How to Choose Restaurant Billing Software: A 12-Point Checklist

This checklist is for restaurant owners and managers in India who are about to sit through software demos and want a way to compare them that does not depend on the salesperson. Take it to every demo, and by the end you will have a score out of 24 for each product.

How to choose restaurant billing software: start with your own floor

A demo on the vendor's sample menu proves very little. Before you book one, write down the facts of your own restaurant, because every answer you get should be tested against them.

• Number of tables, and whether they sit on more than one floor or area.
• Number of kitchen counters that need their own ticket: main kitchen, dosa or tandoor counter, beverage counter, sweets or farsan counter.
• Bills per day on a weekday and on a Sunday, and your busiest hour.
• Share of dine-in against parcel or takeaway.
• How many people bill, how many take orders, and who is allowed to give a discount.
• How often your internet drops in a normal month.

Then prepare one difficult order from real life. For example: a table of six orders two half portions and one full, adds extra butter on one dish, adds two more items after ten minutes, cancels one, asks to split the bill in two, and pays part cash and part UPI. Ask every vendor to run that order in front of you. As a reference point for what a restaurant-specific product covers, see the Dhandhaan restaurant POS software page.

Checks 1 to 4: what happens on the floor during service

1. Offline working

Ask the vendor to switch off the internet during the demo. Then take an order on a captain phone, print a kitchen ticket and settle a bill. Cloud-only software stops at this point. Software with a local server at the branch keeps going on the restaurant's own Wi-Fi.

Ask: What exactly works with no internet? Do captain phones still reach the counter? What happens to the data when the connection returns?

2. Kitchen ticket routing

One order should print separate tickets at the right counters without the captain choosing a printer. Check that items added later are marked as additional, that a cancelled item prints a cancellation ticket, and that a lost ticket can be reprinted.

Ask: Can each menu item be mapped to a kitchen printer? How many printers are included in the price? Does each counter have its own ticket numbers?

3. Table handling

Look at the table screen from across the room. Free, running and billed tables should be clear by colour. Ask for two tables to be merged into one bill for a large group, and for one table to be split into two separate bills for guests who are sharing it.

Ask: Does a table stay occupied after the bill is printed and until payment is taken? Can tables be grouped by floor?

4. Order types and billing speed

Dine-in and parcel orders move differently. A parcel order has no table and is billed at once. Time the cashier: a counter order of four items should be billed in well under a minute, using the keyboard or touch.

Ask: Are there keyboard shortcuts and short codes for items? Can a parcel order be held while the next customer is billed?

Checks 5 to 8: money, tax and control

5. GST invoice

The printed bill should show your GSTIN and FSSAI number, the tax split into CGST and SGST, and an invoice number in an unbroken sequence. Standalone restaurants generally charge 5% GST without input tax credit, but confirm your rate with your accountant. The software should let you set the rate per item and choose whether each menu price includes GST or has it added on top.

Ask: Can I export an invoice register and a GST summary by rate for my accountant? Do invoice numbers restart each financial year?

6. Payment modes

Check cash, UPI and card, and a bill paid partly in each. For UPI, find out where the money lands. Some software shows a QR that pays directly into your own UPI ID with no fee. Other software routes the payment through a gateway and deducts a percentage.

Ask: Is there any fee on digital payments? Is the QR generated for the exact bill amount? Is the card machine connected or is the card payment recorded by hand?

7. Discounts, roles and audit

Most billing leakage happens through discounts, voids and edited bills. A cashier should have a discount limit, and anything above it should need a manager's PIN and a reason. Every discount, void and price change should be recorded with the user and the time.

Ask: Can I see an audit log? Can a captain be limited to certain floors? Can service charge be removed from a bill when a guest declines it? Service charge is voluntary for the guest, so the cashier needs that option.

8. Reports and day end

Ask to see the reports on a phone, since that is where an owner reads them. The useful ones are daily sales, payment mode split, item-wise and category-wise sales, hour-wise sales, discount and cancellation reports, and a day-end report that the cashier prints at close and matches with the cash drawer.

Ask: Do reports export to Excel and PDF? If I am open past midnight, which day do those bills fall under?

Checks 9 to 12: setup, support and the contract

9. Menu setup and changes

Your menu should go in from an Excel file, not be typed item by item. Check sizes such as half and full with their own prices, add-ons such as extra cheese, and a switch to mark an item unavailable today.

