Setting Up Meztezz After Install: Start With Your Masters

So you’ve installed Meztezz and either started the trial or linked the terminal to your cloud account — see Installing & Activating Meztezz if you haven’t yet. The app opens, sample categories greet you, and you’re tempted to just start billing. Don’t. A POS is only as accurate as the data behind it. Half an hour of setting up your Masters properly now saves hours of fixing wrong bills, missing tax, and broken stock reports later.

This guide walks through that setup in the exact order we recommend. Each section builds on the previous one, so if you follow it top-to-bottom on a new install you won’t have to come back and redo anything.

💡 A word on “Masters.” Inside Meztezz, “Masters” is the catch-all term for the foundational records your daily operations rely on — your menu, your stock items, your suppliers, your customers, your kitchen stations, your tables. They’re called Masters because almost every other screen (billing, KOTs, reports, sync) reads from them. Get the Masters right and everything else falls into place.

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The Setup Roadmap at a Glance

There are roughly four stages, and they’re stacked deliberately. Skipping ahead works, but you’ll end up backtracking.

Stage	What you’re doing	Where in the app
1. Essentials	Restaurant identity, tax, printers, stations, staff, security	Settings (gear icon)
2. Inventory Masters	Units, locations, raw materials, suppliers, stock items	More → Masters & More → Inventory
3. Menu Masters	Categories, menu items, variants, add-ons, recipes	More → Menu Management
4. Operations Masters	Tables, customers, offers, loyalty (optional)	Billing screen (table view → + Add Table), More → Masters → Customers

You can stop after Stage 1 and start taking orders — the system ships with sample categories and tables — but Stages 2–4 are what turn a working POS into your POS.

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Stage 1 — The Essentials

These are the must-do settings before you ring up your first real bill. Open Settings (gear icon in the top-right user dropdown) and work through them in this order.

1.1 Restaurant Profile — Settings → Profile

This is the identity the customer sees on every printed bill, plus your locale and currency.

Field	Why it matters
App Name	Title bar text inside the POS itself
Restaurant Name	Printed at the top of every bill, KOT, and report
Address & Phone Number	Printed on the bill footer; required for tax compliance in India
Locale & Currency	Pick INR / USD / EUR / GBP / AED / …. Drives every price formatted in the app.
GST Number	The 15-character GSTIN. Drives whether GST appears on bills at all. Leave blank if you’re not GST-registered.
FSSAI License Number	The 14-digit food safety licence number. Printed on the bill in India.
State Code (Place of Supply)	Tax cards on a GST bill use this. Set it once.
SAC Code	Service Accounting Code printed on tax invoices.
Bill Footer Text	A few lines of free-form text — typically “Thank you, visit again” or your social handles. Leave blank if you don’t need one.

Tax-regime-specific fields (VAT registration for Simple VAT, EIN + Tax Region for US Sales Tax) appear below once you set the regime in §1.2 — you can come back here after step 1.2 to fill them in.

Save before moving on — these values get baked into every bill snapshot from this moment forward.

1.2 Tax Regime & Charges — Settings → Billing & Tax

This is the single setting most likely to bite you if you skip it.

1. Pick your Tax System — India GST, Simple VAT, or US Sales Tax. The bill layout, the columns in reports, and the math behind the totals all change based on this.
2. Decide Tax-Inclusive Pricing: on means the menu price already includes GST; off means GST is added at the bill. Pick one and stick with it — switching halfway through trading creates inconsistent historical bills.
3. If you serve alcohol in India, set the State VAT Rate for liquor. Alcohol is taxed separately from food and the system handles it correctly only when this rate is set.
4. Default GST Rate on Packaging & Service Charge (Liquor-Only Orders) — only used for bills that contain alcohol but no food. Most owners can leave this on the default.
5. Service Charge — pick Percentage or Fixed mode, set the value (typical: 5–10%), and use the per-order-type toggles to enable it independently for Dine-In, Takeaway, and Delivery. This is what stops a service charge sneaking onto a takeaway bill.
6. Packaging Charge — a flat amount, with the same per-order-type toggles. Usually on for Takeaway and Delivery, off for Dine-In.
7. Bill Prefix and KOT Prefix — short codes like INV- and K- that appear on printed slips.
8. Round Off To — pick the rounding behaviour for totals (nearest rupee is the India convention).
9. UPI ID + Print QR Code on Bill — if you want a “Scan to pay” QR on every printed bill, paste your UPI VPA (e.g. yourshop@oksbi) and turn the toggle on.
10. Payment Controls at the bottom — Require GSTIN Before Payment (forces a GSTIN entry on B2B invoices) and Require Receipt Print (blocks closing an order without printing).

1.3 Order Types — Settings → Order Types

Three on/off toggles — Dine-In, Takeaway, Delivery. Disable any you don’t offer. The top bar of the billing screen shows only the enabled types, which means cashiers can’t accidentally pick the wrong one.

(For Delivery orders the Prepaid vs. COD choice is made per-order at the billing screen, not here.)

1.4 Kitchen Stations — Settings → Stations

A station is a destination for kitchen tickets — Tandoor, Chinese, Garde Manger, Bar, Bakery. Each menu item is later tagged with one station, and KOTs for that item route to the station’s printer (or its KDS screen, configured separately in Settings → KDS).

