When your restaurant is open, the Live Orders section is the most important one. That's where your orders will pop up in real-time, and there you will be able to manage them.

The orders are divided up into three categories: New, In kitchen, and In route/ready. Each category shows the orders with that status.

The New tab contains all the recent orders that weren't accepted or rejected yet.

🚨 IMPORTANT NOTE!

1. To accept an order, click on the Accept button.

2. A pop-up will appear, asking how long it will take for you to prepare the order, and in the case of deliveries, to take it to the customer. Fill it out and click on Accept. Note that the total time will be visible to the customer.

3. If you require an external delivery service, click the green button to request a driver from Careem's fleet.

4. After that, the order will move to the In kitchen category, meaning that they are being prepared. The customer will get a notification.

Rejecting or canceling an order

Sometimes you might need to reject an order that just came in or cancel another that you have already accepted.

1. To reject an order, click on the Reject button and select the reason why you're rejecting it.

2. If you have already accepted the order and now you need to cancel it, press the Cancel button.

The customer will get a notification for both cases. If they paid online for their order, we will automatically refund the amount to their credit card.

💡 Tip: If an order doesn't get accepted in 5 minutes, it will be automatically rejected. To avoid that, you can choose to get an automated call if your staff doesn't accept/reject a new order within two minutes.

The In kitchen tab contains all the orders you have accepted and are currently being prepared in your kitchen. Once this step is finished, the order needs to be sent either to the customer's address or the counter, depending on the order type.

To move the order onto this process, click on the Send to deliver or Ready to collect button.

⚠️ Once you accept the order, you need to wait at least 2 minutes to change its status. That way, customers will have more accurate order updates that reflect the real preparation time.

The In route/ready tab tracks the orders that are ready to be delivered, already on their way, or ready to be picked up.

1. When it's a delivery order, all you have to do is wait for your driver to confirm that the order has been delivered. When you have that, click on the Complete button.
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If you are using an integrated delivery service (e.g. Careem), you don't need to manually mark the orders as complete. They will be automatically be marked as complete when the order is delivered by the rider.

2. When it's a pickup/dine-in order, hand the order over to the customer and click on the Complete button.

That will send a confirmation message and the receipt to the customer. If you have set up a loyalty point with ChatFood, they will also receive a reminder of how many loyalty points they have for your outlet.

💡 Tip: Closing the order is similar to completing it, except that it doesn't notify the customer that their order has been completed. The ideal time to click on the Close button instead of Complete is when there's been a while since the order was delivered successfully, but you still need to update your order screen after a busy period.

⚠️ The Close button is available only when the estimated preparation time is reached. That ensures that orders are not wrongly marked as Complete too soon (e.g before it reaches the customer location) and helps to give a more accurate order tracking experience for customers.

If you need to cancel an order that has already been marked as Complete, you need to submit a cancelation request using this form, and provide the following information:

- Order Number
​- Reason for cancelation

⚠️ Refund

If the customer has already paid online using a credit or debit card, the amount will be fully refunded to their card when the cancelation is processed.

⚠️ Loyalty points

If the customer has applied any loyalty points to redeem a discount for the order at the checkout, we will automatically refund the full amount of points they used.

Check our tutorial for accepting a new order here:

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We will be glad to help! 😉