Getting Started - Dashboard
The Dashboard is the website where you set up everything before your iPads go live — your menu, your floor plan, your team, and so on. This guide walks you through it from start to finish.
You’ll spend most of your time on the Onboarding page when you first sign in. It’s a checklist that walks you through every step in order. You can come back to it any time from the sidebar.
How the onboarding checklist works
When you sign in for the first time, you land on a page called Onboarding. It shows three sections, with a progress bar at the top (e.g. “3 of 9 steps completed”).
The three sections are:
- Create your account — Add a company, then add your first restaurant location
- Set up payments — Connect your bank so you can take card payments
- Set up your business — Build your menu, draw your floor plan, install Zavo on your iPads, invite your team, and set up your kitchen
Click any step to expand it. Most steps are filled in directly on the onboarding page; some take you to a different page.
You need to add your company before you can add a location, and you need a location before any of the other steps will activate. After that, you can do payments, menu, floor plan, devices, team, and kitchen in any order.
Step 1: Add a company
A company is the name of your business. If you run one restaurant or a small group, you’ll usually only have one company. You’ll add the individual restaurant locations underneath it in the next step.
This step is filled in right on the onboarding page — no other page to visit.
Open the “Add a company” step
On your first sign-in, this step is already open. Otherwise, click the row to expand it.
Type your company name
There’s one box, Company name. The hint text shows “e.g., My Restaurant Group”. Use whatever name you want — it’s just for your records.
Click Create company
The button briefly says “Creating…” while it saves. When it’s done, the step ticks green and the next one — Add a location — opens automatically with this company already selected.
If you have a couple of separate restaurant brands or businesses you can add more companies later. When you do, the location form will show an extra Account picker so you can choose which company a new location belongs to.
Step 2: Add a location
A location is one of your restaurants — one physical site. Each location has its own menu, floor plan, iPads, staff, and reports. If you only have one restaurant, you’ll only ever fill this in once.
Also done right on the onboarding page.
Open the “Add a location” step
Locked until you’ve finished Step 1.
(If you have more than one company) Pick the Account
The Account dropdown is already filled in with the company you just created. Only change it if this restaurant belongs to a different company.
Type the Location name
Required. Hint text: “e.g., Downtown, Main Street”. Use the trading name of this restaurant, or whatever short name you’ll recognise it by.
Type the Address
Required. Hint text: “e.g., 123 High Street, London”. Just type the address as you’d write it on a card.
(Optional) Tick “Test location”
A checkbox underneath the address. The text reads “Train staff and experiment without affecting live data or reports.” Tick this if you want a practice restaurant — orders rung up here won’t appear in your real reports. Most people leave this unticked.
Click Add location
Button reads “Adding…” while it saves. The location is added to your account and the next step (Set up payments) opens automatically.
You’ll add staff (and get their PINs) later in Step 7 — Invite your team, on the POS Staff tab. The location form on this step doesn’t create any PINs.
Step 3: Set up payments
This connects Zavo to your bank, so you can accept cards. Zavo uses a payments provider called Adyen in the background — they handle the card transactions and pay you out.
Currently UK only — the Country dropdown only shows United Kingdom for now.
The setup is a short 3-screen wizard inside the onboarding card. After that, there’s a separate Adyen page where you confirm your details and add your bank account.
3a. Pick your business type
Two big buttons:
- Sole trader — for individual operators or self-employed
- Company — for limited companies and partnerships
Click the one that matches your business — it’ll highlight in blue with a tick. Then click Next.
3b. Tell us about your business
The next screen depends on what you picked:
- Sole trader → enter your First name and Last name
- Company → enter your Registered business name (the name that’s on Companies House — hint text shows “e.g. Your Company Ltd”)
Then for both:
- Country — only United Kingdom is available right now
- Industry — pick Full-service restaurants (sit-down) or Quick-service restaurants (counter / fast food)
Click Next to continue, or Back to change your business type.
3c. Address, phone, and what shows on bank statements
The longest screen. Most fields fill themselves in once you start typing your address.
Address line 1 — start typing for suggestions
Type the first few characters of your restaurant’s address. After 3 characters, a list of suggestions drops down. Click yours to fill in the rest of the address automatically.
