Auto-Combos — a guide for managers

Auto-Combos is where you tell NX which items add up to a meal deal. Describe the combo once; NX watches every check as items are rung and either offers the deal to the guest or builds it for them.

Where to find it: the NX Portal, on the Combos page under Menu. Combos belong to your whole business rather than one location, so every venue you run shares the same combos — and each venue decides whether to use them.

📸 Screenshot: the Combos page with two or three combos in the list, showing the Mode and per-surface trigger columns, and the "New combo" button in the corner.

Availability

Auto-Combos is rolling out in stages, and the trigger switches described in §7 are off until the stage covering that surface is live at your venue. You can author combos before then; nothing happens until you turn a surface on.

If a surface isn't live yet, its switch has no effect. Ask your NX contact where your venue sits.

Contents

1. The one idea you need first
2. Before you start
3. Creating your first combo
4. Slots — the items that qualify
5. Upcharges — when a bigger item costs more
6. How the combo shows up on the check
7. Where the combo happens
8. Drive-thru and other areas
9. Turning it on for your venues
10. When a combo comes apart
11. When two combos could apply
12. Checking your work
13. Managing combos day to day
14. Troubleshooting
15. Good to know

1. The one idea you need first

A combo is a list of slots and a price.

Any sandwich, any side, any drink — $9.99.

That sentence is three slots and a price, and it is the whole model. You describe which items can fill each slot; NX watches the check and, when the items on it fill every slot, the combo is available.

Two things follow from this, and both surprise people:

Nobody has to ring a "combo" button. The guest orders a sandwich, some fries and a drink the normal way. NX notices those three lines add up to a combo you defined and handles it from there. Ringing a combo item by hand still works exactly as it does today — this is in addition to that, not a replacement.

But the two are separate, and it's worth being clear about how: a combo built by hand isn't tracked as a combo. If staff ring your combo menu item and pick the components through its modifier groups the way they always have, that's a normal item sale. It gets no combo badge, no savings figure, and it won't appear in the combo reporting described in §15. Only combos NX recognises are counted as combos.

Order doesn't matter, and neither does timing. The sandwich can be rung first or last. If a combo forms and the guest then adds a fourth item that makes a bigger combo apply, NX re-evaluates and forms the bigger one.

The three words you'll see everywhere

• Slot — one position in the combo. "Sandwich" is a slot; "Drink" is a slot.
• Qualifying items — which menu items are allowed to fill a slot.
• Combo price — what the whole set costs together, before tax.

2. Before you start

You'll want these ready:

• The menu items themselves. Combos reference items you already have. Nothing needs to be duplicated or renamed.
• A price. One number for the whole set, before tax.
• Optionally, item filters. If a slot should be "any item in the Sides category" rather than a list you maintain by hand, build that as an Item Filter first — see §4.
• A tenant (Enterprise) selected in the context picker at the top of the Portal. Combos are set up for your whole business, so the Combos page needs an Enterprise selected rather than a single venue. (Switch to a venue later to turn the combo on for that location — §9.)

3. Creating your first combo

Press New combo and work down the page. The form is one scrolling page with a nav down the side; "Find a setting…" at the top jumps to any field by name.

General

Slots — add at least two. This is the real work, and §4 covers it.

Triggers — every surface starts at Off. Nothing happens anywhere until you change one, which is deliberate: authoring a combo never turns it on by itself. See §7.

Save. The combo now exists but is dormant until you set a trigger and enable it at a venue.

📸 Screenshot: the combo form on the General section, showing the Handling mode buttons and the Combo price field, with the section nav down the left.

4. Slots — the items that qualify

Each slot answers three questions: what's it called, what can fill it, and how many.

Name

Free text — "Sandwich", "Side", "Drink". It's for you and for the prompt the guest sees, so keep it recognizable.

Qualifying items — a filter or a list

Every slot uses exactly one of these two. You pick which with the toggle on the slot.

Filter — points at an Item Filter you've already built, like "everything in the Sides category" or "every item tagged Beverage". Use this when the set should look after itself: add a new side to the menu next month and it joins the combo automatically, with no combo to edit.

Specific items — a list you pick by hand. Use this when the set is short and deliberate: "Small Fries, Side Salad, Apple Slices" and nothing else.

You can't use both on one slot. A slot with a filter and a list, or with neither, won't save — NX has to be able to resolve a slot to one unambiguous set of items.

