Independent field guide
Run a full service on Toast without guessing
From opening the drawer to running the close — the order lifecycle, modifiers, comps and voids, 86ing an item mid-rush, tip handling, and the handful of reports that actually tell you something.
Three shifts of the day
Where to start
01 — Before service
Set the floor up
Terminals, handhelds, printers and the kitchen display. Staff accounts, PINs and permission levels — decided once, calmly, before anyone is waiting on a ticket.
02 — During service
Work the rush
Open a tab, fire a course, hold the mains, split a check six ways, comp a dessert without breaking the numbers — and put it all back together when the table changes its mind.
03 — After service
Close it clean
Settle open checks, batch the card terminal, declare and distribute tips, count the drawer, then read the day’s numbers while the shift is still fresh in your head.
One ticket, end to end
The order lifecycle
- Open. A server signs in, picks an order type — dine-in, takeout, delivery — and attaches it to a table or a guest name. Everything downstream inherits that choice, so getting it wrong here costs you at the close.
- Build. Items go on with their modifiers. Required modifiers stop the ticket until answered; that is the point of them. Anything the kitchen must read — allergies, temperatures, substitutions — belongs in a modifier, not a free-text note nobody prints.
- Send. Sending routes each item to its prep station by menu-item configuration, not by who typed it. If the salads are landing at the grill, the routing is wrong — not the server.
- Adjust. Courses get held and fired, tables get moved, items get sent back. Every one of these is a logged action tied to an employee, which is exactly what you want when you reconstruct a bad night later.
- Settle. Split by seat, by item, or by an even share. Take payment, apply the tip, print or email the receipt. Partial payments leave the check open until the balance clears.
- Close. The check closes, the sale lands in the day’s totals, and the card transaction waits in a batch until it is settled with the processor. An unsettled batch is money you have not actually been paid.
Know your stations
Front terminal
The fixed station. Fastest for building large tickets and handling cash, and the one place a manager can always be found when an override is needed.
Handhelds
Ordering at the table. Shortens the walk and the wait, but depends entirely on your floor’s wireless coverage — test the far corners before you trust it on a Friday.
Kitchen display
Where tickets actually get read. Screens beat paper for timing and recall, but only if routing and course timing are configured to match how the line really works.
Back office
Menu, pricing, staff and reporting, edited away from the floor. Changes made here reach the terminals — know how long that takes before you rely on it mid-shift.
How to read this guide. Everything here describes how restaurant point-of-sale work is structured — the concepts, the order of operations, and the decisions that bite you later.
Exact screen names, button positions and menu paths change between releases and vary by configuration. Confirm those against your own account and the vendor’s current documentation before you build training material on them.
Start where the shift starts
Devices, users and permissions first. Everything else in this guide assumes that groundwork is done.