Address line 2 (optional)
Use this for a suite, unit, or floor number if you need it.
Postal code and Town or city
The postcode types in capitals automatically. After you stop typing, you’ll see one of:
- “Validating postal code…” — checking
- Green border with “Postal code is valid.” — good to go
- Red border with “Please enter a valid postal code.” — try again
Phone number
The country code is fixed to +44 UK. Type your number as 10 digits without the leading 0 — e.g. type 7700900000, not 07700900000. If you do it wrong, you’ll see “Enter 10 digits without leading 0.”
Statement descriptor
This is the short name that shows up on your customers’ bank statements when they pay you. There’s a counter on the right showing how many characters you’ve used out of 22 maximum. Most people use their trading name (e.g. Pizza Place).
Click Save & continue
The form sends to Adyen. The button label changes to Create onboarding link — that’s the next step.
3d. Finish on Adyen’s website
Click Create onboarding link. A new browser tab opens to Adyen’s onboarding page. There you’ll:
- Confirm your identity (you’ll need to upload your passport or ID)
- Add the bank account where Zavo should pay you out
- Sign Adyen’s merchant agreement
The onboarding card now shows your Adyen account ID and a status (e.g. pending). Once Adyen has checked everything, the card flips to Payments ready and the step is ticked off.
Submitting the form is the easy part. Adyen has to manually check your details, which can take a couple of days. Start this step early so it isn’t blocking your opening day. While you wait, you can crack on with menu, floor plan, devices, team, and kitchen — they don’t depend on payments being ready.
You can go Back to the start of the wizard to change between Sole trader and Company. Once you’ve clicked Save & continue on the address screen, the choice is locked in.
Step 4: Build your menu
Click Create items on the onboarding card. This takes you to the Menus page — this is where you set up everything you sell.
The page has four tabs along the top:
- Menu Builder — where you add menus, categories, and items (start here)
- Modifiers — where you set up choices like cooking temperature, sides, or extras
- POS Editor — where you arrange how items appear on the iPad’s button grid
- Online Menu — settings for your public menu page (if you accept online bookings)
For first-time setup, you’ll spend most of your time on Menu Builder.
4a. Create a menu
A menu is the top-level container — usually one per service style. For example, À la carte, Brunch, Drinks. Most restaurants start with just one.
Click + Create Menu
A window opens titled Create Menu with two boxes:
- Menu name — required. e.g. “Lunch Menu”, “À la carte”
- Description — optional. A short note for yourself.
Click Create
The new menu becomes the active one, ready for categories.
If you have several locations using the same menu, you can edit any menu and use the Visible locations picker to switch it on for multiple restaurants at once. Edits then apply to all of them. To get a starting copy that you can change independently, use Import menu from [Location] instead.
4b. Add categories
A category groups items together — Starters, Mains, Desserts, Wine, and so on.
Click + Add Category
Window: Create Category.
- Category name — required. e.g. “Appetizers”
- Default prep station — optional. If set, every item you add to this category will go to this station in the kitchen by default. You’ll set up prep stations in Step 8. You can leave this blank for now and come back to it.
Click Create
The category appears on the menu, ready for items.
4c. Add items
This window has the most fields of anything in the dashboard. Click + Add Item inside a category.
Here’s what each section does, in plain English:
| Section | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Basic | The item’s name, price, and an optional description |
| Appearance | A colour for the item’s button on the iPad — pick from a palette of 21 colours |
| Availability | Which menu this item belongs to, and which locations it shows on (if you have several restaurants) |
| Allergens | Tick any of 14 allergens that apply (Cereals/Gluten, Crustaceans, Eggs, Fish, Peanuts, Soybeans, Milk, Nuts, Celery, Mustard, Sesame, Sulphites, Lupin, Molluscs). There’s a Suggest allergens with AI button that reads the item name and description and pre-ticks the likely ones for you to review. |
| Kitchen | The prep station that prepares this item, an optional kitchen label (a short note that prints on the kitchen ticket — e.g. “No onions”), and the VAT rate (Standard 20%, Reduced 5%, or Zero 0%) |
| Image | Upload a square photo. Shown on the iPad’s button grid. |
| Modifiers | Attach modifier groups (cooking temperature, sides, extras) so staff can customise the item at order time. You build modifier groups on the Modifiers tab and reuse them across many items. |
Click Save item when you’re done.