If you run several venues, prefer filters that are defined for your whole business, or explicit item lists. A filter that points at things belonging to a single venue — that venue's categories or price points — resolves differently at each location, which is rarely what you want on a combo shared by all of them.

Quantity

How many items fill this slot. Usually 1. Set it to 2 for "two tacos", and NX will require two qualifying items before the slot counts as filled.

Order matters, a little

Slots are filled top down. Where an item could fill more than one slot, NX prefers the slot with the fewest other options, so a two-slot combo of "any sandwich" and "any item" fills sensibly rather than putting the sandwich in the wide-open slot. Use the arrows on a slot to reorder.

📸 Screenshot: the Slots section with three slots — Sandwich (Filter), Side (Filter), Drink (Specific items) — one of them expanded to show the quantity and upcharge controls.

5. Upcharges — when a bigger item costs more

An upcharge adds to the combo price when a particular item fills a slot.

Any sandwich, any side, any drink — $9.99. Large drink, add $1.00.

On the Drink slot, add an upcharge, set Applies to (a filter or a list, exactly like the slot itself) and an Amount. When the guest picks a large drink, the combo costs $10.99 instead.

Three things to know:

• Upcharges add to the combo price, never to the item. The guest sees one combo total that reflects what they actually chose.
• They're shown, not hidden. A combo priced up by an upcharge displays the higher price.
• A slot can have several. Add one per tier — medium +$0.50, large +$1.00.

6. How the combo shows up on the check

Three choices. They cost the guest the same; they differ in what the check, the receipt and the kitchen ticket look like.

Price Adjust — the lines stay as they are

Every item stays on the check as its own line. NX adjusts the prices so the lines add up to the combo price.

Best for: most situations, and the safest place to start. The kitchen ticket is unchanged, the receipt still itemizes everything, and nothing about how staff ring an order changes.

Expect the line prices to look odd. The combo price is split across the items in proportion to what each normally costs, so a $7 sandwich carries more of the discount than a $2 drink. The individual prices won't match your menu, and one line will often differ from its siblings by a cent or two — that's NX making the set add up to the combo price exactly. It's intended, and only in this mode.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Sales categories keep their share. Because the split is proportional, the reduction is spread across categories in the same ratio as the items themselves, rather than landing entirely on one.
• A refund of one line refunds what the guest paid for it — its adjusted share, not its menu price.

Consolidate — the lines collapse into one

The items become components of a single combo line priced at the combo price.

Best for: operations that want the check to read "Value Meal — $9.99" the way a hand-rung combo does.

Requires an Anchor menu item — the existing combo item on your menu that NX uses as the template for the combo line. NX won't let you save a Consolidate combo without one, and the item has to be on the venue's menu for the combo to form there.

The anchor is a template and nothing more. Ringing it by hand doesn't gather up loose items already on the check — a sandwich and fries sitting there won't be pulled into a combo because someone pressed the combo button. Rung by hand it's simply another line, and it can go on to fill a slot like any other item.

One limit — and it's about forming, not keeping: because this mode re-rings the lines, it can only form out of items that haven't been sent to the kitchen yet. Once a Consolidate combo has formed, sending the order doesn't disturb it. Price Adjust and Auto Discount have no such restriction and will form over already-sent items quite happily.

Auto Discount — the lines stay, a discount brings the total down

Every item stays at its normal price and a discount is applied that brings the set down to the combo price.

Best for: operations that want the saving visible as a discount — on the receipt, and in discount reporting alongside everything else.

NX creates and maintains a discount for you. It appears in your discount list named after the combo, with "(Auto-Combo)" on the end. Don't edit or delete it. It's applied by the system, not offered as a button for cashiers to press, and NX keeps its name in step when you rename the combo and retires it if you switch the combo off.

The guest sees that discount's name, not the word "combo". Wherever discount names appear — receipts included — this one appears like any other. The combo's own name is stored separately: it shows on the POS check line as a badge and drives reporting, but it isn't the receipt wording. If you want guests to read something particular on the receipt, name the combo with that in mind.

7. Where the combo happens

Each surface has its own switch, and all of them start at Off.

Set them independently for POS, Kiosk and Online ordering. Prompting online while auto-forming at the kiosk is a perfectly normal configuration.

The guardrail on Auto

Auto will never silently raise the guest's total.

