Printing

Overview

Printing in Katalyst connects your POS, kitchen, and back office to physical receipt and kitchen printers. When something needs a paper record—a guest check, a kitchen ticket, a payment slip, or an end-of-day report—the system creates a print job, sends it to the right printer, and tracks whether it printed successfully.

Printing supports:

• Kitchen tickets when items are fired or orders come in
• Guest checks for diners and staff
• Payment receipts (cash, card, gift card)
• Operational slips (clock in/out, breaks, cash outs)
• Management reports (restaurant closeout)
• Gift card and loyalty balance and activation slips
• Order labels (label printers)

How printing works (at a glance)

1. An action on the POS, KDS, or back office triggers printing (for example, firing an item or closing a payment).
2. The system builds the ticket content and assigns a printer (based on menu routing, prep station, or defaults).
3. A print job is created and delivered to a device running the print server (usually a designated POS iPad).
4. That device sends the job to the printer over the network.
5. The job status is updated so staff and support can see if printing succeeded or failed.

Print job lifecycle

Jobs keep a history of status changes for troubleshooting.

What can be printed

The system supports many document types. Each is formatted for receipt printers (or label printers where noted).

Checks and kitchen

Kitchen tickets can include modifiers, allergies, seat numbers, courses, and order-type details. Items marked print separate slips get their own kitchen ticket.

Payments

Payment methods can also be set to print check on close and open cash drawer on close per payment type.

Staff and operations

See Cash-Outs.md for what appears on the Employee Cash Out receipt.

Gift cards and loyalty

Reports

The closeout report includes summary sales, payments, tips, surcharges, comps, pay-ins, pay-outs, tip-outs, and cash deposit totals.

Printers and routing

Printer setup

Each printer in back office is configured with:

• Name — how staff identify it (e.g. "Bar Printer", "Expo")
• IP address / port — network connection to the physical device
• Line width — characters per line (default 35)
• Brand / model — for compatibility
• Type — default (receipt/kitchen) or label
• Reroute printer — backup printer if the primary fails after retries

Per-printer behavior flags:

Printer groups

A printer group is a named set of printers. The restaurant or a POS device can use a group as its default, so one action prints to multiple stations (for example, duplicate kitchen copies).

Priority for “which printer”:

1. Device default — printer or printer group assigned to the POS iPad
2. Restaurant default — location-wide default printer or group
3. Menu item routing — each menu item can route to a specific printer or group (by revenue center)
4. Prep station — KDS prep stations can have their own printer
5. Revenue center expo printer — fallback for KDS kitchen reprints when no prep station printer is set

Label printers

Menu items routed to a label printer produce compact order labels instead of full kitchen chits.

Print server

What is the print server?

The print server is a POS device (iPad) designated to receive print jobs from the cloud and send them to local network printers. Other devices create jobs; the print server executes them.

When print server is disabled, more printing may be handled directly on individual POS devices (behavior depends on app version and checkout type).

Default printer hierarchy

If no device default exists, the restaurant default is used.

Receipt appearance (headers and footers)

Restaurant settings include printer customization:

• Up to 3 header lines and 3 footer lines (shown on guest-facing receipts)
• Font size — guest and kitchen can be small or large
• Indentation and routing name (for advanced setups)

These apply to formatted receipts such as guest checks and payment slips.

Kitchen Display System (KDS) and printing

When KDS is enabled for a revenue center, printing behavior interacts with kitchen screens:

Staff can reprint kitchen tickets from KDS; reprints respect separate-slip rules and prep station routing.

Automatic vs manual printing

Automatic (typical triggers)

• Fire / send to kitchen — kitchen tickets to routed printers
• Void item — void ticket if printer has void printing enabled
• Card payment — merchant and/or customer copies
• Cash Out approved — employee cash out receipt
• Clock out — clock-out slip (when enabled)
• Takeout / online orders — kitchen tickets when orders become active (with print server)
• Gift card activation — activation slip

Manual (staff-initiated)

From POS or back office, staff can request:

• Guest check reprint
• Kitchen check reprint (full check or selected items)
• Payment reprint
• Cash out reprint
• Restaurant closeout report for a date
• Gift card / loyalty lookup or adjust slips

Retries and rerouting

If a print job fails, the system can retry before giving up:

Additional timing:

• Print job timeout — how long before a job is considered stuck (default 30 seconds)
• POS printing queue cleanup — how long completed jobs stay in the device queue (default 10 minutes)

Katalyst also automatically re-sends unprinted kitchen and check jobs that are still pending after a short delay.

