The usual way
A copy per module
The sales report says one thing, the payout says another, and nobody can point at the order where they parted company. The cause is almost never explained to the restaurant.
Product
Seven surfaces, one truth
DineStack is not a suite of products that integrate. It is one event log with seven views onto it. Nothing stores a total — every figure on every screen is folded from the same events, every time it is asked for.
Evidence
Three of them, on the build they were certified on
The register, the pass and the same register with the network pulled. Same log, same money code, same order underneath all three.
The architecture
Why that matters more than it sounds
Most restaurant software keeps its own copy of the numbers in each module and reconciles them later. It works until the night it does not.
This way
One record, projected
An append-only log on a tamper-evident chain, and every screen a projection over it. When two figures disagree, one of them is a bug in a projection and we can find it.
Corrections are new events. A manager fixing a forgotten clock-out leaves the original punch exactly where it was, with their name and their reason beside it. Nothing is edited and nothing is deleted — which is what makes the history worth reading three weeks later.
Surfaces
What each one does
Every surface reads the same events. What separates them is which ones they care about and what they are allowed to record.
POS
- Where
- Android tablet at the counter
- Reads
- menu, staff authorisation, order state, payment routes
- Records
- orders, lines, payments, cash counts, clock events, waste and receiving
Kitchen
- Where
- Tablet on the pass, or the same tablet in KDS mode
- Reads
- fired tickets and their items
- Records
- item ready, ticket complete
Admin
- Where
- Owner dashboard in a browser
- Reads
- everything the location has recorded
- Records
- menu, recipes, tax, rota, corrections, dispatch decisions
Money
- Where
- Settlement, reconciliation, disputes
- Reads
- payments, refunds, processor settlement, bank deposits
- Records
- external confirmations, corrections, dispute responses
Workforce
- Where
- Time, rota, overtime, tips, labour
- Reads
- clock events, schedule, labour policy, pay rates
- Records
- schedules, time corrections, tip pools
Driver
- Where
- Android app on your driver’s own phone
- Reads
- their own assignments and what is owed on each
- Records
- accept, pick up, arrive, collect, complete
Reports
- Where
- Sales, labour, attendance, overtime, tips, delivery
- Reads
- the same events every other surface reads
- Records
- nothing at all
Consequences
Two things that follow from it
Offline is not a degraded mode
A tablet holds its own copy of the log. It can authenticate staff, price an order and record a cash payment with no connection at all, because the same code that runs on the server runs on the device. Reconnecting replays what happened, deduplicated by a key the tablet generated before it tried.
The price on a receipt never changes
An order line carries the price and the tax rate it was rung up under. Change your menu tomorrow, or your tax rate next month, and last week’s orders still add up to exactly what the guest paid.