The second round makes it onto the bill.

How a table actually goes

A couple sit down at seven. Two jollofs, a Coke, a sobolo. Half an hour later a friend joins and orders fufu. Then another round of drinks. At nine somebody asks for the bill, and whoever’s serving has to put it together from an order pad, the kitchen’s memory and their own.

That’s where a restaurant loses money without anybody stealing anything. The second round that was never written down. The fufu the kitchen made and nobody charged for. The bill added up on a phone calculator with one line missed. Nobody notices until the takings don’t match what went out of the kitchen, and by then nobody remembers which table it was.

A tab for every table

When a table orders, tap what they’re having and Set this aside. The sale waits in your tabs under the name you give it: Table 4, the couple by the window, the office lunch. Open tabs show as cards you can read from across the room, with the first three lines on each and “+2 more” for the rest.

When they order again, tap their card, add the round and set it aside again. Every sale gets an order number, counted per day, so the kitchen and the floor can talk about number 23 instead of “the jollof for the man in the blue shirt”.

The kitchen gets it straight away

Turn on the kitchen board and a tablet in the kitchen becomes the kitchen screen. You tick the categories the kitchen makes, so a plate of banku goes to the cook and a bottle of Coke doesn’t. The moment a round leaves the till, paid or set aside, it arrives as a ticket: the order number, the tab’s name, every line with how it’s sold and any note, like “no pepper” or “extra shito”. A second round comes as its own ticket, marked 2nd round.

The board shows how many tickets are waiting and how long the oldest has been there. The cook taps Done when a ticket’s out. If a dish comes off the bill after it was sent, the ticket shows it crossed out, so nobody cooks it for nothing.

The kitchen board is on every plan, and a tablet used as the kitchen screen doesn’t count as one of your tills.

When they ask for the bill

Tap their card and the bill is there with every round on it, at the prices they were rung at. They pay how they like: cash with the change worked out, MoMo as a prompt on their phone that only closes the sale when the money arrives, or the card machine you already have. The receipt is a picture you send to their WhatsApp.

On Pro, every waiter signs in with their own PIN. The sale shows who opened the tab, who added each round and who took the money, so a question about table 4 has an answer. Staff and PINs explains how.

VAT and the Tourism Levy

A restaurant registered for VAT charges VAT, NHIL and GETFund, 20% in all. One licensed by the Ghana Tourism Authority also collects the 1% Tourism Levy from its customers. In Tabworthy these are settings you pick, never a rate you type, and your prices can either include the tax or have it added on. The receipt shows each tax on its own line, and your Tourism Levy registration number when the sale carries the levy.

This isn’t tax advice. Check which rules apply to you with GRA or your accountant. VAT and the Tourism Levy works through the sums.

What the night made

When the last table’s gone, the report has the night: what came in, how many sales, cash against MoMo, what’s still open on tabs, the dishes that sold most, and any voids or refunds said out loud. On Pro it also shows what each person took, and closing up counts the drawer against what it should hold.

What it doesn’t do yet

It doesn’t draw your floor plan or put orders against numbered tables; you name the tab instead. It doesn’t split one bill between friends, add a service charge, or take something off a bill as a discount. It doesn’t print to a kitchen or receipt printer. It doesn’t take bookings, or orders from a website or a QR code. And it isn’t a GRA certified invoicing system, so it doesn’t issue E-VAT invoices.