06 · Kiosk (a tablet on the counter)

A kiosk is a spare tablet, left out where your team or your customers can reach it, running one screen and nothing else. It is not the back office. Nobody signs in on it, nobody can browse to your finances from it, and it can only ever see the one business it was paired to.

You set one up once, in a minute, and then leave it alone.

There are two kinds, and you choose which when you pair the tablet:

You can run both at once on two tablets. Pair each one separately.

Everything on this page is at Settings → Kiosk. Settings is under your business name, top-left.

There is a second thing called a kiosk, and it is not this one. On the Check-in page there is a Kiosk button that puts your own signed-in browser into a full-screen register for one class or session, for a staff member standing at the door with a laptop. It ends when you select Exit kiosk. This page is about a dedicated tablet you leave out, with nobody signed in on it, covering everything happening today. If you are pairing a tablet, you want this page. See Bookings for the other one.

1. Setting up a tablet

Have the tablet in your hand for this. It takes about a minute.

1. On your computer, open Settings → Kiosk.
2. Under Pair a device, choose Staff kiosk or Visitor check-in.
3. Give it a Device name if you like, Front door iPad, Back office iPad. You will thank yourself later when there are three of them in the list. It is optional, and unnamed tablets show as Kiosk tablet.
4. Select Generate code.
5. Point the tablet's camera at the square on your screen. Open the camera app, hold it up, tap the link it offers. That is the whole job: the tablet opens your kiosk and pairs itself, with nothing to type.

The code beside the square works once and expires after 15 minutes. If you walk away and come back to a stale one, just select Generate code again.

No camera, or a camera that will not read it? Type it instead. The address is printed under the square, with a Copy link button if it is easier to send it to the tablet in a message. Open that address on the tablet and enter the six characters.

Make it full screen

Once it is paired, add it to the tablet's home screen and it opens like an app, with no address bar: Share then Add to Home Screen on an iPad, or the browser menu then Install app on Android. The icon and name are your business's, not ours.

It stays paired

A paired tablet stays paired for a year, and through being switched off, restarted and put in a drawer. You never have to do this again unless you unpair it or clear the tablet's browser data.

2. The list of paired tablets

Paired tablets shows every one, its kind (Staff or Visitor), and when it was last used, so a tablet somebody has quietly stopped using is visible.

Unpair ends it. The tablet drops back to the pairing screen the next time anybody touches it, and the old code cannot bring it back. Use it when a tablet is lost, sold, or leaves the building.

A lost tablet is the reason to check this list. Unpairing it is immediate and it is the only thing you need to do: there is no account on the tablet to disable, and nothing on it that survives being unpaired.

3. What shows on a staff kiosk

What shows on the kiosk lists every tile available to you. Tick the ones you want, move them up and down with the arrows into the order that suits the room, and rename any of them if your team calls it something else. The name you type is what appears on the tablet.

Only tools you have switched on appear in the list. Turn on the Roster module and a clock tile appears here; turn on Shopping and a shopping tile appears. If the list is empty, you have no modules on yet that have anything to offer a tablet.

Breaks on the tablet

Off unless you switch it on, under Settings, then Kiosk. With it on, anyone clocked on gets a Start unpaid break button, and a Back from break button while they are away. The tablet shows who is on a break and tells them how long their break was when they come back.

A punched break is recorded as an unpaid break on their timesheet, so it comes off their paid hours. That is the point of it, and it is why the setting starts off: turning it on changes what people are paid. A paid rest break is not punched here, which is why the button says unpaid.

Two things the tablet handles for you. If somebody clocks out while still on a break, the break is closed first, so nobody is ever paid straight through one. And a break left running for hours is recorded at a sensible maximum rather than swallowing the whole shift, with a note on the timesheet so you can correct it.

Breaks are punched by tapping a name. On a tablet that identifies people by PIN, a manager adds the break to the timesheet instead.

A tablet that has not caught up never punches the wrong way. Tapping a name's Clock in when that person already clocked in on their phone, or Clock out after their shift was already closed, changes nothing and says so.

Tiles you may see, depending on what you run:

A new tile we add later appears next to its relatives, already ticked, rather than at the bottom of the list where nobody would notice it. The order here is the order on the tablet.