Ask: Can I change a price myself, or do I have to call support? How long does a change take to reach the captain phones?

10. Support and training

Call the support number during the demo, in the evening if you can. Ask who installs the printers, who trains the cashier and captains, and what the support hours are on Sundays and festival days.

Ask: Is support by phone, WhatsApp or ticket only? Is there a charge for a site visit?

11. Data ownership

Your sales data is your record for tax and for running the business. You should be able to export the menu, the invoice register and reports at any time without paying for the export.

Ask: If I stop the subscription, how long can I download my data? In what format?

12. Price model

Software is sold as a flat yearly fee, a monthly fee per outlet, a charge per bill, or a one-time licence. Convert each quote to a three-year total with add-ons, extra devices and renewal price included. The method is in our guide to restaurant POS software price in India.

Ask: What is the renewal price? Which features are add-ons? Is there any charge linked to my sales or number of bills?

Scoring table for a restaurant billing software demo

Score each check 2 if it worked in front of you on your own order, 1 if it worked partly or needs an add-on, and 0 if it did not work or was only promised. A promise for "the next version" scores 0.

The maximum is 24. A score of 20 or more is a shortlist candidate. A zero on check 1, 2 or 5 is a stop, whatever the total, because those three cannot be worked around during service.

How Dhandhaan handles this: the checklist applied to our own product

Dhandhaan is the restaurant POS software built by JK Tech Hub in Rajkot.

• Offline: each branch runs on a local server, the counter PC or a mini PC. Captain phones, the counter and the printers talk over the restaurant's Wi-Fi, and data syncs to the cloud when the connection returns.
• Kitchen tickets: each item is mapped to a kitchen printer, with its own ticket number sequence per printer. Added items are marked ADDITIONAL, cancelled items print a CANCELLED ticket, and any ticket can be reprinted.
• Tables: areas or floors, colour status, merge into one bill, split into sub-tables such as Table 1A and Table 1B with separate bills.
• Billing: "Print Bill" gives a provisional bill and keeps the table occupied. "Settle" takes payment, assigns the final invoice number and frees the table. Parcel orders are billed at once and can be put on hold.
• GST: rate per item, inclusive or exclusive pricing per item, CGST and SGST on the invoice, GST summary by rate and an invoice register export.
• Payments: cash, UPI QR for the exact amount paid into the restaurant's own UPI ID with no fee, card recorded manually, and split payment.
• Control: roles for owner, manager, cashier and captain, discount limits with manager PIN, and an audit log.
• Price: ₹12,999 a year for a single branch, ₹23,999 a year for multi-branch, with no charge per bill.

Where it would lose points for some restaurants: Dhandhaan does not include inventory, stock or recipe management, and live integration with food delivery apps is not available at present. There is no kitchen display screen, since the kitchen works from printed tickets. There is no iPhone app, no customer loyalty module and no card machine integration. If your shortlist depends on one of those, score it honestly.

What we learned from building restaurant POS software for a real kitchen

JK Tech Hub built Dhandhaan for a multi-branch South Indian and fast food restaurant business in Gujarat that was moving off a hosted POS. Three lessons from that work are behind the checklist above.

First, staff wanted screens that felt familiar. That is why check 4 says to time your own cashier, not the vendor's trainer.

Second, the kitchen had separate counters with their own printers, and routing was the feature the kitchen staff cared about most. During testing we found that printers on changing network addresses went missing after a router restart, so each printer now gets a fixed IP address at installation.

Third, outages at peak hours were the main complaint with the earlier system. Testing with the internet cable pulled out became a standard step for us, and it is why offline working is check 1 and not check 12.

How to decide after the demos

Put the score sheets side by side. Remove any product with a zero on offline working, kitchen tickets or GST. Among those left, compare the three-year price, then call one existing customer of each vendor and ask a single question: what happened the last time something broke during service.

If two products are level, pick the one your cashier and senior captain preferred. They will use it for ten hours a day.

Related reading and next step

• Dhandhaan restaurant POS software: features and price
• Restaurant POS software price in India: models and 3-year cost
• Offline restaurant billing software: what works when the internet is down
• Kitchen order ticket printing and setup
• Restaurant discount control to stop billing leakage

To run this checklist on Dhandhaan with your own menu, book a demo or ask for a quote through the contact page or WhatsApp +91 7265004040.