When it comes time to settle an order, your guests may wish to split the entire check evenly or divide payment for specific items. To make this easy, the Lightspeed Restaurant App allows splitting a check by seats or by covers in equal shares.

Splitting checks by seat allows guests to pay only for the items they ordered, whereas splitting checks by covers allows your guests to split the total cost of the bill evenly.

Setting up Advanced Check splitting

Before you can split checks on the Restaurant POS, you must first enable Advanced check splitting in the Lightspeed Back Office. To configure this for the POS, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Back Office with your Lightspeed credentials.
2. From the navigation menu, select Configuration > Configurations. You will see a list of your device profiles.
3. Select the name of the device profile for which you wish to enable advanced check splitting.
4. On the settings page, click Payments.

   

5. Scroll to Payment options and check off Enable advanced check splitting.

   

6. Click Save.
7. Once you have enabled the setting from the Back Office, reload your device configuration to update and sync the changes.

Dividing checks by seats

If an order was taken in table service mode with items assigned to particular seats, the check can be split according to those seats. This way, if separate payment is requested, you can generate an individual check for each guest.

1. Tap Split check on the bottom right of the screen. This will open the Split check screen.
2. Split the checks by tapping Distribute by seat. Once done, each item is automatically put onto a separate check for its corresponding seat. Any shared items are automatically split across all seats.

   Shared items that were ordered one by one are always divided evenly between all of the checks. For example, if there are 4 beers on a table with four guests, the POS will divide each beer four ways. This way, each check contains 4*0.25 beers. This type of division can quickly become confusing on the check. In these cases, it may be necessary to edit the item shares manually on each check.

3. If necessary, use the following steps 3a-c to sort the item shares so those split items are reassembled into a single item, and assign it to a specific check.
   1. Click Split next to the item share you want to edit. You will be shown the check on which the share is active.
   2. Uncheck the shares on the check where they should not be active and check in the query the invoice that should receive the share so that the shares are merged again.
   3. Repeat steps 3a-b for each check except the one containing the entire item article.
   4. Tap Done to confirm.
4. To finish splitting the checks, you can choose several options:
   • Tap on Print on each check to print each check individually, and then tap Done to apply the checks for further ordering.
   • Tap Print at the bottom right-hand corner to print all checks.
   • Tap Pay at each check to process payment for it.
   • Tap Done at the upper right corner to apply the checks for further ordering.
     
     

When returning to the Register screen after splitting the checks, the order view reflects the divided bills. At the top of the Order view, you can select which check you wish to view or edit.

Dividing checks by covers

Another option to split the check is to split it into equal parts by using the covers.

Shared items are always divided between the checks, even if the number of shared items is several times larger than the number of covers. For example, if there are 4 beers on a table with four guests, the POS will divide each beer four ways. This way, each check contains 4*0.25 beers. This type of division can quickly become confusing on the check for the guest. It is necessary to edit the corresponding article shares manually on each check split to avoid it. Access optional steps 3a-d to get how to.

1. Tap Split check on the bottom right of the Register screen. This will open the Split check screen.
   
   
2. Select Distribute by seat to separate the check by the predefined number of covers at the table. Optionally, manually split the check into fewer or more parts or use the optional way from using steps 2a to 2c:
   1. Tap Actions at the top of the desired check.
   2. Use the plus or minus to adjust the number of covers at the table.
   3. Tap Split receipt - X parts to apply changes.
      
      
3. (Optional) Use the following steps 3a-3c to sort the item shares so that they are reassembled and listed as one item on a specific check.
   1. Click Split next to the article share you want to edit.
   2. Uncheck the shares on the check where they should not be active and check in the query the check that should receive the share so that the shares are merged again.
   3. Repeat steps 3a-3b for each check except the one containing the entire article.
   4. Tap Done to confirm.
4. To complete the check splitting, choose out of four options:
   • Tap on Print at each check to print the checks individually and then tap Done to apply the checks for further ordering.
   • Tap on Print all to print all checks and then tap Done to apply the checks for further ordering.
   • Tap Pay to proceed with payment.
   • Tap Done to apply the checks for further ordering.
     
     

When returning to the Register screen after splitting the checks, the order view reflects the divided bills. At the top of the Order view, you can select which check you wish to view or edit.

What's next?