Captain App: A Deep Walkthrough for Meztezz

The Captain App puts the POS in a waiter’s pocket — they take orders, fire KOTs, and track kitchen progress from their phone without walking back to the billing counter. If the Tables & Reservations post covered the floor and the Orders post covered the billing screen, this post covers the tool that lets your captains do both from the dining room. It’s written for two readers: the owner setting it up for the first time, and the captain who’ll use it every shift. One thing to know upfront — the Captain App is Android-only today.

This guide assumes you’ve already gone through Setting Up Masters and Tables & Reservations. Categories, items, stations, tables and staff all need to exist on the terminal before they’ll appear on the Captain App.

💡 Where this lives. The Captain App is a separate Android app that connects to the POS terminal over your local Wi-Fi network — it’s not a screen inside the terminal. You install it on each waiter’s phone, it discovers the terminal automatically, and from that point it mirrors the menu, tables and staff list in real time. Everything in this guide happens inside that app, not the terminal.

The Walkthrough at a Glance

Part	What you’ll learn
1. What the Captain App Is (and Isn’t)	What it does, what it doesn’t, and how it fits alongside the terminal.
2. Installing the App	Where to get the APK, Android requirements, and what about iOS.
3. Connecting to Your POS Terminal	How the app finds the terminal on your Wi-Fi and the restaurant PIN.
4. Logging In	Staff selection, PIN entry, and what permissions mean.
5. The Floor at a Glance	The table grid, section tabs, statuses, and the lock mechanism.
6. Browsing the Menu	Categories, search, and how the menu stays in sync with the terminal.
7. Building the Cart	Variants, addons, notes, discounts, and order type selection.
8. Sending to the Kitchen	Firing the KOT, the confirmation screen, and second-round orders.
9. Tracking Your KOTs	Live status, elapsed-time warnings, rush priority, and marking pickup.
10. My Orders	The consolidated order view and order detail drill-down.
11. Approving QR Orders	The approval gate, urgency indicators, and approve/reject actions.
12. Reservations	Today’s bookings, seating, no-shows, and permission gates.
13. Your Profile	Editing your details and changing your PIN.
14. What Stays on the Terminal	Honest list of what the captain app can’t do and why.
15. A Few Habits That Save You Later	Small disciplines that keep service smooth.

Part 1 — What the Captain App Is (and Isn’t)

The Captain App is a phone app for your floor staff. It connects to the Meztezz POS terminal over your restaurant’s Wi-Fi and lets waiters take orders, fire KOTs, and track kitchen progress — all from the dining room. It’s a co-equal order source: when a captain sends an order, the KOT fires immediately to the kitchen printer or KDS, no cashier gate in between.

Why it matters. Captains don’t walk back to the billing counter every time a guest orders. Orders reach the kitchen faster, tables turn over sooner, and the owner can see exactly who took which order. During a busy dinner service, that round-trip saving per table adds up quickly.

What it isn’t. The Captain App is not a standalone POS. It doesn’t settle bills, manage stock, print receipts, or work without the terminal running. Think of it as the captain’s window into the terminal — not a replacement for it. The terminal remains the single source of truth for all operational data.

If you’ve already read Tables & Reservations or Taking Orders, you’ve seen the Captain App mentioned in passing. This guide is the full story.

Part 2 — Installing the App

The Captain App is Android-only today. It requires Android 7.0 or newer — that covers the vast majority of phones still in use. iOS is not available yet; if and when that changes, we’ll update this post.

You download the APK directly from the Captain App page on meztezz.com. There’s no Play Store listing at the moment — here’s how to install it:

Open the Captain App page on your phone’s browser and tap the download button to get the APK.
Android may ask you to allow installation from this source — tap Allow.
Open the app once the install finishes.

Google Play distribution may come in the future, but for now the APK download is the quickest way to get started.

Part 3 — Connecting to Your POS Terminal

When you first open the Captain App, it searches for the POS terminal on your Wi-Fi network. In most setups this takes a few seconds — you’ll see a scanning indicator, then the terminal appears and you tap to connect.

If the app can’t find the terminal automatically, it offers a manual option: tap Enter IP manually and type in the terminal’s IP address. You can find this IP on the terminal under Settings > System > IP Address, or from Settings > KDS where it’s part of the Browser KDS Access URL (e.g. http://192.168.1.2:3001/kds).

Once the app reaches the terminal, it asks for the Restaurant PIN. This PIN is displayed on the terminal under Settings > System > Captain App — it’s derived automatically from your activation key, so you can’t change it, only view and share it. The owner shares this PIN with their staff so each phone can pair to the right restaurant. You enter it once — the app remembers the connection after that.

