Food Print Feature

Our Food Print feature provides you with the opportunity to deliver food ordering systems with thermal printer integration. This feature works with XDelivery and Commerce Pro and has its own settings and configurations. To utilise the Food Print feature, you will have to build your stores in advance of configuring the Food Print feature.

COMPATIBLE PRINTERS

There are 2 compatible printers that work with Food Print. They are the Goodcom GT5000SW and the Goodcom GT6000GW.

Both these printers are very common thermal printers used in the food industry and can be found via a local distributor in your country or Alibaba. You can also contact support as we may have stock in-house. The cost is between $100 - £150 + delivery charges. The GT5000SW is the cheaper of the two and also bigger. Both these printers support Wi-Fi, GPRS and Ethernet connectivity.

You can also connect to the printer settings via http://goodcom.cn/dl/login.php.  To access the settings via this URL, you will need to get the terminal id from the settings on the printer. This is important and we will cover this in more detail further on in this article.


THE ORDERING PROCESS


The ordering process is very easy for the business to manage and provides a smooth and seamless experience for the customer.

Before we get into configuring this feature, here are a few points regarding the process:

  • Once the Food Print feature has been configured, the restaurant will be able to accept or reject the order via the printer.
  • The restaurant can also accept or reject an order via a secure area within their mobile app.
  • When the order is placed, the customer will request a preferred delivery time. 
  • When the restaurant accepts the order, they can modify the delivery time and the customer is notified.
  • If the business rejects an order and the customer has paid via PayPal, the customer will be automatically refunded. In the vast majority of cases, orders are accepted by the restaurant.
  • Automatic push notifications and emails can be configured within the Food Print settings in the editor to notify the restaurant and the customer during the ordering process.


SETTING UP THE FOOD PRINT FEATURE


Before you start, you will have to build the shop in either XDelivery or CommercePro. Please do not proceed any further until you have done this. Once you have completed building the shop, add the Food Print feature to your app. When you go into this feature for the first time, you will be presented with the ‘General Settings’ page. 

Once you have completed the above, additional settings will be made visible. Let’s go through each option as numbered above:

1. Select Foodprintv2 Status:

You can choose from 3 options here:

  • Auto (open or closed according to time slots)
  • Open (forced open forever)
  • Closed (forced closed forever)

This section can be updated later as required. For testing purposed, we recommend that you choose the ‘Open’ option.

2. Deliver Address on Homepage?

This is only relevant if the Commerce feature is used. As we have now upgraded the Commerce feature to CommercePro, you can select ‘mandatory’.

3. Select Receipt Delivery

You can choose to send orders to the printer or alternatively receive and manage orders only in the app. Select your preferred mode from the drop down menu. You can change this at any time and is very useful in the event that the printer becomes temporarily unavailable.  We will show how you can manage the orders via the app further on.

4. Order Fetch Date

If the business has already been taking orders, you can bring these orders into the orders section in the Food Print feature by choosing a date from when you want to collect this information. If you are setting this up for the first time and no orders have been placed, input todays date.

5. Current Estimated Processing Time shown in the App

This is only relevant if you are using the Commerce Feature (processing time would be displayed on the homepage). This is not relevant for CommercePro or XDelivery.  You can therefore set this to the expected processing time for reference (recommended setting 30 mins).

6. Processing Time Limit Warning

If the order is not accepted or rejected within this specified time, an email will be sent to restaurant advising that an order is waiting to be processed. (recommended setting: 10 mins)

7. Minimum Printer Ping Time Warning

The thermal printer performs periodic checks to verify the connection with the system. If the printer is disconnected for more than the specified time, a warning email will be sent to the restaurant. (recommended setting: 10 mins)

8. How many times send ping warning?

You can specify how many times you want the system to send a warning email advising that the printer is disconnected from the system. (recommended setting: 1)

9. Commerce Settings

This is where you can connect the Food Print feature to Commerce feature you have built your store on. Once this selection has been made, you won’t be able to change it unless you reset the system back to default settings. 

10. Select SMS Gateway

You can opt to have notifications sent out via SMS using TextLocal or Twilio. You will have to setup an account with TextLocal or Twilio and you will need to contact their support to get the relevant credentials to input into the CMS.


ADDING A PRINTER TO THE STORE


Once you have completed the initial settings (as above) and clicked ‘Save’, you will then see additional settings where you can complete the setup.  This is the page you will see:

You need to navigate to the settings section to add the printer to your store. This section needs to be completed.  Beneath the initial settings that you have already configured, you will see the printer management section as below:

IMORTANT: You have to setup the printer section even if the business is choosing to manage orders via the app.

You will have to enter in a:

  • Printer Name – assign any name to the printer
  • Restaurant ID – assign an 5 digit numerical code of your choice
  • Password – assign an 5 digit numerical code of your choice

You will also have to:

  • Select the Shop
  • Select the INI File (for the relevant printer the business is using)
  • Select the Currency

You can see the image below as reference:

Once you have completed this section, click ‘Add Printer’. You will then need to navigate back to the Settings section and you will see that the printer has been added a below:

Next, click on the INI File (as above) and you will be prompted to save this file to your computer. You will need this file if the business wants the thermal printer connected to the shop. This is covered in the next section.