Set up your modifier groups once on the Modifiers tab — for example, Cooking temperature: Rare / Medium / Well done — and attach the same group to every steak on the menu. If you change the group later, every item using it updates.
4d. Shortcut: let AI build the menu for you
If you already have a menu (a photo, a PDF, or pasted text), click Analyze Menu at the top of the page. Upload your menu and the AI will read it and propose categories, items, and prices for you. Review the suggestions, then click to import.
4e. Shortcut: copy from another restaurant
If another one of your locations already has menus, the page shows “Import menu from [Location]”. Pick which menus to copy. The copy is independent — editing it doesn’t affect the original.
4f. Day-to-day actions
- Edit — click any row
- Duplicate — right-click an item
- Move items between categories — drag and drop, then click Save
- Mark as 86 (out of stock) — toggle the icon on the item row
- Delete a category that has items — a window asks whether to move the items into another category, or delete them with the category
An item without a prep station won’t appear on any kitchen ticket or KDS screen. The easiest fix is to set a Default prep station on the category — every item you add to it will inherit that station. You can also set or change the station on individual items. You’ll set up the stations themselves in Step 8.
Step 5: Design your floor plan
Click Set up floor plan on the onboarding card. This takes you to the Floor Plan page — “Design your restaurant layout by adding and arranging tables”.
This is a drag-and-drop editor where you place tables on a canvas, organised by rooms (also called areas). Whatever you build here is exactly what your servers see on the iPad.
5a. Add a room
Click Add Room
A window opens titled Add New Room with the help text: “Create a new room to your restaurant (e.g., Main dining, Patio, Bar, Chambre Séparée, etc.)”
Type a name in the Room name box.
Click Add Room to confirm
The new room appears at the top as a tab. Click the tab any time to switch rooms.
5b. Place tables
Click Edit room on the room you want to work on. The room tabs are replaced by an edit toolbar:
The toolbar gives you three sections:
- Type — pick Square, Rectangular, or Round
- Seating — for round tables, choose 2 Seats, 3 Seats, or 4 Seats
- Label — pick a letter (default
T) and a starting number (default1)
Click anywhere on the canvas to drop a table. It lines up neatly on a hidden grid and gets labelled T1, T2, T3, and so on. The number ticks up automatically each time you place another.
5c. Edit a table
Click a table to select it. You’ll see handles around it:
- Drag the table to move it
- Drag a corner to resize it
- Use the rotation handle (the little circle above the table) to spin it 90° at a time
You can also right-click to get a menu with Edit, Duplicate, Rotate, and Delete. The Edit window lets you change the letter, number, size, shape, and which sides have seats (for square or rectangular tables).
5d. Manage rooms
- Rename a room — pencil icon next to the room tab
- Delete a room — trash icon. A confirmation window asks you to type the room name to confirm. Every table in the room is deleted with it, so be sure first.
- Zoom in and out — scroll wheel or +/- buttons
- Pan around — click and drag empty canvas
Each room remembers its own zoom and position so when you switch tabs, things stay where you left them.
Lay out the tables roughly the way they sit in the restaurant. It makes life much easier for servers — they recognise tables faster on the iPad if the on-screen layout looks like the real room.
You’re done with this step as soon as you have at least one room with at least one table.
Step 6: Set up devices
Click Go to Devices on the onboarding card. This takes you to the Devices page — “Manage your kiosks, kitchen displays, and handheld devices”.
This is where you set up every iPad (and later, iPhone) that runs Zavo. The full pairing flow — what to do on the iPad itself — is in Getting Started - iPad POS app. This step is just the Dashboard side.
6a. Add a device
Click Add Device
Top-right of the page. A window opens titled Add Device with the description “Register a new kiosk, kitchen display, or handheld device”.