💡 Both devices — the phone and the terminal — must be on the same Wi-Fi network. If the app can’t find the terminal, that’s the first thing to check. A phone on mobile data or a different Wi-Fi band won’t see the terminal.

Part 4 — Logging In

After pairing, you land on the login screen. There’s a staff dropdown populated from the terminal’s user list — the captain picks their name, no typing needed. The list refreshes from the terminal each time the screen loads, so a newly added staff member appears right away.

Below the dropdown, the app asks for a PIN (or password, depending on what the owner configured for that user on the terminal). PINs are four to six digits.

Lockout protection. If someone enters the wrong credentials five times, the account is locked for fifteen minutes. This is enforced by the terminal to prevent guessing. The captain needs to wait it out, or a manager can unlock the account from the terminal.

After a successful login, the captain lands on the Tables screen — the floor at a glance, with every section and table status visible. From here, the shift begins.

A note on permissions. What you can do inside the app depends on the role your owner or manager assigned you on the terminal. A captain might be able to take orders and view KOTs but not approve QR orders or manage reservations. For how roles and permissions work, see Staff, Roles, Permissions & Attendance.

Part 5 — The Floor at a Glance

After login, you land on the Tables screen — a grid of every table in the restaurant, pulled from the same data the terminal uses and kept updated while you’re connected. Across the top, section tabs let you filter by floor or area (Ground Floor, Rooftop, Patio — whatever sections the owner configured). Each tab shows a quick count like “4/10”, meaning four tables available out of ten total in that section. Tap “All” to see every table across every section at once.

Each table card is colour-coded by status:

Green — Available. Nobody is sitting here. Tap to start a new order.
Red — Occupied. An open order is running on this table.
Yellow — Reserved. A reservation is booked. You can still seat a walk-in if the owner allows it.
Grey — Blocked. The owner has taken this table out of service (under maintenance, saved for a private event, etc.). You can’t tap it.

A small legend at the bottom of the screen reminds you what each colour means so you never have to guess.

The Lock Mechanism

When you tap an available table to start an order, the app acquires an exclusive lock on that table. Every other captain online sees the table as “being served” by you — they can’t start a separate order on the same table. This prevents the classic floor problem: two waiters independently taking orders for the same table because neither knew the other had already started.

The lock releases automatically when you send the order to the kitchen (the table flips to occupied), when you go back to the tables screen with an empty cart (you abandoned the order), or when you log out. There’s no manual unlock needed — it cleans up after itself.

Table Handover

Sometimes you need to pass a table to another captain — maybe your shift is ending, you’re going on break, or a table falls in a colleague’s zone. Tap a table you own and choose Hand Over from the options that appear. The app shows a list of all captains currently online. Pick one, confirm, and the lock transfers instantly. The receiving captain sees the table appear under their name. No orders are lost — the handover moves ownership, not data.

If no other captains are online, the handover option tells you so. You’ll need to wait until someone else logs in.

❗ What stays on the terminal. The captain app can view tables and open orders, but it can’t transfer, merge, or split tables — those structural moves go through the terminal. The app is for taking orders and tracking progress, not rearranging the floor plan mid-service.

For the full table story — statuses, sections, merge/split/transfer — see Tables & Reservations.

Tap an available table (or the Takeaway/Delivery button at the bottom of the tables screen) and you land on the Menu screen. The entire menu is organised by categories, displayed as horizontal tabs you can swipe through.

Categories support parent-child nesting. If the owner has grouped items under a parent like “Starters” with sub-categories like “Veg Starters” and “Non-Veg Starters”, tapping the parent expands to show the children. Tap a child to see just those items, or tap “All” within the parent to see everything underneath it. Tap the back arrow on the category bar to return to the top-level categories.

Items appear in a two-column grid within each category. Each card shows the item name, price, and a veg/non-veg indicator (the familiar green or red dot). Items that are out of stock appear greyed out — you can see them, but tapping does nothing. No more walking to the kitchen to find out something is unavailable.

At the top of the menu sits a search bar. Start typing and results filter as you type — useful when the menu runs into hundreds of items and you know what the guest wants but not which category it lives under. Search works across all categories at once, ignoring the current category selection.

💡 Live from the terminal. The menu on the captain’s phone is pulled live from the terminal. Any changes the owner makes — new items, updated prices, items marked out of stock — appear on the captain’s phone on the next refresh. Pull down on the menu screen to force a refresh at any time.