Safety checks on the tablet are the same list the Safety page shows, in the order your team walks the building, and they follow the same rules. A pass/fail check has Pass and Fail buttons. Fail, or a reading outside its safe range, asks what is wrong (needed) and what was done straight away, and can take a photo; logging it raises a fault on Maintenance and tells whoever manages safety. A check that needs a photo takes one with the tablet's camera. A failed check stays on the list so it can be checked again once it has been dealt with, and a weekly or longer check missed on its day stays on the list, marked overdue, until it is done. An as needed check is always there and can be done as often as it comes up. Who did it is the Logging as name, or the tablet when nobody picked one.

Tasks on the tablet shows everything due today or overdue for the whole team, whoever it belongs to, with a Logging as name like the safety checks. A task made from a customer, a booking, an invoice, a form, a document or a job stays off the tablet, because anyone standing there can read it. Those stay on the Tasks page.

Taking a booking at the tablet

Take a booking is for the walk-in nobody is going to open the back office for. It asks who is taking it first, then what they are booking, and then shows the same booking form your customers use on your website, with every package, headcount, question, extra and rule you set up there. Pick the day from the same calendar (every day you take bookings for, with a dot on the days that have a free time), pick a time, fill in their details and answers, and it is booked and confirmed on the spot. The email is optional; the phone number is not.

A dimmed day cannot be booked from the tablet, and you can tap it to see why: closed, too soon for your notice period, nothing runs that day, fully booked, or blocked out. A blocked-out day says so, and says that the back office can still book it. The tablet itself never books into time you have blocked out; that is a decision for somebody who is signed in, using New booking on the Bookings page, where the blocked times are shown dashed and can be used anyway.

Nobody agrees to your booking terms on the customer's behalf; the terms go out with their confirmation.

Taking the money. When anything is owing, the Booked in screen shows the amount and one question: how are they paying?

• Your payment methods (Cash, EFTPOS, Card, whatever you have set up) as buttons. Tap one, check the amount (it starts at what is owing, and you can take part of it), and record it. It goes on the booking's ledger with a numbered receipt, emailed if you entered their email, exactly as Take a payment does in Bookings. The record names who took it, by name tap or PIN.
• Email the deposit link, when the offering takes a deposit and you entered their email. Once they pay, their card is saved and the balance follows your usual schedule, as a website booking would. Sending it starts your deposit deadline, if you have one set, and the screen says how long they have.
• Pay later. It stays on the booking for you to follow up from Bookings.

Recording payments at the tablet is on by default when your kiosk identifies staff by personal PIN, and off when it is by name tap. Change it under Settings → Kiosk. Switched off, the tablet still books and can still email the deposit link.

4. How your team clocks in

Under How staff clock in, two choices, and the difference matters:

• Tap your name. Simplest. Everyone rostered today is a button. Anyone in the room could tap a colleague's name, though.
• Personal PIN. Each person types their own PIN, so nobody can clock a workmate in or out.

Choose Personal PIN and a list of your team appears underneath, with Set PIN beside each one. Set them before you tell people to start using the kiosk, or the first person to try it cannot clock on. PINs are stored scrambled and are never shown again, to you or to anyone. If somebody forgets theirs, set a new one.

The same choice decides who gets named on a walk-in taken at the tablet, so Personal PIN means the name on that booking is proven rather than tapped.

Clock in/out shows only staff rostered today is on by default, which keeps the list short and honest. There is a someone else option on the tablet for when a person comes in to cover unrostered, so nobody is ever stuck.

Somebody with no login can still clock on

A team member added with No login, and even one with no email address at all, clocks in and out on the kiosk with their own PIN like anyone else, and their hours reach timesheets and payroll the same way. The kiosk is often the only way those people can record a shift, so this is the setting that makes them payable.

The kiosk can be the only place someone clocks

Whether a person may clock in on their own phone or computer is a permission, not a kiosk setting: Clock in and out on their own phone or computer, at Team → Staff list → Roles & permissions. Turn it off for a role and those people must use the tablet. That is a deliberate choice some businesses want, and the kiosk is what makes it workable.

5. Shopping list, on the tablet

If you show the shopping tile, two switches decide how much a tablet in a shared room is trusted with it:

• Let staff add to the shopping list. Off makes the tile read-only.
• Let staff tick items off. Off means staff can add but only managers remove.