If the combination of combo price and upcharges would come out higher than what the guest is already paying — which can happen once several upcharges stack — NX doesn't form the combo. It falls back to a prompt so a person makes the call, and on surfaces with nowhere to show a prompt, it does nothing at all.

Prompting doesn't nag

A guest who declines a prompt isn't asked again for the same set of items. Change the order — add something, swap the drink — and it becomes a genuinely different question, so NX may offer again.

8. Drive-thru and other areas

There's no separate drive-thru switch, because a drive-thru lane is an Area.

On the Area, set Auto Combo Trigger. It overrides the POS setting on every combo for checks opened in that area:

• Leave it empty — each combo uses its own POS setting. This is the default and usually right.
• Auto — form combos silently in this area. The usual choice for a drive-thru lane, where speed matters and nobody wants a prompt on the screen.
• Prompt — always ask in this area, even for combos set to Auto.
• Off — no combos at all in this area.

The most common setup is Prompt on the POS generally, Auto on the drive-thru area.

9. Turning it on for your venues

Combos are written once for your whole business, then enabled per location.

To author or change a combo — select the Enterprise in the context picker. Everything on the form is editable there.

To turn one on for a location — select the venue, open the combo, and use:

• Active — whether this venue runs the combo at all.
• Triggers — this venue's own Off / Prompt / Auto per surface.

Everything else — the slots, the price, the handling mode — is set for the whole business and shows as read-only when you're looking at a single venue. That's deliberate: a combo means the same thing and costs the same everywhere, and only whether and how insistently it runs varies by location.

10. When a combo comes apart

A formed combo isn't locked. If the check stops satisfying the combo, the combo dissolves and the items return to their normal prices.

What dissolves one:

• Removing or voiding one of the items in it.
• Applying a discount to one of its items (see below).
• Splitting the check so its items land on different checks.
• Undoing it — staff can always reverse a combo, and everything returns exactly as it was.

What it looks like: prices go back to normal, an Auto Discount combo's discount clears, and a Consolidate combo's components return as ordinary lines while the combo line retires quietly — it is not recorded as a void or a comp, so it won't show up in your void reporting.

What happens next: the freed items go straight back into consideration. Remove the drink from a three-item combo and, if those two remaining items happen to make a different combo you've defined, that one forms instead.

Voiding after the kitchen has the order

Voiding a component after the order is sent dissolves the combo, and the guest's total can go up.

This is the one behaviour to brief staff on. A combo can form over items that are already fired (everything except Consolidate — see §6), and a Consolidate combo that formed before the order was sent stays formed afterwards. So a combo can be live on a check whose food is already being made.

Void one of its components at that point and the rest of the meal reverts to full menu price. If the combo was saving $1.50, the guest now owes $1.50 more for food they're still getting. There is no prompt and no manager approval on this — it happens on the next save, quietly. Whoever voids the item is the person who has to notice, and explain it.

If that's a problem in your operation, the practical guard is procedural rather than a setting: have staff re-quote the total to the guest after voiding out of a combo.

Combos and discounts don't mix

An item that already has a discount on it can't be part of a combo.

This is absolute and it runs both ways. A line with any discount — a manual one, a loyalty reward, a coupon — is skipped when NX looks for combos. And discounting an item that's already in a combo breaks that combo up.

The reason is that both are ways of lowering a price, and stacking them silently would make the total impossible for staff to explain at the counter. If a guest should get both, the combo has to come apart first — which NX does for you.

11. When two combos could apply

Sometimes a check satisfies more than one combo, or the same item could fill slots in two of them. An item can only ever be in one combo at a time, so NX has to choose.

By default it picks whatever saves the guest the most. That's a venue-level setting in your POS configuration if you need to change it.

Two controls on the combo itself:

• Priority — a number, lower goes first. It settles ties and gives you a predictable order when several combos overlap.
• Exclude from best-deal arbitration — keeps this combo out of the comparison entirely. Use it for a promotion that should apply on its own terms rather than competing.

Both live under the advanced settings on the General section. Most combos never need either.

12. Checking your work

Before turning a combo on for real:

1. Read the slots back as a sentence. "Any sandwich, any side, any drink, $9.99." If you can't say it plainly, the slots probably aren't what you meant.
2. Check the arithmetic. Add up what the items normally cost. If the combo price isn't lower, Auto won't fire — the guardrail in §7 will hold it back — and you'll wonder why nothing happens.
3. Try it on one venue first. Enable it at a single location with the trigger on Prompt. A prompt is reversible and visible; Auto is neither. On a Price Adjust combo this is also your first look at the adjusted line prices — check they read acceptably on a receipt before going wider (§6).
4. Ring a test order. Add the items in an order nobody would use — drink first, sandwich last — and confirm the combo still offers.
5. Void something. Take one item off a formed combo and watch what the total does, so nobody meets that for the first time in front of a guest (§10).
6. Then widen it. Turn on the other venues, and move to Auto once you've seen it behave.