Part 7 — Building the Cart

Tapping a menu item opens a detail panel where you customise the order before it goes to the cart. Here’s the flow:

Pick a variant (if the item has them). Some items come in sizes — Half/Full, Small/Medium/Large, Quarter/Half/Full. A default size is pre-selected; change it if needed. The price adjusts based on your selection.
Select addons (if available). Extras like cheese, mushroom, extra gravy — tap as many as you like, or none at all. Each addon shows its additional price.
Add special instructions. Expand the Special Instructions section to see quick-tap chips for common requests. You can also add a custom instruction by tapping ”+ Add” and typing it in. These notes print on the KOT so the kitchen knows exactly what the guest wants.
Set the quantity. Tap + or - to adjust (minimum 1, maximum 99).
Tap “Add to Cart.” The item lands in your cart with all your selections intact.

Repeat for every item the guest orders. A floating cart button at the bottom of the menu screen shows how many items you’ve added — tap it to review the cart before sending.

Order Type

At the top of the cart screen, you’ll see the order type: Dine-In, Takeaway, or Delivery. If you started from a table, it defaults to Dine-In. If you tapped the Takeaway or Delivery button from the tables screen, it’s pre-set accordingly. You can switch order types here if needed — but note that switching away from Dine-In releases the table, and switching to Takeaway or Delivery automatically removes any liquor items from the cart (legal requirement in India).

Delivery orders default to prepaid — payment is settled later on the terminal.

Which order types appear depends on what the owner has enabled in the terminal settings. If the restaurant is dine-in only, the Takeaway and Delivery options won’t show up at all.

Parked Carts

Life on a busy floor is unpredictable. If you navigate away from the cart, log out, or the app closes mid-order, your unsent items are saved automatically. When you come back to that table’s order, the items reappear exactly as you left them — variants, addons, notes, quantities, everything. No work is lost. This happens behind the scenes; you don’t need to tap “save” or do anything special.

Part 8 — Sending to the Kitchen

When the cart looks right, tap Send to Kitchen. Here’s what happens behind the scenes: the order is created on the terminal, items are added, and KOTs (Kitchen Order Tickets) fire — one per kitchen station. If the guest ordered a tandoori starter and a main-course curry and those go to different stations, each station’s printer gets its own ticket with only the items it needs to prepare.

❗ No cashier gate. The captain app fires KOTs immediately — there is no “cashier reviews the order first” queue. The captain and the billing terminal are co-equal sources of orders. Both can create orders, and both send KOTs directly to the kitchen. For the full KOT story, see Taking Orders & Sending to the Kitchen.

The Confirmation Screen

After a successful send, a success animation plays and the screen shows the KOT number (what the kitchen references) and the order number (what appears on the bill). Two buttons appear:

Start New Order — clears the cart and takes you back to the tables screen, ready for the next guest.
Add More Items — takes you back to the menu with the current order still active, so you can add a second round to the same table.

Second-Round Orders

Guests often order in rounds — starters first, then mains, then dessert. When you tap “Add More Items” and return to the menu, any items you already sent appear in the cart greyed out with an “Already sent to kitchen” label. They’re there for reference so you can see what the table has ordered, but you can’t edit or remove them. New items you add sit alongside them as unsent items. When you tap Send again, only the new items become a fresh KOT — the kitchen doesn’t get a repeat of the first round.

If your Wi-Fi hiccups mid-send, the app won’t accidentally double-up the order. Each item carries a unique marker so duplicates are caught and rejected — you’ll see an error message if the network interrupted, but the order won’t have phantom extras when the connection comes back.

Part 9 — Tracking Your KOTs

Once an order leaves the cart, it becomes one or more KOTs — one per kitchen station. The My KOTs screen (the KOTs tab) is a live dashboard of every KOT you sent during your session. Not the whole restaurant’s KOTs — just yours. Open it from the main navigation and you see your most recent KOTs at the top, each displayed as a card showing the KOT number, the station it went to (Tandoor, Main Kitchen, Bar, etc.), the table number or customer name, and the items on the ticket.

Status Progression

Each KOT moves through a lifecycle. The status badge on the card updates as the kitchen works through the ticket:

Status	What it means
Pending	Sent to the kitchen, not yet seen.
Acknowledged	The kitchen has seen the ticket.
Preparing	The kitchen is actively working on it.
Ready	Food is done — waiting for the captain to collect.
Served	The captain has picked up the plates and taken them to the table.
Completed	The order is closed on the terminal (bill settled).
Cancelled	The KOT was cancelled — items crossed out.

