Production centers, device settings, and printing profiles are the three essential components that enable POS printing. The production centers are the destinations for printing jobs like order tickets but they can also be a destination for orders to be displayed like a Kitchen Display System (KDS) screen.

There are two types of production centers in Lightspeed Restaurant:

• Printing locations are printers that typically generate receipts or order tickets.
• Digital production centers are destinations like a KDS screen which allow orders routed to a virtual production center to appear on the designated screen or screens.

This article will guide you on adding, editing, and deleting production centers from the Back Office.

Adding a printing location

1. Login to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. From the main navigation, go to Configuration > Printing > Production centers.
3. Click Add printing location.
   
4. Fill in the form to customize the printing location. For a list of settings and descriptions of what they do, see Printing location settings.
5. Select Save to add the production center.
   

Printing location settings

Name: Enter a name for the production center. For example, Grill or Bar.

Printer profile: Select the printer profile that this production center will use. If you do not choose a printing profile, the production center will remain disabled.

Order profiles: Orders can be routed to a specific printer station based on the order profiles selected. Order profiles can be toggled on or off for each production center. By default, all available order profiles are enabled. This feature does not apply to virtual production centers.

Printed tickets settings

Header spacing: Use the drop-down menu to add blank lines to the top of each ticket. Adding empty lines to dockets can be useful if you hang them on a ticket rail or holder and want to ensure no information gets covered. You can pick between 0-10 blank lines.

Font size: Select the font size for the text to be printed. You can select Small, Medium, or Large.

Sort items by course: When enabled, this option organizes the ticket into sections based on the course of each dish ordered. For example, all starters will be grouped together, followed by all main dishes, and so on. Disable this option if the production center is used for drinks.

Include SKU before item name: This setting will print each item's SKU followed by the item name.

Print one item per ticket: Enabling this option makes it so that each ticket contains only one item. This is useful if your workflow involves giving the customer their docket and the customer later presents it to retrieve their order, item by item.

Print wider lines: When enabled, this setting makes the lines on printed tickets wider for legibility.

Open cash drawer when printing a ticket: When enabled, the printer will open a connected cash drawer whenever it prints a ticket. By plugging a buzzer into the printer's drawer port, an audible buzz will indicate the completion of each print job to alert staff of a new order.

Print delivery information: Enabling this setting will print the customer's address on production dockets for orders where an order profile with the Delivery takeaway mode setting has been selected.

Adding a digital production center

1. Login to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. From the main navigation, go to Configuration > Printing > Production centers.
3. Click Connect to a different device.
   
4. Fill in the form to customize the digital production center. For a list of settings and descriptions of what they do, see Digital production center settings.
5. Select Save to add the production center to the Back Office.
   

Digital production center settings

Device for connection: Choose Lightspeed KDS, QSR KDS, or QSR KDS + DineTime, depending on the integration you're using.

Name: Enter a name for the production center. For example, Kitchen KDS.

Destination IP address: Enter the IP Address of the third-party kitchen display system connected to this production center. 

Editing production centers

If you need to change the settings on a production center after you've created it, you can access the production center's page and edit it as needed.

1. Login to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. From the navigation bar, go to Configuration > Printing > Production centers.
3. Click the name of the production center to be adjusted.
4. Make the desired changes to the settings. See above for a list and description of each setting.
5. Click Save to apply your changes to the desired production center.

Deleting production centers

If you ever need to remove a production center, you can do so from the Back Office.

1. Login to Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. From the navigation menu, go to Configuration > Printing > Production centers.
3. Click the trash can icon in the row of the production center to be deleted.

What's next?