Both are on to begin with. Turn the second one off if you have had a list quietly emptied.

Staff can set the amount, the category and the supplier, the same three the back office uses. The category list is the one you already use, and the supplier list is your own supplier book, so a tablet can only ever pick a supplier you have actually set up. There is nothing to turn on: the pickers appear by themselves once you have suppliers or categories, and stay out of the way when you do not.

Adding something already on the list adds the amounts together on the line that is there, rather than putting it on twice, and the tablet says so.

The usual order is there as a guide. Once you have a usual order set up (Shopping list → Usual order), the tablet shows a Usual order button. It lists what you normally buy, in your own order, and marks anything already on the list or already ordered, so nobody puts a second one on. Everything else has an Add, which opens the amount already filled in with the usual, for staff to change before it goes on the list.

There is deliberately no way to add the whole order at once from the tablet. The person standing at it is checking what has actually run out, and adding the lot there would leave the list full of things somebody then has to tick back off. Dropping the full order onto the list stays a back office job. With Let staff add to the shopping list off, the guide is read only.

Only supplier names ever reach the tablet. Phone numbers, emails, account references and the rest of the supplier book stay in the back office, because a kiosk sits in a public room with no login on it.

6. Reporting a fault from the tablet

The tablet is the device standing next to the broken thing, so the Report a fault tile asks for everything the back office does: what has gone wrong, where it is, how urgent, anything else the person fixing it should know, and a photo taken there and then.

Where it is offers your own areas as buttons, the same list your safety checks use, with a box for anywhere else. Nothing is a fixed list.

Underneath the form, Already reported shows what is still outstanding and where each one is up to. That is there for two reasons: the same leaking tap does not get reported by four people in one shift, and whoever is standing at the tablet can see their report was picked up.

Reports land on Operations → Maintenance, and whoever should know is notified. The tile appears when the Safety tool is on, because that is the tool the register belongs to.

The list on the tablet shows the fault and its status only. It never shows who reported something or the detail they added, because a kiosk sits in a room customers can see.

7. The lock screen

For a staff kiosk you can put a calm, branded cover over the screen when nobody is using it.

• Lock after no activity: never, or after 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 or 30 minutes.
• Require a PIN to unlock, 4 to 8 digits. Without it, any tap unlocks.

Be clear-eyed about what this is. It is a privacy cover, not a hard lock. It hides the screen from the room; a determined person could reload the page. For a tablet that genuinely must not leave this one screen, also turn on the tablet's own single-app lockdown: Guided Access on an iPad, Screen Pinning on Android. That is the part that stops somebody wandering off into Safari.

Visitor kiosks always stay open, because a check-in screen nobody can wake up is a queue at your front door.

A kiosk looks after itself. It asks the tablet not to fall asleep while it is on screen, and it keeps itself on the current version: when we release an update it notices within a few minutes and steps onto it. Both happen only when the kiosk is idle, never while somebody is part way through clocking on. If an update does catch it mid screen, the tablet starts itself fresh rather than showing an error, so there is nothing to close and reopen. The tablet's own Auto-Lock setting still overrides the first one, so set that to Never and leave the tablet on charge.

8. The visitor kiosk

Paired as Visitor check-in, the tablet shows Welcome, check yourself in and two ways to do it: scan your QR, or find your name. Either way it congratulates them by first name and resets itself for the next person.

Show the "find my name" list decides whether the name list exists at all. Turn it off and the tablet goes straight to the camera, scan-only, and no guest names ever appear on the unattended screen. That is the right setting for a tablet left in a public doorway.

When the list is on, it shows first name and last initial only, enough to find yourself and not enough to be a guest list somebody could read off the counter.

9. Who can set this up

Setting up kiosks needs the manage settings permission, so owners and managers. Nobody using the tablet needs any permission or account at all, which is the point of it.

The tablet itself can only ever reach the one business it was paired to. It has no way into the back office, no way to another business, and everything it shows is checked against its own pairing every time, not trusted from the tablet.

Troubleshooting

Related: Roster & timesheets · Bookings · Shopping list · Safety & cleaning · Roles & permissions · Security & your data