Each status has its own colour on the card, so you can glance at the list and immediately tell which KOTs need attention without reading text.

Elapsed-Time Indicators

Every KOT card also shows how long ago it was created. As time passes and the KOT is still waiting — not yet ready — the elapsed time changes colour: it starts as neutral text, shifts to a warning colour when the KOT has been sitting for a while, and turns red when it’s overdue. The colour shift gives you an at-a-glance sense of which tickets are lagging without counting minutes yourself. Once a KOT reaches “ready”, “completed”, or “cancelled” status, the timer stops drawing attention — the job is done.

Rush Priority

If a guest is in a hurry, or a KOT has been stuck in pending for too long, you can escalate it. Tap the Rush button on any active KOT (one that hasn’t reached “ready” yet) to flag it as rush priority. The card border turns red, a “RUSH” badge appears, and the kitchen sees the same highlight on their side — whether that’s a KDS display or a reprinted ticket. Tap the button again to revert to normal priority. Only the captain who created the KOT can toggle rush.

Mark Pickup

When the kitchen marks a KOT as “ready”, a green banner appears on the card: Ready for Pickup. The captain taps the Picked Up button to confirm they’ve collected the plates and taken them to the table. This moves the KOT to “served” status and clears the banner. It’s a small step, but it closes the loop — the kitchen knows their output was collected, and the captain’s screen moves on to the KOTs that still need attention.

💡 Updates are live. When the kitchen changes a KOT’s status, your screen updates instantly — no need to pull down to refresh. If you do pull down, the list refreshes manually as well, but you shouldn’t need to.

Part 10 — My Orders

While My KOTs shows individual kitchen tickets, the My Orders screen shows the bigger picture: all your active orders for the current session, consolidated by table. If a table has had three rounds of ordering (three KOTs), those appear as one order card — not three.

Each order card shows the order type (Dine-In, Takeaway, Delivery), the table number or customer name, the total item count across all KOTs, and a set of small status chips summarising where things stand — for example, “2 Preparing, 1 Ready”. If any KOT in the order is flagged as rush, the card shows a rush badge. If any KOT is ready for pickup, the card highlights green with a “KOT Ready for Pickup” banner so you don’t miss it.

When it’s useful: a guest asks you for their running total, or you want to check which of your tables still has pending KOTs before your shift ends, or you just need a quick overview of your workload. It answers the question “what’s going on across all my tables right now?” in one scroll.

Order Detail

Tap any order card and you drill down into the full item list. Items are grouped by KOT number — each KOT appears as a section with a header (“KOT #12”, “KOT #13”) so you can tell which items were sent in which round. For each item you see the name, variant (if any), special instructions, quantity, unit price, and line total. A status badge shows where that item stands in the kitchen (Pending, In Kitchen, Preparing, Ready, Served).

At the bottom, the screen totals up the items. From here you can also tap Add More Items to jump back to the menu and start a new round for the same table, or Resume Unsent Items if you had previously started adding items but navigated away before sending.

Part 11 — Approving QR Orders

When a guest scans a QR code on their table and places an order from their phone, the order doesn’t go straight to the kitchen. It lands on the captain’s QR Approvals screen first. This is a deliberate gate — the captain reviews and either approves or rejects the order before anything reaches the kitchen.

Why the Gate

Without a review step, anyone who scans the QR code could send orders to your kitchen — including prank orders from a neighbouring table, a guest ordering an item that just ran out, or someone accidentally ordering to the wrong table. The approval step keeps the captain in the loop: they know what’s heading to their station’s kitchen, they can catch mistakes before they become wasted prep, and they remain the single point of accountability for their section.

The Approval Screen

Open QR Approvals and you see a list of pending orders — each card shows the table number, order number, the guest’s phone number (if provided), and the full list of items with variants, quantities, and any notes the guest typed. A badge at the top of the screen shows how many orders are waiting.

Each card also carries an elapsed-time indicator. When the order first arrives it’s a neutral colour, but the longer the guest waits, the more urgent the indicator becomes — shifting to a warning colour and eventually to red. This gives you a sense of which orders have been sitting too long without you needing to remember when each one came in.