CONNECTING THE PRINTER TO THE STORE

Step 1: Get the Printer Terminal ID


Now that you have downloaded and saved the INI file (see previous section above), you will have to upload this file to the printer settings. To do this, you will have to:

  1. Switch on the printer and connect the printer to your local network by Wi-Fi or Ethernet cable.
  2. Get the ‘Terminal ID’ from the printer settings.  On the printer, go to Settings > Remote Setting > Server. You will prompted to ‘set the parameters’. After clicking OK, you will be given a 3 digit terminal ID. 

The above is a fairly simple process. You can also search for the manual of the printer online for instructions.

Step 2: Access the Printer Online

After you have got the printer terminal ID, you will need to do the following:

  1. Go to http://goodcom.cn/dl/login.php
  2. Enter the printer terminal ID on this page and click ‘Login’.

Congratulations!  You have now accessed the printer settings online. You should see a page similar to this:

Step 3: Upload the INI file to the Printer

To ensure that the shop communicates with the printer, you will have to upload the INI File to the printer settings. To do this:

  1. Scroll down to the bottom of the settings page and click ‘Choose File’ to import the INI file you saved  earlier (see previous section where we refer to saving the INI File from the CMS).
  2. Click ‘Import File’ and then ‘Upload’.
  3. Switch your printer off and then on again.

Your printer is now configured to work with your shop.


SET APP OWNER/ADMIN


The next step is to set the app owners/admins. It is mandatory to set at least one app owner/admin for the system to work. To do this, the business owner or the nominated app owner/admin will have to register an account on the app first. You can then navigate to this section with the Food Print feature:

To set the app owner/admin:

  1.  Find the registered user within the list.
  2. In the right column (Is Owner?), click the text ‘No’ to change it to ‘Yes’. The screen will reload to apply this change.
  3. Navigate back to the App Owner/Admin tab and update the user’s mobile number including the international prefix and click enter. This is important if the business owner wants orders to be received via SMS.


NOTIFICATION TEMPLATES


The next step is to setup the Notifications by navigating to the ‘Notifications’ tab.

The Notification Types in the drop-down menu are:

  • Processing Notification: the message sent when the app owner accepts the order
  • Ping Notification: message sent (to app owner only) when there is a connection issue with the printer
  • Suspended Notification: message sent (to app owner only) if the order is suspended for any reason
  • Refund Notification: message sent to notify that the order was rejected as payment was not accepted (for PayPal payment only)
  • Order Status Notification: message sent to notify of the new order status
  • Preferred Delivery Time Notification: message sent if the app owner decides to change the delivery time chosen by the customer
  • SMS: active only if you have chosen SMS as the order receipt mode (see previous paragraphs)

At least one option must be ticked for each type of message above.

The text can be customized where required and the tags can also be used to pull in certain information into any message. Click the ‘Save’ button after completing all message settings.


SHOP NOTIFICATIONS

This section is located at the bottom of the ‘Notifications’ tab screen. You have to add the text that users will see on the shop home page. This section is only relevant for the older Commerce feature. It is not relevant for Commerce Pro or XDelivery but you will still need to add some text in these sections and save.

  • Open: When the store is open according to time slots
  • Open ignore time slot: When the store is open by manual setting (See ‘Setting up the Food Print Feature’ point 1 above.)
  • When the store is closed according to time slots
  • When the store is closed by manual setting (See ‘Setting up the Food Print Feature’ point 1 above.)


MANAGE ORDERS FROM THE DASHBOARD OR APP


1. Manage Orders from the Dashboard

You can navigate to the ‘Order Status’ tab where you can see a summary of the orders placed. The business owner can also manage the progress status here:

The main orders statuses will be managed automatically during the progress of the order, based on the actions of the thermal printer operator and also according to the payment type chosen by the customer for online payments. The business owner can also manually update the status of any order via the drop-down menu.

2. Manage Orders from the App

To manage orders from the app, the business owner or manager must register as a user in the app and enabled as an App Owner/Admin. See previous section ‘Set App Owner/Admin’.

The owner or manager will then be able to access the Food Print feature via the app:

In this area, the owner or manager can see:

A summary of all the orders

  • Orders receipts
  • Order detail
  •  Option to accept/reject orders
  • Option to change receipt delivery to Printer, App or SMS.
  • Option to change Order Status

You may want to consider the following when setting up access to this area within the app:

  • You can put the Food Print feature in a subfolder and call it ‘Settings’ or similar. This is the easiest way.
  • You can hide the Food Print feature from the app navigation but make sure it is enabled. You can then setup a deep link to the feature that is somewhere on a Custom Page. You can then show the app owner where to find this small link.

We hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you have any further questions, please contact support.