Payment method printing options

Each payment method (cash, card, manual, gift card, etc.) can be configured with:

These apply at payment time, independent of kitchen routing.

What's on common receipts (summary)

Guest check

• Restaurant header/footer
• Check number, table, guests, server
• Itemized order with modifiers and prices
• Discounts, surcharges, taxes, total
• Payment lines (when printing after payment)

Kitchen check

• Check number, order type, time
• Items, modifiers, quantities
• Allergies, courses, seat numbers (when enabled)
• Reprint indicator when applicable

Employee cash out

• Sales by category, taxes, comps
• Payments by type, tip detail
• Employee cash owed and signature lines

Restaurant closeout report

• Business date, covers, checks
• Net/gross sales, surcharges, discounts
• Payments by type, tips breakdown
• Pay-ins, pay-outs, tip-outs, cash deposit

Card payment slip

• Merchant or customer copy
• Card type, last 4, amount, tip
• Check number, table, time

Relationship to other features

Troubleshooting common printing issues

Nothing prints at all

Check:

• At least one POS device is marked print server and is online
• Print server enabled is on for the restaurant (if your deployment uses it)
• Printers have correct IP address and are on the same network as the print server iPad
• The POS app is open and connected (print jobs are delivered in real time)

Kitchen tickets don't print but KDS shows orders

Check:

• Print incoming under KDS settings — if KDS is on and this is off, tickets may be screen-only
• Menu items have printer routing assigned for that revenue center
• Printer print fire tickets is enabled
• Revenue center has KDS enabled

Guest check or payment won't print

Check:

• Device or restaurant default printer is set
• Payment method has print check on close if you expect print on close
• For card payments, device checkout type affects whether merchant/customer copies are created

Prints to wrong printer

Check:

• Menu item printer assignment for that revenue center
• Whether a printer group is sending copies to multiple printers
• Prep station or expo printer override on KDS reprints
• Device default vs restaurant default

Duplicate kitchen tickets

Check:

• Item marked print separate slips (each item gets its own chit)
• Printer group includes multiple printers
• Reprint was triggered more than once

Print failed / stuck jobs

Check:

• Printer is powered on and has paper
• Reroute printer is configured as backup
• Retry settings — job may succeed on reroute
• Pending jobs may be resent automatically after a few minutes

Cash Out receipt did not print

Check:

• Print server enabled and a default printer exists on the approving device
• Cash Out reached approved status (printing triggers on approve)
• See Cash-Outs.md troubleshooting

Closeout report shows wrong date

Reports use the restaurant reporting time shift. Printing "today" just after midnight may use the previous business day — this is intentional for venues whose day ends after midnight.

Card slips missing tips line

Some revenue centers disable print tips line on card receipts. Check revenue center settings.

Setup checklist (for managers / implementers)

• Printers added in back office with correct IP and line width
• Reroute backup printer configured for critical stations
• Restaurant default printer or printer group set
• Each POS iPad has a default printer (or inherits restaurant default)
• One device designated as print server and kept logged in during service
• Print server enabled matches your deployment model
• Menu items routed to correct kitchen/label printers per revenue center
• KDS print incoming aligned with whether kitchen wants paper or screen only
• Payment methods configured for print on close / open drawer as needed
• Header/footer lines set for guest receipts
• Test fire, void, guest reprint, payment, and cash out print during pre-shift

End-of-shift checklist (printing)

• No large backlog of failed print jobs
• Restaurant closeout report printed for the business date (if required)
• All staff cash out receipts printed and filed
• Kitchen printers have paper for next shift

Glossary

This guide reflects product behavior in the Katalyst POS platform. Exact menu labels, permission names, and admin paths in your deployment may vary slightly. Contact your account team for location-specific printer models and network setup.