest shift | Each order in well under a minute, without hunting for items |
| One screen for all order types | Switch an order between dine-in, takeaway and delivery | Delivery captures phone and address on the same screen |
| Dish costing | Receive oil in tins, sell dishes, check stock | Stock falls in usage units, and each dish shows a cost |
| Offline billing | Disconnect the internet mid-shift | Billing continues and the bills reach the report later |
| Daily close | Pull today's sales by payment type and device | Downloadable without calling support |
| Growth | Add a second outlet or online orders | Same menu and stock, no re-entry |
Restaurant billing software or restaurant POS software?
Sellers use the two names loosely. Billing software prints bills and takes payment. Restaurant POS software also tracks ingredient stock, suppliers, staff and reports. If the system only bills, you will still run stock in a notebook and costs in your head. Judge by what the system does, not what it is called.
Which kind of restaurant are you?
The right software depends on how your restaurant takes and serves orders. Start here, because a feature that is essential for one format is clutter for another.
| Format | What matters most | Must test | Usually not needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Café or quick service counter | Speed at the counter, held orders, takeaway | Keyboard shortcuts, hold and recall, payment split | Table maps, captain app |
| Full table service | Orders from tables to several kitchen stations | Kitchen tickets by station, captain app, moving and splitting bills | Barcode billing |
| Cloud kitchen | Online orders and packaging stock | Online orders landing on the same menu and stock | Dine-in screens |
| Small chain | The same menu across outlets, stock per outlet | Outlet switching, stock transfers, staff limited to outlets | Central kitchen, until you have one |
If you are a counter-service café, a system built around table service will slow your cashier down. If you run a busy dining room, a counter-first system will leave your waiters walking orders to the kitchen.
How to design your menu for billing and online ordering
A clean menu setup makes billing faster and online ordering possible later. Most slow counters are slow because of the menu, not the software.
- Short names for the counter, full names online. The cashier searches "pbm"; the customer reads "Paneer butter masala". If the system has one name field, start the name with the word a cashier would type.
- Portions as variants. Half and full, or regular and large, are variants of one item, not separate items. This keeps reports readable.
- Extras as add-ons, not items. Extra cheese is an add-on to a pizza, not a line on its own, so the kitchen sees it with the dish it belongs to.
- Categories in counter order. Group items the way the cashier moves through an order: starters, mains, breads, drinks. Online, the same categories become the menu sections.
- Combos as one item with a fixed price. Track the combo and its contents, so stock still falls for each part.
Menu sheet: columns to copy
Prepare this before setup. The vendor's team can import it, and it becomes your costing sheet.
- Item name (counter)
- Item name (online)
- Category
- Portion or size
- Price
- Order types it is sold for (dine-in, takeaway, delivery)
- Add-ons allowed
- Ingredients and quantity per portion, in usage units
- Food label, such as vegetarian
- Tax category, as your accountant advises
- Active (yes or no)
Worked example: what a dish costs, and what one day's mismatch costs
The figures below are an illustrative example with round numbers, not real prices or data from any restaurant.
Costing one dish
You buy in storage units and cook in usage units. The software should convert between them. For one portion of paneer butter masala:
| Ingredient | Bought as | Bought at | Used per portion | Cost per portion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paneer | 1 kg | ₹400 | 100 g | ₹40.00 |
| Butter | 1 kg | ₹550 | 20 g | ₹11.00 |
| Gravy base | 1 kg | ₹60 | 150 g | ₹9.00 |
| Cream | 1 litre | ₹220 | 30 ml | ₹6.60 |
| Oil | 15 litre tin | ₹2,100 | 30 ml | ₹4.20 |
| Spices | Mixed | ₹5.00 | ||
| Total | ₹75.80 |
At a menu price of ₹260, the ingredient cost is about 29% of the price. If paneer goes from ₹400 to ₹480 a kilo, the portion cost rises by ₹8 to about ₹84, and the share rises to about 32%. You only see this if purchase prices go into the system when goods arrive.
What a day's stock mismatch costs
Say you sold 40 portions of paneer dishes yesterday at 100 g each. The system expects 4 kg of paneer used. The evening count shows 5 kg gone. The extra kilo is ₹400 of paneer nobody paid for: waste, heavy portions or worse. Repeated every day for a month, that is ₹12,000 from one ingredient.
You catch this only if stock falls with every bill in usage units and you count the high-value items daily. Count paneer, meat, oil and dairy every day, and everything else weekly.
How fast is fast enough at the counter?