Pick the Device Type
Three buttons:
- Kiosk — POS Terminal — an iPad that takes orders and payments
- KDS — Kitchen Display — an iPad mounted in the kitchen showing tickets
- Handheld — iPhone Waiter — an iPhone for taking orders tableside
Greyed-out buttons mean you’ve used all your seats for that type.
Type a Device Name
A short label so you can tell devices apart later. Hints change with the type — e.g. “Front Counter POS”, “Kitchen Display 1”, “Waiter Device 1”.
Pick the Location
Which restaurant this device belongs to. If you only have one location, it’s already filled in.
Click Generate Code
A second window opens titled Device Registered, with the message “Use this code to connect your device”. A 6-digit activation code (e.g. 427-893) is shown in big numbers — see below.
After clicking Generate Code, this window appears with the activation code:
The window also shows a short “How to connect” checklist:
- Download and open the Zavo app on your device
- Enter the 6-digit code shown above
- The device will connect automatically
Click the small copy icon next to the code to copy it, then enter it on the iPad. Click Done to close the window when you’re finished.
6b. The device list
Once you’ve added a device, it shows up in the All Devices table:
The columns are:
- Device — the icon and name you chose
- Type — Kiosk (POS), Kitchen Display, or Handheld (iPhone)
- Registration Code — the activation code, in case you need to copy it again
- Location — which restaurant
- Status — Pending (grey dot, waiting for the iPad to claim the code), Active (green dot, paired and online), or Revoked (red dot, deactivated)
Hover over a row and click the ⋯ menu to:
- Rename Device — change the name
- Reassign Location — move it to a different restaurant
- Operation Mode — only for kiosks. Tick which modes the iPad should run: any combination of Full service, Quick service, and Reception. KDS and Handheld are locked to one mode each.
- Regenerate code — replaces the old code with a fresh one (in case you lose it or it expires)
- Revoke — signs the device out and stops it connecting. You can reactivate it later.
- Delete — permanently removes it. Can’t be undone.
Once an iPad uses its code, the code is used up. If you ever need to reconnect the same device — for example after wiping the iPad — use Regenerate code to get a new one.
For the iPad side of pairing (what shows on screen, signing in with your manager PIN, opening the register), see Getting Started - iPad POS app.
Step 7: Invite your team
Click Invite team on the onboarding card. This takes you to the Users page.
There are two tabs at the top:
- Dashboard Users — people who sign into the website (managers, you, accountants…)
- POS Staff — people who sign into the iPad with a 4-digit PIN (servers, kitchen, shift managers)
These are two separate lists. Dashboard users have email accounts; POS staff just have a PIN. Most kitchen and floor staff only need a POS Staff record.
7a. Invite a Dashboard User
Click + Invite (top-right of the Dashboard Users tab)
A window opens titled Invite Team Member.
Type the email address
The person you’re inviting will get an email with a link to join.
Pick a Role
Two built-in roles:
- Admin — can do everything, including managing the team and billing
- Manager — can view and edit day-to-day data, but can’t manage the team or billing
If you’ve set up custom roles for your business (under Config → Dashboard permissions), they’ll appear in a separate Custom role dropdown.
Pick the access scope
Choose how much of your business this person can see:
- Organization — every restaurant, across every company
- Account — every restaurant in one company (you’ll pick which one next)
- Location — just one restaurant. There’s also an All locations toggle if you want to pick several specific ones.
Click Send Invitation
The person appears in the table marked Pending. Once they click the email link and finish setting up their account, they switch to Active.
Other things you can do on a Dashboard User row:
- Edit permissions — change role or access scope
- Manage location access — switch which restaurants they can see
- Resend — resend the email link if they haven’t signed up yet
- Remove — take them out of the team
7b. Add POS Staff
Switch to the POS Staff tab. These are the people who sign into the iPads.
Click Add Staff
Window: Add Staff Member.
Type the staff name
e.g. “John Smith”. This is what appears on receipts and kitchen tickets when this person rings up an order.
Pick a Role
Four options, each with a short description:
- Server — Front of house
- Runner — Food runner
- Kitchen — Kitchen staff
- Manager — Shift manager
The role decides what the person can do on the iPad — for example, only managers can apply discounts or close the register by default.
