Setting Up Queued & Future Orders in NX POS
Queued & Future Orders allow your restaurant to accept orders in advance for fulfillment at a later time or date. Whether it's a catering order needed next Tuesday or a lunch pickup scheduled for an hour from now, this feature ensures the kitchen gets the ticket exactly when they need it—not too early, and not too late. ⏱️
When enabled, NX holds these orders in a "Queued" state and automatically releases them to the kitchen printers and KDS based on your specific prep time requirements.
🔛 Enabling Future Orders
This feature is configured at the Area level. This allows you to enable future ordering for specific service areas (like "Takeout" or "Delivery") while keeping it disabled for others (like "Bar" or "Dining Room").
Navigate to Portal > Configuration > Organization > Areas.
Select the specific Area you wish to configure (e.g., Takeout).
Locate the setting Allow Future/Queued orders.
Toggle this setting to ON ✅.
🕰️ Configuring the Release Time
Once future orders are enabled, you must tell the system when to send the ticket to the kitchen. This is controlled by the Queued Order Release Time.
At start of day
Orders will be released 10 minutes after the Venue's End of Day process runs.
This is beneficial for operators who want to come in to the orders already printed at their printers.
⚠️ NX KDS systems will immediately show these orders and the Active Order Time will be skewed based on these early morning orders.
🚨 NX KDS configured with auto-bump may run into issues where the order is bumped automatically before staff can even see the order
Example: End of Day is set for 4am, queued orders will appear at 4:10am. NX KDS is configured to auto-bump after 20 minutes. The order would be auto-bumped at 4:30am, likely before staff know of it.
At queued time
Orders will be released at the time that the guest desired minus the Default Lead Time
Example: Guest wants their order at 1pm, the default lead time is 15 minutes. The order will be released at 12:45pm.
Custom time
Custom time allows you to specify a set time of the day when the order will be released.
Example: 9:00am - all orders will be released at 9am daily.
🥡 Orders placed for a same-day later time
NX will release same-day orders based on the earlier of the time options. Example:
At start of day
The order will be released immediately
At queued time
the order will be released based on the queue time minus lead time as normal.
Custom Time 9am
the Venue is configured to release queued orders at a Custom time and that custom time is set for 9am.
If the guest places an order at 10am, for 2pm pickup the order will be released immediately.
Best Practices 💡
Buffer Time: Set your Release Time to cover your longest prep item plus a small buffer. If your deep dish pizza takes 30 minutes, set the release time to 40 or 45 minutes to ensure it's ready for the guest's pickup time. 🍕
Printer Behavior: Until the release time is met, the order will not print in the kitchen. This prevents tickets from getting lost or covered in grease hours before they need to be cooked.