[lime]

Dears,

as you may have noticed, we have released a new menu item: Kylix.
This is the Restaurant project, to equip your PMS with the F&B (Food and Beverage) tool.

Unlike recent developments, it was decided to apply a development style rapid and
potentially shared by the community. We are not restaurant software experts and we
are sure that your needs will allow us to
make the best choices.

This is the right place to discuss the whole project.
To do it best, let us describe the objectives that we are giving:

  1. Subdivision of Areas. We will support multiple catering areas, each of which will
be able to have independent menus.
  2. Taxation: centralization with PMS Zak. Zak will be a single point to manage
invoices and receipts for both services of hotels and restaurants
  3. Possibility to link meals to reservations, in particular taking into account the
treatments with which rooms are sold.
  4. "En passant" consumption management for customers who stay overnight
and consume meals or drinks out of their rate.
  5. Support for access to lunchroom for external customers.
  6. Mobile friendly: we will develop a layer to allow waiters to manage orders
using a simple and cheap mobile phone.
  7. Centralized access management via Zak Team Plugin.

Obviously, You have to expect the usual: fast development and popular costs.
All interventions are more than welcome; we only ask You for civil, thoughtful
and constructive interventions!

Thank you all for your attention !!!!

[lime]

Dear Zakers,

As you know, among the great developments we are preparing on Zak, there is also Kylix,
our restaurant module, of which you have already been able to taste a very first preview.
In recent months we have been working really hard to prepare for this important update.
While remaining an alpha version, the news are not few and we hope you will like it.
Of course feel free to give us any feedback to fix it and improve it in the next releases.

Let's get to the point, what's new?

Super-table removals

On the setup page, we have removed the super-products, as we have found a better and
faster way to merge multiple tables.


Overview page

You may have noticed a new menu item within the Kylix section.
This is the great news of the release, it is to all intents and purposes the operational
part of your restaurant module, specifically designed for accounting, by issuing invoices
and electronic receipts, and to associate a bill to a reservation, in the case that the
customer is a guest of the hotel.


Tables

On this page, you'll find the list of your tables, divided by area, and you'll be able
to clearly see the status of each one. We currently have 3 states:

1. free table
2. occupied table
3. joined table


Free table

Here you can open a new service by entering:

1. the number of customers (which will automatically calculate the service fee, if set in
this area)
2. the type of meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner), useful both for statistical purposes and as
a summary within the hotel reservations, to see how many meals they have enjoyed
3. any other tables to add to the service: this is the functionality that replaces the super
tables, it will allow you to join 2 or more tables on the fly
4. optionally (you can also do it at a later time) it is possible to insert the order
immediately, selecting from the menus available in that area, the list of meals, grouped
within their category.

Any settings you set now for the service will be editable at a later time.


Busy table

An occupied table is identified by the red bar: this status is assigned to the table, after
a service has been opened on it.
Here you will have 2 actions available:
1. open the detail of the table to review the order, modify it, print the order or the
pre-bill (not fiscal), associate the bill to a reservation currently in the hotel,
or issue a document (receipt, invoice)
2. close the service, making the table available again.

Since when creating the service, the order is optional, an icon will make it immediately
visible which tables are occupied have an order registered.

All recent open and closed services (by recent we mean those of today and yesterday),
remain visible in the appropriate section in the sidebar to the right of the overview.
To print the order/pre-bill, we bought a thermal printer (not fiscal), the model is
MUNBYN ITPP047. It is installed like any other printer, and is compatible with all major
operating systems: Linux, MacOs, windows, Android and IOS.
Once the drivers are installed, it will be recognized by your system and will be usable
normally, without requiring any browser plugins.


United table

When within a service you join 2 or more tables, the joined tables will be represented close
to the main table with a different graphics and with a clear reference to the table to which
they are joined. This allows you to continue to see that table within your overview, while
making it clear that it is not a free table.
Alternatively, from the overview settings, it is possible to hide the joined tables (Zak
will remember if you have chosen to hide them or not).


Takeaway

Similar to table service, we have prepared the takeaway, allowing you to record a service
without a table. Here you can enter the customer's name and any additional information
(not mandatory) such as telephone number, type of meal and time of pick up (in case it is
not immediate).
Once you have created a new takeaway service, you will find it in the sidebar, in the
appropriate section of the takeaways.
Also here, as for the new service, each option will be modifiable at a later time.


Hotel guests list

As additional information, in the sidebar, we show you the list of your guests who have a
rate that includes a meal: BB, HB, FB, AI. Currently it is only an analogic information,
without any connection to Kylix: in the future it could also be a shortcut to assign these
guests to a table, or to register the order they want for the next day.


Bill issuance

As mentioned previously, from table detail, it is possible to access the accounting screen
to issue receipts and invoices. Being an alpha, these 2 features are still disabled, this is
because we want to make sure that everything is stable, before going to modify your
accounting area.
When you issue the bill, by default, you will find the VAT at 10%, and for each meal you can
change it manually, so that you can issue valid receipts and invoices on the fiscal point
of view.


Bill in the room

Always from the detail of a service, you will find the button to charge the bill to a room.
From this screen, you can choose how many and which meals to charge (depending on the
rate of the reservation), so that you will then charge on reservation only what they really
have to pay, or possibly by registering a meal at 0.


What else are we cooking?

In the coming months, in addition to consolidating the work already done, you can expect:

1. meals variations
2. reservations
3. subdivision of bills (partial bills and Roman-style bills)
4. printable menus
5. menu viewable through a printable qrcode

and so much more!

Obviously your feedback is precious to us.

Thank you all

[lime]

Dear Zakers,

the work on the development of Kylix is proceeding, and we are ready
to release a new update.
Among the various news, we have listened to some of your feedback
reported on the forum, in particular:

- We revised the creation of a menu.
Now it is possible to define, not only the categories of food to be
included, but also the single meals: in this way it will be possible
to activate/deactivate the single meals.

- We have added the time of creation of a service, which will be
visible inside the overview, both inside the table
and in the detail of the table, so it will also be shown in the
printout of the order.

- When creating a new service, ZaK will try to guess the type of meal
(breakfast, lunch, dinner) according to the day time.

- In the sidebar, inside the Guest section (hotel guests with a
Kylix-compatible board), we have added the number of guests within the
reservation.

- When the meal is charged to the room, ZaK will keep mind of the booked
rate to calculate the price: obviously it's just a pre-set, to speed up
the operation, but you will be free to charge the amount you want,
regardless of the ZaK forecast.

As already mentioned, we are also working on other features, including:

- reservations
- variations of meals
- quick assignment of a hotel guest to a table
- partial and "roman" (total divided per each person) bills
- web app to allow the waiter to take orders from a smartphone/tablet
- generation of a printable menu that can be consulted via qr code.

As always, feedback and advice are welcome.

Thank you