Another illustrative example: you bill 90 orders between 1 pm and 2 pm. At 40 seconds a bill, one cashier spends the full hour billing, so any delay builds a queue. At 20 seconds a bill, the same cashier has half the hour free. Speed comes from search that finds an item in three letters, one-key shortcuts for hold, print and checkout, and a menu set up as above.
10 questions to put to any vendor in a demo
Run the demo on your laptop or counter machine, with your menu, not the vendor's sample.
- "Bill these five orders." Bring five real orders from your busiest shift, with portions, extras and a discount. Time each one.
- "Hold this order and start another." Then recall the first. A guest who is still deciding should not block the queue.
- "Change this order from dine-in to delivery." Check that delivery captures the phone number and address without leaving the screen.
- "Now disconnect the internet." Bill three more orders. Reconnect, then find those bills in today's report.
- "Log in as a cashier and give a discount." See whether a cashier can do it, and whether it is recorded with their name.
- "Cancel a printed bill." Ask to see the record the cancellation leaves behind.
- "Receive a tin of oil and sell ten dishes." Check that stock falls in millilitres while you bought in tins, and that the dish shows a cost.
- "Show today's sales by payment type and by counter." Then download the report.
- "Add a second outlet." Move stock from one to the other and limit a cashier to one outlet.
- "Add online ordering." Ask whether online orders use the same menu and stock, and what they cost per order.
Before you leave, call the support number. The answer you get in the demo week is the best you will get.
Switching to new software: a two-week plan
Days 1 to 3: fill the menu sheet, list suppliers, and set up staff roles: who can discount, cancel and see reports.
Days 4 to 6: count opening stock for the high-value items. Enter purchase prices so dishes carry a cost.
Days 7 to 10: run the new system next to the old one at quiet hours. Compare the day's totals.
Day 11: go live on a weekday lunch, not a Friday night.
Days 12 to 14: review the daily report each night, fix menu names the cashier struggled with, and start the daily count of high-value items.
Common mistakes when buying restaurant billing software
- Buying from a brochure. Feature lists all look alike. Fix: run the 10-question demo with your own orders.
- Testing with the vendor's sample menu. It is always fast. Fix: bring your own menu, with your messy item names.
- Skipping the offline test. The internet drops at the worst time. Fix: disconnect it during the demo.
- Setting up stock without usage units. Stock never matches. Fix: storage unit, usage unit and cost per item for every ingredient you track.
- Giving everyone manager rights. Discounts and cancellations go unrecorded. Fix: roles per person, with an activity log.
- Choosing for the wrong format. A table-service system slows a café counter, and the reverse leaves a dining room short. Fix: start from the format table above.
- Planning online ordering on a separate menu. Two menus drift apart. Fix: pick billing and online ordering that share one product list.
Where Ordrio fits
Kadal is Ordrio's billing and POS software, built for cafés, quick service restaurants and small chains that bill at a counter. Against the checklist above, it gives you:
- Billing: in-store, delivery and pickup orders from the counter; hold an order, print the bill and pick the salesperson; keyboard shortcuts for search, checkout, hold and print; cash, card, UPI and wallet; GST-ready invoices.
- Stock and costing: storage units, usage units and cost per item; real-time stock with low-stock alerts; suppliers, purchase orders, supplier payments, stock counts and returns to suppliers.
- Staff: roles and access control per person, access limited to chosen outlets, and activity logs and performance per staff member.
- Reports: daily sales summaries, sales by payment type and by device, and reports you can download for your accountant.
- Outlets and offline: switch outlets from one login, stock per outlet, transfer orders, and billing that continues offline and syncs later.
- Online ordering: add Nadi with the Restobite template for your own ordering website and app, table QR ordering and payment, table booking, and delivery or pickup, on the same products and stock, with no per-order fees from Ordrio. Your payment gateway charges its own fees.
- Delivery: your own staff, Vayu (Ordrio's own riders in selected Indian cities) or couriers through Ordrio Ship.
What is not included or not stated. Our Kadal pages do not list kitchen tickets by station, a captain app for waiters, a kitchen display, table layouts or links from Kadal to food delivery apps. If you need any of these, ask in the demo and get the answer in writing.
When Ordrio is not the right choice. A full-service restaurant with several kitchen stations, a central kitchen, or most orders coming from food delivery apps is usually better served by a restaurant-first POS such as Petpooja. Our Kadal vs Petpooja page says so plainly. You can keep Petpooja and still run your own online store on Nadi, which connects to Petpooja on the Scale and Max plans.
You start on the free plan. Any paid plan costs ₹1 for the first 30 days. See pricing.