Pick the Location
Which restaurant they work at.
Copy the generated PIN — only shown once
A 4-digit PIN is generated and shown in a window. Copy it and give it to the staff member — they’ll type it on the iPad to sign in. If you lose it, you can reset it later.
Other things you can do on a POS Staff row:
- Reset PIN — generates a new PIN. The old one stops working immediately.
- Edit — change the name or role
- View activity — see when they last signed in and what they did
- Deactivate — turns off their PIN without deleting the record (handy when someone leaves temporarily)
- Delete — permanently remove
Dashboard users can’t sign into the iPad, and POS staff can’t sign into the website. This keeps things tidy — your servers don’t need (or want) email logins to see your billing, and your accountant doesn’t need a PIN to take orders.
Step 8: Kitchen and bar prep
Click Manage prep stations on the onboarding card. This takes you to the Prep Stations page.
A prep station is an area in the kitchen or behind the bar that prepares food or drinks. You set them up here, then go back to your menu and tell each item which station prepares it. When an order comes in, Zavo automatically sends each item’s ticket to the right station — printed on a ticket printer, shown on a KDS screen, or both.
8a. Add a station
Click + Create Prep Station
Window: Add Prep Station.
Type a Station Name
Required. Hint text shows “e.g., Hot Kitchen, Cold Station, Bar”. Name it however your team refers to it.
Pick an Icon
Nine options to make stations easy to spot at a glance:
- Chef Hat — general kitchen
- Grill/Hot — flame icon for hot items
- Beverages — coffee cup
- Desserts — ice cream
- Pizza
- Salads
- Soups
- Sandwiches
- General — utensils
(Optional) Add a Note
A short description — e.g. “Handles all grilled items and fried foods”. Useful for the next person who edits this.
Pick Assign To
Two big buttons:
- All Locations — every restaurant in the company uses this station (useful for a chain with the same kitchen setup everywhere)
- Specific Locations — only the restaurants you tick will see this station
If you pick Specific Locations, a checklist of your restaurants appears below.
(Optional) Assign printers
A list of printers configured at the location, with checkboxes. Tick the printer(s) where this station’s tickets should print. You can pick more than one — every printer you tick gets a copy of the ticket.
You set up the printers themselves over in Connecting Hardware — come back to this page once your printers are connected.
Click Create Station
The station appears in the table on the prep stations page, ready to be used.
8b. Send items to the right station
Once your stations exist, go back to Menus and:
- Set a Default prep station on each category — every item in that category will use it. This is the easiest way to set things up in bulk.
- Or, change the Prep station on each individual item if some items in a category go elsewhere.
8c. How tickets actually flow
When a server fires off an order from the iPad:
- Zavo splits the order by prep station — items going to Hot Kitchen go on one ticket, items going to Cold Station on another, and so on
- Each station that owns at least one item gets its own ticket
- The ticket prints on every printer linked to that station, and appears on any KDS screen running that station
- The ticket shows the order number, items, modifiers, allergen warnings, and any kitchen labels
Example: a burger and a salad in one order will print two tickets — one in the hot kitchen, one at the cold station.
A KDS iPad (set up in Getting Started - iPad POS app with mode KDS) replaces paper tickets entirely. It’s cleaner, faster, and you’ll never run out of receipt rolls. You can also mix the two — paper at the bar, KDS in the kitchen, for example.
You’re done
Once all the steps are ticked, the Dashboard side is fully set up. Next:
- Pair your iPads — see Getting Started - iPad POS app
- Connect your printers and card terminals — see Connecting Hardware
Where to find each thing later
The onboarding checklist is a one-time guide. After you finish, manage everything from the sidebar on the left:
- Menus — menus, categories, items, modifiers, allergens
- Devices — register, rename, reassign, revoke iPads and iPhones
- Users — invite Dashboard users, manage POS staff PINs
- Config → Floor Plan — re-arrange your tables and rooms
- Config → Prep Stations — kitchen routing and printer assignments
- Config → Terminals — printer and card-reader setup
- Reports — sales, payments, end-of-day reports