Get started with Square KDS for Android

Square KDS displays items based on the categories you assign. To assign categories:

1. Open Square KDS and tap ≡ to open the menu.
2. Tap the gear icon to view your settings.
3. Tap Routing.
4. Tap Items & categories.
5. Toggle on the categories that you want to display.

Learn more about creating item categories.

With Square KDS, you can toggle different layouts based on your preferred text size and the amount of tickets you want displayed. To adjust your layout settings:

1. Open Square KDS and tap ≡ to open the menu.
2. Tap the gear icon to view your settings.
3. Tap Layout.
4. Select your text size.
5. Select your preferred layout.

To enable alerts and timers on your display:

1. Open Square KDS and tap ≡ to open the menu.
2. Tap the gear icon to view your settings.
3. Tap Timer & Alerts.
4. Select the timeframe for yellow and red alerts.

Set up which orders go to a prep station based on the item categories, Kitchen Categories, order source (i.e. POS and online) and Dining Options. Review our setup instructions for routing orders with Square KDS.

Connect a printer to your KDS to print order tickets for your customers for in-person, delivery and pickup orders. You can manually print or auto-print when a ticket is received or completed. Learn more about printing with Square KDS.

Both prep stations and expeditor (expo) stations can mark single items or whole tickets as complete. Marking an item or ticket complete will complete all that item or ticket at all kitchen displays at the location.

Note: If your location has a Prep and Expo device, completing an item or ticket on a Prep device will show a ‘grey dot’ next to the completed item(s) on the Expo device. Expo can then complete the ticket again as another step.

On Square KDS, tap the completed item directly on the display. If you select the wrong item, tap the item again to undo.

Note: You only have three seconds to undo item completion. After that point, you can tap the item to recall it.

Tap the top banner of the ticket you want to complete. If you tapped the wrong ticket, tap the header again to undo.
Note: You have three seconds to undo the ticket completion. View and recall the same ticket in the Completed tab.

To view your completed tickets, tap Completed.

Expo stations have an additional feature that will automatically alert Square Online and third-party delivery services when an order is ready by completing the ticket.

To enable this feature:

1. Go to Devices on your online Square Dashboard.
2. Click Kitchen settings > Order Settings.
3. Select the location for kitchen order updates.
4. Toggle on Automatically send order updates.
5. Click Save.

When you complete a ticket on the KDS it will update the order’s fulfilment state to ‘Ready’. If you have Text diner when order is ready enabled on Square Online, your online customer will also receive a text.

Note: This is only available for expo stations. When activated, this setting will apply to all expo stations assigned to the selected location.

To customise your item grouping settings:

1. On Square KDS, select Devices > Kitchen Settings > Order settings.
2. Toggle on Combine identical items. Items with the same details will then be automatically combined into one line item.

If you toggle on ‘Single item per ticket’, this setting overrides grouping items and automatically prints each item, ungrouped, on its own ticket.

Note: ‘Combine identical items’ is off by default for existing printer stations but will turn on by default for all new printer stations you create. Learn more about grouping items.

Coursing helps you and your team manage the flow of bills – for both the front and back of house. Coursing is designed to easily group items, add items and let the kitchen know when to hold or start firing dishes.

Coursing is an optional setting, so you’ll need to visit your POS Device settings on your Square Dashboard to turn on Coursing and Hold/Fire.

To edit the coursing format your kitchen prefers on each KDS device:

1. Open Square KDS.
2. Tap ≡.
3. Tap the settings gear icon.
4. Select Coursing.
5. Choose between Show fired and held courses or Only show fired courses.

Kitchens can prioritise tickets and move orders to the front of the queue. For instance, your customer may need a quick turnaround for a last minute addition to their order, or if someone joins a table late and the ticket for their meal comes in behind the rest of the party. When you enter the order in the POS again, you can bump the ticket to the front of the queue.

Note: The prioritising function only exists for Expo stations.

To prioritise an order:

1. On an expeditor station, tap ↑≡ on the toolbar at the bottom of the ticket.
2. After a three-second cancellation window, the ticket will move to the front of the queue for all kitchen displays at the location with a message confirming that the order has been prioritised.

All Day Counts shows the total count of a specific item (i.e. in highest demand) as well as which order tickets include that item. To view a specific item across all open tickets:

1. Open Square for KDS.
2. Tap ≡.
3. Tap the item(s) you want to see All Day Counts for. Items will be highlighted across all tickets, and you’ll see the All Day Counts.
4. To see the full-screen view of your All Day Counts, tap View all counts > View Full-screen.

Once you mark an item as completed, it will automatically be subtracted from the All Day Count.

If you need to mark an item as sold out – aka ‘86’ that item – you can do this directly from your Square kitchen display. This capability exists on both Prep and Expo station screens. When you mark an item as unavailable from Square KDS, it will update your ordering platforms, so that item appears as sold out to your customers.

Note: Any item with inventory tracking turned on cannot be marked as available or unavailable with the 86ing feature.

To 86 an item from a Prep or Expo station:

1. Open Square KDS, and tap ≡.
2. Tap View all items availability.
3. Use the search tool to find an item, or select an item from the list.
4. You can mark the item as Available or Unavailable. To 86 an item, select Unavailable then tap Save.