How to Fire Courses on Kitchen Display

All courses hit the pass at once

When every dish prints together, desserts sit under heat lamps while starters are still plating. Guests complain about cold desserts and rushed pacing.

Expo cannot tell which lines are intentional holds versus forgotten tickets. Boards fill with noise and age colours escalate on food that should not cook yet.

Without routing cues on the cart, FOH sends bar drinks and grill steaks in one mental batch and wonders why stations fire out of sequence.

Without a migration applied, course fields are missing and every line behaves like Course 1 — desserts flood the board again.

Why this happens

• Every line defaults to Course 1 with no hold discipline.
• FOH forgets to Fire Course 2 after starters clear.
• KDS not enabled or recipes lack Default KDS Station.
• Kitchen tablets sleep and stop polling, so fires look delayed.

Biznsbook addresses this through course hold and fire, KDS station routing cues, ETag ticket polling when Restaurant and POS are licensed — floor plans poll without SignalR, POS table sessions link sales, and KDS boards respect course hold/fire with ETag polling.

Finance teams lose days each month reconciling versions that should never have diverged. Naming Biznsbook screens as the system of record — and closing periods when agreed — prevents silent edits that auditors flag immediately.

Step-by-step: Fire Courses on Kitchen Display

Built for hosts, cashiers, and kitchen leads running live floor plans, table sessions, bill split, and course-paced KDS in Biznsbook.

1. Enable KDS and stations. Restaurant → Settings → Enable KDS. Configure Grill, Fryer, Cold, Bar, and thresholds; assign Default KDS Station on active recipes.
2. Open a table session. Select Available or Reserved on the POS floor plan so the session banner and course dropdown appear.
3. Set course on each line. Use the banner default course or the modifier modal course picker. Cart lines show a → Station cue when the recipe routes to Grill, Bar, or another station.
4. Send Course 1 with the sale. Complete the sale. Course 1 lines create tickets with IsHeld false; Course 2+ create held lines omitted from boards.
5. Fire the next course. When starters clear, tap Fire on the table chip, enter the course number, and confirm. FireCourse clears the hold and stamps FiredAt.
6. Watch station boards. Boards group lines under Course headers, poll about every 10 seconds with If-None-Match / ETag, and escalate age colour green → amber → red.
7. Bump through lifecycle. Acknowledge → Start → Ready → Bump as usual. Empty boards may mean remaining lines are still held, not that the ticket vanished.

Review results after the first full weekly cycle. Adjust roles, mappings, or approvals where the same exception repeats.

Screen-level flows live in the Help Center. This guide focuses on the business process; help articles cover click-by-click navigation.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mistake 1: Every line defaults to Course 1 with no hold discipline. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in table turns, unpaid checks, or kitchen pacing.
• Mistake 2: FOH forgets to Fire Course 2 after starters clear. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in table turns, unpaid checks, or kitchen pacing.
• Mistake 3: KDS not enabled or recipes lack Default KDS Station. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in table turns, unpaid checks, or kitchen pacing.
• Mistake 4: Kitchen tablets sleep and stop polling, so fires look delayed. Repeating this each month usually shows up first in table turns, unpaid checks, or kitchen pacing.

Track recurring exceptions in month-end notes; each should map to a control above.

Best practices that hold up as you scale

• Enable KDS and stations — Restaurant → Settings → Enable KDS.
• Open a table session — Select Available or Reserved on the POS floor plan so the session banner and course dropdown appear.
• Set course on each line — Use the banner default course or the modifier modal course picker.
• Send Course 1 with the sale — Complete the sale.
• Fire the next course — When starters clear, tap Fire on the table chip, enter the course number, and confirm.

Teams that settle shares before Cleaning, Fire courses only when expo is ready, and review table analytics weekly keep turns and kitchen pacing aligned.

How Biznsbook supports this workflow

course hold and fire is documented in Biznsbook Restaurant capabilities. Use it as part of a controlled finance process — posting, review, and period close — not as an isolated export. When Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Taxation, Expense, or Finance Management modules are enabled, related documents can post through the central accounting posting service with double-entry validation.

KDS station routing cues is documented in Biznsbook Restaurant capabilities. Use it as part of a controlled finance process — posting, review, and period close — not as an isolated export. When Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Taxation, Expense, or Finance Management modules are enabled, related documents can post through the central accounting posting service with double-entry validation.

ETag ticket polling is documented in Biznsbook Restaurant capabilities. Use it as part of a controlled finance process — posting, review, and period close — not as an isolated export. When Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Taxation, Expense, or Finance Management modules are enabled, related documents can post through the central accounting posting service with double-entry validation.

Manage Floor Plan gates the editor; View covers Live View and POS table ops; ViewKDS operates boards; bill split and Fire use View (or ViewKDS for fire-course).

Suggested implementation timeline

1. Week 1: Document current process gaps and configure course hold and fire with finance owner sign-off.
2. Weeks 2–3: Pilot on one month or one entity; post all test transactions through Biznsbook; freeze parallel spreadsheet journals.
3. Week 4: Run first trial balance or report tie-out; fix mapping and permission issues.
4. Month 2–3: Roll out to full team; add approvals and period close cadence from this guide.
5. Ongoing: Monthly review using course fire tip and leadership dashboard.

Related guides and help articles

Pair this guide with floor plans, split checks, fire courses, and run KDS.

Docs hub: restaurant management guides. Industry: restaurants & food service ERP. Module: restaurant software.

Hold rules cooks can trust

Course 1 copies from SaleBillItem.RestaurantCourseNumber (default 1) with IsHeld false and FiredAt set on create. Courses 2 and higher start held and are filtered from GetActiveTicketsAsync until FireCourseAsync clears the hold.

Boards group visible lines under Course headers. An empty station card after starters clear often means mains are still held — Fire from POS rather than voiding and re-ringing.

Train expo to call Fire only after plates clear the pass so cooks do not start mains under a half-cleared starter ticket.

ETag polling for kitchen tablets

Station boards send If-None-Match against the tickets API. Unchanged payloads return 304 so busy kitchens do not redraw every ten seconds. After Fire, the next changed poll paints new lines with the same add animation used for new tickets.

Mount tablets on wired power and keep the KDS tab foregrounded. Sleeping browsers stop polling and make Fire look broken when the hold already cleared server-side.

Separate guest Wi-Fi from kitchen polling devices when possible — POS and KDS on a stable VLAN reduces dropped polls compared to congested guest networks.

Routing cues before send

POS catalog attaches recipe DefaultKDSStation as a → Station cue on cart lines and the modifier modal title. Train FOH to glance at the cue before confirming so Grill and Bar expectations match the tickets that will appear after Fire.

Online and QR orders always fire as course 1 — do not promise course pacing on public ordering without a dine-in table session.

Metrics to track monthly

• Tables Occupied Now and Bill Requested dashboard tiles
• Sessions closed only after linked bill balances settle
• Swap/merge events without orphaned KDS table numbers
• Course 2+ fired after starters clear (held lines cleared)
• KDS boards returning 304 on unchanged ticket polls

Start with three metrics; trend direction matters more than a single point-in-time snapshot.

Spreadsheet / manual books vs integrated ERP

Compare typical manual finance work with Biznsbook course hold and fire and related capabilities.

Course fire tip

Apply the FOH migration before relying on course fields. Keep kitchen tablets awake on wired power so Fire updates appear on the next 10-second poll. Review KDS Analytics after introducing course fire — average ticket time often drops when desserts stop ageing on the board during mains.

Document this in your finance SOP and revisit each quarter as transaction volume or entity structure changes.

Frequently asked questions

How this differs by industry