Approve or Reject

Two buttons sit at the bottom of every pending order card:

Approve — sends the order to the kitchen as a normal KOT. From that point on, it behaves exactly like any order you would have taken yourself: it appears on your My KOTs screen, the kitchen prints or displays it, and you track it through to pickup.
Reject — dismisses the order. Rejecting may ask you for an optional reason (e.g. “item unavailable”, “wrong table”); on some phones that prompt may not appear, in which case the order is simply rejected. If you provide one, it’s recorded for the kitchen/captain audit trail.

For how QR ordering works end-to-end — setting it up on the terminal, generating the codes, and the guest-side experience — see QR Ordering for Guests.

Part 12 — Reservations

The Reservations screen shows today’s bookings, sorted by time — earliest first. At the top, a row of filter chips lets you narrow the list:

Active — the default view, showing all reservations that are still in play (pending, confirmed, or seated). This hides completed, cancelled, and no-show bookings so you only see what matters right now.
Pending — bookings that haven’t been confirmed yet.
Confirmed — bookings the restaurant has confirmed but the guest hasn’t arrived.
Seated — guests who have arrived and been seated.

Tap any reservation card to open the detail view, which shows the guest’s name, phone, party size, table assignment, section, special requests, and a full timeline of status changes.

Upcoming Alert

When a confirmed booking is approaching — within the warning window configured on the terminal — an upcoming-reservations banner surfaces on the Tables (floor) screen, listing the bookings due soon. This gives the captain a heads-up to prepare the table before the guest walks in, rather than scrambling after they arrive.

Actions

From the detail screen, two actions are available for pending or confirmed reservations:

Seat — marks the reservation as seated and assigns the guest to their table. If the reservation doesn’t already have a table assigned, a table picker appears so you can choose one on the spot.
No-Show — marks the guest as a no-show. A modal prompts for an optional reason (e.g. “called to cancel”, “30 minutes past reservation time”) so there’s a record of why the table was freed up.

⚠️ Permission required. Seating and no-show actions require the reservation:manage permission. If your role doesn’t have it, the action buttons won’t appear — ask your manager to update your role on the terminal.

What the captain can’t do: create or edit reservations. That stays on the terminal. The captain app is built for speed-of-service moves on the floor, not for structural changes that need the full terminal screen.

For the full reservation lifecycle — booking, double-booking detection, auto no-show, the grace period — see Tables & Reservations, Parts 5–8.

Part 13 — Your Profile

Open the Profile screen from the main navigation to view and edit your details: display name, email, and phone number. Tap Edit, make your changes, and save — it updates on the terminal instantly.

From the same screen you can change your PIN or password. Tap the relevant option, enter your current credential, type the new one twice to confirm, and submit.

Your role — captain, waiter, manager — appears as a read-only badge at the top of the screen. The owner sets this on the terminal; you can’t change your own role from the app.

Part 14 — What Stays on the Terminal

The captain app is deliberately focused on what a waiter needs mid-service. These things stay on the terminal — and in each case, there’s a reason.

What	Why it stays on the terminal
Settle bills / take payments	Bills close where the cash drawer and printer live.
Transfer / merge / split tables	Structural moves need the cashier’s full-screen view.
Create or edit reservations	Booking management is a manager task.
Stock, inventory, or GRN	Back-of-house operations stay back-of-house.
Day close or Z-report	End-of-day is a terminal ritual with cash reconciliation.
Print receipts	Printing routes through the terminal’s connected printers.
Work without the terminal running	The app needs the POS on the same Wi-Fi.
Run on iOS	Android only, for now.

Part 15 — A Few Habits That Save You Later

Keep both devices on the same Wi-Fi network. If you switch networks — or your phone falls back to mobile data — the app loses its connection to the terminal. This is the single most common “it stopped working” cause.
Log out at the end of your shift. This releases any table locks you’re holding and saves any unfinished cart for next time. The next captain who logs in gets a clean slate, and your in-progress work is waiting for you when you’re back.
Use item notes for allergy or special requests. They print directly on the KOT ticket the kitchen sees — “no peanuts”, “extra spicy”, “gluten-free bun”. If it’s not in the note, the kitchen won’t know.
Check My KOTs before telling the guest “five more minutes.” The elapsed time on each KOT card tells you whether that’s an honest estimate or wishful thinking.
If the app can’t find the terminal on launch, check Wi-Fi first. Nine times out of ten, that’s all it is.

Stuck? We’re Here to Help

If any of this didn’t behave the way the guide describes — a connection that won’t pair, a permission that seems missing, a KOT that isn’t showing up — drop us a line at bazimat@gmail.com or contact us. Tell us which section of this guide you’re on and what you’re seeing; we’ll usually have you sorted in a single back-and-forth.