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Receipt Layout & Kitchen Tickets

Once your printer is connected — see Receipt Printer Setup — you control what actually prints. Everything here is under Settings → Printer, and needs Manager access or above.

Two different documents

A customer receipt and a kitchen ticket are not the same document at different sizes. They're for different readers:

  • The customer receipt is a record of a transaction — prices, totals, payment.
  • The kitchen ticket is instructions — what to make, for whom, by when. Prices are noise.

ForkLine keeps these separate, so you can make kitchen tickets huge and readable across a hot line without printing giant customer receipts.

Kitchen copies

Kitchen copies per order (0–5) sets how many automatic kitchen copies print for each order.

  • 0 — no kitchen paper at all. Correct if your kitchen works purely from the kitchen display.
  • 1 — the usual setup.
  • 2+ — for kitchens where the line and the pass each need one.

This counts the kitchen's copies only. The customer's own copy, dine-in bills, and staff reprints are separate and always single.

Formatting

Adjust how receipts look:

  • Font size — a plain multiple from 1 to 6. The ceiling is the printer's, not a ForkLine limit.
  • Alignment — left, center, or right, and you can set the header, item lines, and detail lines independently. A centered header over left-aligned items is the usual arrangement.
  • Bold header and bold item names — the two that matter most for legibility.

Item names can be bold while their modifiers and notes underneath stay normal, which is what makes a ticket scannable.

Kitchen receipt layout

Turn on kitchen receipt layout to give kitchen tickets their own settings, independent of customer receipts. Until you do, kitchen copies print exactly like the customer's receipt — so nothing changes until you opt in.

With it on, each field has its own controls: whether it prints at all, and its size, boldness, and alignment.

Available fields include: store name, address, order number, order type, placed-at time, printed-at time, payment status, customer name, customer phone, items, item details, subtotal, tax, and total.

Three fields are kitchen-specific and default on for kitchen tickets and off for customer receipts:

  • Order type — TYPE: PHONE ORDER - PICKUP, which is where the order came from crossed with where the food goes. A cook needs to know a phone order is waiting for a callback in a way they don't for a walk-in.
  • Placed at — when the order came in.
  • Printed at — when this piece of paper was produced. On a reprint, that's the reprint time, which is the number the pass actually wants.

Item prices can be dropped from the item line without removing the item — usually right for a kitchen ticket.

Served by prints the cashier's name from register accounts. It's off by default in both layouts, and prints nothing when an order has no cashier — an online order has no one to name, and Served by: over a blank line is worse than no line.

Reordering fields

The print order is drag-and-drop. Drag a field to move it; the handle also takes arrow keys, so it's settable without a mouse.

Modifiers always print directly under their item — they have nowhere else to sensibly go.

Previewing

The settings card shows a live preview built by the same code that produces real paper, so it can't drift from what prints.

For a physical check, use test print. Two variants:

  • Receipt — a setup slip confirming the printer works and echoing your settings.
  • Kitchen — a realistic sample ticket through your actual kitchen layout, so you can compare before trimming fields.

The kitchen test looks like a real ticket on purpose — with a banner top and bottom and an order number reading TEST so nobody cooks it. Neither variant triggers print-failure alerts.

Test on your real printer before a real order depends on it. A layout that looks right on screen can be too wide or too small on paper.

Reprinting

From Managing Orders, open an order and choose Reprint. Pick the customer receipt, the kitchen copy, or both, and a quantity.

Practical advice

Make kitchen tickets bigger than feels necessary. They're read at arm's length, quickly, sometimes through steam.

Print the order type if you take phone orders. Confusing a phone order for a walk-in means food sitting under a heat lamp.

Turn off prices on kitchen tickets. Nobody cooking needs them, and removing them leaves room for what matters.

If you print two copies, check both come out. See Receipt Printer Setup → Troubleshooting.

Where to go next

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