13. Managing combos day to day

Changing the price takes effect on new checks. Combos already formed on open checks keep the price they formed at.

Renaming is safe. Checks that already closed keep the name they were sold under, so last month's reports don't change under you. On an Auto Discount combo the paired discount is renamed to match.

Switching it off — clear Active, at the Enterprise to stop it everywhere or at one venue to stop it there. Open checks with the combo already on them are unaffected.

Seasonal combos — a Daypart handles time of day. For a combo that runs for a few weeks, switch Active off when it ends rather than deleting it; the definition is then there to switch back on next year, and your reporting history still resolves its name.

14. Troubleshooting

The combo never offers. A combo that can't form does so silently — there's no message explaining why — so work down these two lists. Start with the setup, which accounts for most of it:

• Is the trigger for that surface still Off? That's the default and the most common answer.
• Is the combo Active for this venue? Select the venue and check.
• Is the surface live at your venue yet? See Availability.
• Does the Daypart cover the time you're testing?
• Has an Area override taken control? A drive-thru area set to Off overrides every combo (§8).

If the setup is right, it'll be one of these — the check itself is the problem:

• Something in the set is already discounted. Combos always yield to an existing discount, so a single discounted line takes the whole set out of contention (§10).
• A slot isn't really full. Check the quantities. A slot needing two items isn't filled by one.
• One line has a quantity of 2 where the slot wants 1. NX never splits a line, so two drinks rung as a single line of quantity 2 won't fill a one-drink slot. Ring them as separate lines.
• Consolidate, and something is already sent. That mode only forms out of unsent items (§6).
• Consolidate, and the anchor item isn't on this venue's menu. The combo can't form without it.
• Auto Discount, and the set already costs the combo price or less. There's nothing to take off.
• The guest already said no. A dismissed prompt isn't re-offered until the qualifying items actually change (§7).

It offers as a prompt even though I set Auto. Almost always the guardrail: forming the combo would cost the guest more than they're currently paying, usually because of upcharges. Compare the combo price plus applicable upcharges against what the items ring up to individually.

It formed, then came apart on its own. Something changed on the check — an item removed, voided, discounted, or the check split. That's working as designed (§10). If items were left over, check whether a different combo formed from them.

The wrong combo formed. Two combos overlapped and NX picked the one that saved more. Use Priority to control the order, or Exclude from best-deal arbitration on the one that shouldn't compete (§11).

There's a discount in my list I didn't create. If it's named after a combo with "(Auto-Combo)" on the end, NX created it for an Auto Discount combo. Leave it alone (§6).

I can't edit the slots. You have a single venue selected. Switch the context picker to the Enterprise (§9).

The Combos page is empty, or the form won't open. Check the context picker — an Enterprise or a venue must be selected — and that your user has permission to manage menu items.

15. Good to know

• Combos never change what the kitchen makes. Except in Consolidate mode, where the ticket shows the components under one combo line, tickets are exactly what they'd be without the combo.
• Tax is worked out from the prices the guest actually pays, after the combo is applied. The tax rates are the ones locked in when the item was rung, so forming or dissolving a combo never changes which rate applies — only the amount it's applied to.
• Every formation can be undone, and undo puts the check back exactly as it was.
• Modifiers come along. An item keeps its modifiers when it joins a combo, and those modifiers are priced as they normally would be.
• A guest can get more than one combo on a check. Ring two full value meals and two combos form, as long as there are enough items to fill both.
• NX won't suggest what's missing. If a check has a sandwich and fries but no drink, nothing is offered — combos are recognized when they're complete, not proposed halfway.
• Combos don't survive a split check. Splitting dissolves the combo and the items return to their normal prices, so review a split before taking payment.
• Reporting. Once combos are live, sales reports gain a Combos section showing how many formed and what guests saved, split by whether NX formed them automatically, a guest accepted a prompt, or staff built one by hand. Auto Discount combos additionally appear in your normal discount reports under the paired discount's name.

Glossary