Plain definitions of the restaurant, POS, payment and tax terms operators use day to day — with the Southeast Asian specifics generic glossaries leave out, like DuitNow QR, consolidated e-invoices, and why Malaysian F&B service tax is 6% rather than 8%.
To 86 an item is to take it off the menu mid-service because it has run out or can no longer be served. The term is kitchen shorthand, called out so front of house stops selling it immediately.
Back of house is the kitchen and everything supporting it — prep areas, stores, wash-up, and the chefs, cooks and porters who work there. It covers everyone the guest does not normally see.
A comp is an item given to a guest at no charge — usually to recover a service issue, or as hospitality for a regular. Unlike a void, a comp records that the item was made and consumed, just not paid for.
A cover is one guest served. Restaurants count covers rather than bills because a table of four is four covers on one bill — and staffing, prep and revenue all scale with guests, not with tables.
Front of house is everything the guest sees and everyone who serves them — the dining room, bar, counter, hosts, servers and cashiers. Contrasted with back of house, which is the kitchen and everything behind it.
A KOT is the instruction sent to the kitchen when an order is placed — historically a printed docket, now usually a ticket on a kitchen display. It carries the items, modifiers and course order the kitchen needs to cook.
Mise en place is everything prepared before service starts — sauces made, proteins portioned, garnishes cut, stations stocked. Literally 'everything in its place'. It is what makes service speed possible.
A par level is the minimum quantity of an item you want on hand before reordering. It should cover the lead time from your supplier plus a buffer for a busier-than-usual period.
A service charge is a percentage added to a bill by the venue, commonly 10%. It is a pricing decision, not a tax, and it is usually applied to the subtotal before tax is calculated.
Table turnover is how many times a table is used during a service. It is calculated by dividing the length of service by the average time a table is occupied, including the reset between guests.
A tip pool combines tips from a shift and divides them among staff, usually by hours worked or by weighted role points. A percentage is often tipped out to the kitchen before the front-of-house split.
A void is the cancellation of an item or an order after it has been rung into the POS. Voids are tracked because a pattern of them — by person, by shift, by item — can indicate a training issue or a control problem.
A cloud POS runs in a browser or app with data stored on remote servers, so it can be reached from anywhere and updates without installation. Its trade-off is that it needs an internet connection to work.
A kitchen display system replaces printed dockets with a screen showing live orders. Items move through states — new, preparing, complete — so the kitchen and the counter share one view of what is ready.
A modifier is a structured option attached to a menu item — size, milk, doneness, extra shot, no onions. Structured modifiers can be reported on; free-text notes cannot.
A multi-tenant system serves several separate businesses from one deployment, keeping each one's data isolated from the others. It is what makes a white-label POS platform possible.
An offline-first POS stores data locally and keeps working without an internet connection, syncing when the connection returns. Billing continues through an outage rather than stopping.
A point of sale system is the software and hardware used to take orders, calculate bills, record payments and report on sales. In hospitality it usually also connects the kitchen, tables, stock and staff.
QR ordering lets guests scan a code at the table to browse the menu and place an order themselves. The order joins the same kitchen queue as one entered by staff.
Cash reconciliation is counting the drawer at close, subtracting the opening float, and comparing the result against what the POS says was taken in cash. The difference is recorded as over or short.
DuitNow QR is Malaysia's interoperable QR payment standard, operated by PayNet. One code accepts any Malaysian bank app or e-wallet, so a merchant does not need a separate QR per wallet.
An e-wallet is a stored-value app used to pay without a card — Touch 'n Go, GrabPay, Boost and ShopeePay in Malaysia, TrueMoney and Rabbit LINE Pay in Thailand. Most now settle through the national QR standard.
Payment mix is the breakdown of takings by method — cash, card, QR, e-wallet — over a period. It is what cash reconciliation runs against and what tells you how much cash you actually still handle.
PromptPay is Thailand's national QR transfer scheme, linking payments to a registered phone number or national ID. It is the default cashless method for most independent Thai venues.
Average spend per cover is total revenue divided by the number of guests over the same period. It is more stable than average bill value, because bill value moves with party size while spend per head does not.
The break-even point is the revenue at which total costs are covered and profit is zero. It is calculated by dividing fixed costs by the contribution margin ratio.
COGS is the direct cost of what you sold — ingredients, drinks, packaging — over a period. It is calculated as opening stock plus purchases minus closing stock, and it drives food cost percentage.
A consolidated e-invoice aggregates many transactions into a single submission rather than issuing one per sale. It is the practical route for high-volume F&B and retail, where buyers rarely provide tax details.
Contribution margin is selling price minus item cost — the cash each sale contributes toward rent, labour and profit. Menu engineering uses it in currency rather than as a percentage.
An e-invoice is an invoice issued and validated electronically through a tax authority's system. In Malaysia, LHDN's MyInvois mandate rolls out in phases by annual turnover, with businesses under RM1 million fully exempt.
Food cost percentage is the cost of ingredients as a share of the revenue they generated. Calculated as cost of goods sold divided by food revenue, multiplied by 100.
Food waste is stock that was paid for but produced no revenue — spoiled, over-produced, mis-prepared, returned or broken. It never appears on an invoice, which is why it goes unmeasured.
Gross turnover is total sales before deductions. Mall leases commonly require tenants to declare it, and percentage-rent arrangements make that declaration a contractual obligation rather than an internal exercise.
Labour cost percentage is total labour cost divided by revenue for the same period, multiplied by 100. A true figure includes employer on-costs, not just gross wages.
Menu engineering classifies each dish by profitability and popularity into four groups — Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs — and prescribes an action for each: protect, re-price, promote or remove.
Pour cost is the cost of the liquor in a drink as a share of its selling price. It is the bar equivalent of food cost percentage, and it is calculated per serve rather than per bottle.
Prime cost is food cost plus labour cost, expressed as a percentage of revenue. It is the most watched number in restaurant operations, because together those two lines are where most of the money goes.
RevPASH is revenue divided by seats multiplied by hours of service. It captures both how full you were and how much each guest spent, in one number.
SST is Malaysia's Sales and Service Tax. For food and beverage preparation the service tax rate is 6% — F&B falls under Group B, which was explicitly excluded when the general service tax rose to 8% in March 2024.
VAT is a consumption tax charged on goods and services. Thailand's rate is 7%, legislated to remain at that level until 30 September 2026. On a Thai tax invoice it must appear as a separate line, not folded into the total.
Withholding tax is an amount a payer deducts from a supplier payment and remits to the tax authority. In Thailand common rates are 5% on rent, 3% on services and professional fees, 2% on advertising and 1% on transport.
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