Click and collect

Back Office → Operations → Click and collect lets customers order online and fetch it from the counter. It is off until you switch it on, and nothing about your shop changes until you do.

34.1 Setting it up

Per branch, you choose:

• Slot length and how many orders each slot can take. This is what stops forty people being promised the same fifteen minutes.
• How much notice you need. Someone ordering at 16:59 for 17:00 gives you no time to pick it, so orders are only offered slots that far ahead.
• Collection hours — independent of trading hours, so a kitchen can take collections over lunch only.
• How long an unpaid order holds stock. Keep this short; a held order is stock nobody can sell.
• Whether they may pay on collection. Off by default: an order already paid for cannot be abandoned, which is the main risk this feature carries.

34.2 What the customer sees

Only what they can actually buy. The online catalogue shows what's available — on-hand less anything other orders are already holding — so the last one is never promised twice. When it's gone the item disappears from the list rather than sitting there unbuyable.

Full collection slots aren't offered at all. A customer double-tapping Order gets one order, not two.

34.3 What ordering does to your stock

It holds the stock; it does not sell it. The goods are still on your shelf, so your on-hand figure stays true and a stocktake still balances. What changes is what's available to the next online customer.

An unpaid order gives the stock back when its hold runs out. This matters more than it sounds: without it, abandoned baskets would hold stock forever — your shelf would look full while nothing could be sold, and nothing anywhere would flag it.

A paid order never expires. You're holding the customer's money; the order stays.

34.4 A walk-in taking reserved stock

Your till will still sell the last one to someone standing in front of you. That's deliberate — refusing a paying customer for an order that might be an abandoned basket is the wrong trade.

When it happens, the collect order is flagged "Short of stock — ring the customer" so somebody deals with it. They may well accept what's there, and you can still hand it over.

34.5 Picking and handing over

Operations lists orders in slot order, described by what you need to do — pick it now, ready, customer not told yet, short of stock. Marking an order ready and telling the customer are separate steps, because those genuinely come apart.

Collect & pay hands it over: the hold is released, stock comes off properly, and the sale closes exactly like a walk-in — same costing, same books, same receipt. If they've already paid online, nothing more is taken.

Cancelling gives the stock back and tells you how much to refund. It never quietly keeps the money.