Production centers, device settings, and printing profiles are the three pillars that enable POS printing. Essentially, production centers are the destinations for printing jobs. They can be configured from the Back Office, including settings like printing destination, templates, and IP address. This article will guide you on adding production centers from the Back Office.

Adding production centers 

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

Production center settings

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

Virtual production center: Use this setting if you have a third-party kitchen display system, such as QSR Automations, instead of a printer. Before turning on this setting, first enable any other desired production center settings as the available fields will change when it is toggled. This is not required for the Lightspeed KDS.

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.

Supported order types: Select Direct orders, Table-side orders, Takeaway orders, or Online orders to restrict the production center to printing only that type of orders. For example, your kitchen may need to print all orders, but a packing area printer might print only takeaway or online orders.

Number of empty lines at the top of docket: Use the slider to add blank lines to the top of each production docket. 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.

Organize the content of the order docket into courses: 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.

Prefix names with the corresponding object identifiers: This can be used with integrations such as Drink Flow Management systems.

Print a single item per docket: 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: Makes the lines on printed tickets wider for legibility.

Trigger the drawer connector when printing a docket: 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: When enabled, this setting will print the delivery information on takeaway orders.

Font Size: Controls the size of the printed text on production tickets, which can be set to small, medium, or large.

Virtual production center settings

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

Virtual protocol: Choose Lightspeed, QSR KDS, QSR KDS + DineTime, or Dirmeier depending on the integration you're using.

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. Select Edit next to the production center to be adjusted.
4. Make the desired changes to the settings. For a list of settings and descriptions of what they do, see Production center settings.
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 > Printing profiles.
3. Click Remove next to the printing profile to be deleted.

What's next?