For each station you set:

• Name (slug) — short internal identifier, lowercase
• Display Name — the human label printed on the KOT header
• Active toggle — switch a station off without deleting it

If you have a single kitchen, just create one station called “Kitchen”. If you have multiple — a typical mid-size Indian kitchen has Tandoor / Continental / Chinese / Indian + Bar — create one per physical workstation.

💡 The bar is a separate station. Even if your bar shares the same physical counter as the kitchen, give it its own station called bar. The bar station’s job is KOT routing — sending drink tickets to the bar’s printer or screen — plus tracking drink recipes (peg-outs) for liquor. Don’t merge it into the main kitchen. (Note: what marks an item as alcohol — for liquor VAT and the dine-in-only rule — is the category’s Alcohol Category flag, not the station. See §3.1.)

1.5 Printers — Settings → Printer

Meztezz has three printer roles you can configure:

• Bill Printer — prints customer bills at the counter
• KOT Printer — prints kitchen tickets (one default, plus optional per-station KOT printers)
• Counter Printer — optional second counter printer for token slips or duplicates

For each printer:

1. Pick the connection — USB or Network
2. USB — choose the printer from the dropdown
3. Network — enter the IP address and port (most Epson/TVS/POS thermal printers default to port 9100)
4. Set the paper width — 80mm for most counter printers, 58mm for compact/handheld units
5. Click Test — a test slip should appear in a few seconds. Then Save.

Two further switches worth knowing:

• Print Preview — opens a preview window before sending to the printer; handy while you’re still fine-tuning bill layout.
• Print Server (relay) — turn this on if only one machine has a physical printer and the others should route through it. The relay’s port can be customised here.

For multi-station kitchens, scroll down to Station Printers and link each station to its own KOT printer (plus an optional Counter printer) with the same connection settings.

1.6 Staff Accounts — Settings → Users

Owner-only logins are fine for the first day, but everyone deserves their own credentials so order history shows who did what.

For each staff member:

Field	Notes
Username	Lowercase letters and numbers only; used for password login
Display Name	The name shown in the app
Role	Owner / Manager / Cashier / Waiter / Kitchen / Bar, or a custom role
Password	Set on creation (8+ chars with upper, lower, digit)
Email	Optional, reference only
Phone	Optional, reference only

After creating the user, the same screen has dedicated dialogs to:

• Set PIN — a 4–6 digit PIN for fast switching at the counter (recommended)
• Reset Password — for when staff forget theirs

Need finer-grained permissions than the predefined roles? Open Settings → Roles and define a custom role with exactly the toggles you need.

1.7 Security — Settings → Security

A few switches that quietly matter a lot:

• Manager PIN — system-wide PIN used to approve discounts, voids, refunds, complimentary items, and account unlocks. Set this on day one. It’s separate from any individual user’s login PIN.
• Approval toggles — choose which actions require Manager PIN (voids, refunds, comp items) and set the discount-approval threshold above which a manager has to step in.
• Auto-lock — screen locks after N minutes of inactivity (default 5; options 2/5/10/15/30 or off).
• Default login method — PIN or Password.
• Role Configuration — flip operational rules, e.g. “Waiters can process payments” (off by default), “Kitchen can view inventory”.
• Shift management — enable shifts if you want staff to open/close cash drawers per session.
• Recovery Key — the 24-character key shown during setup that recovers your password. If you didn’t save it, regenerate one here.

1.8 System & Backup — Settings → System, Settings → Backup

Two quick housekeeping settings that future-you will thank you for:

• Business Day Start Hour (Settings → System) — for late-night restaurants, set this to, say, 06:00 so a 2 AM order rolls up under the previous day’s reports instead of starting a new day in the middle of your busy hours.
• Auto-Backup (Settings → Backup) — pick a folder, frequency (default every 4 hours), and how many backups to keep. Day-end backups can also be triggered from this tab.

1.9 (Optional) Cloud Link — Settings → License

If you didn’t link the terminal during the install wizard, do it now. Open Settings → License, find the Cloud Link box, and paste your Terminal Setup Code (it looks like MEZTEZZ-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) from app.meztezz.com → Outlets. Enter the API URL it gives you, hit Link to Cloud, and you’re done. From here on, every order, payment, and stock change syncs to the cloud automatically (roughly every five minutes). The separate Settings → Cloud Sync tab is the manual route — use it only if you’re entering a cloud API URL and key by hand.

1.10 (Optional) KDS — Settings → KDS

Only relevant if you’re using kitchen tablets/screens. This tab is where stations get bound to KDS browser displays, where you set timing thresholds (warning / overdue), heartbeat interval, max connections, and inactivity timeout. Configure once per kitchen screen — the URL each station opens is also generated here.

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Stage 2 — Inventory Masters (only if you’re tracking stock)

If you only need to bill — no inventory, no recipes, no purchase tracking — you can skip this entire stage. Come back to it once you’re ready.

If you are tracking stock, set up the inventory Masters in this exact order. Each one is a building block for the next.

💡 Two menus do the inventory work — know which is which.
More → Masters holds the records you define: Items, Raw Materials, Suppliers, Locations (and Customers). This is where you create and edit the catalogue.
More → Inventory holds the live stock operations: on-hand Stock Items, Purchase Orders, Movements, Alerts, Food Wastage, Recipes, and Physical Counts.
Stage 2 below defines the Masters records first, then seeds your opening stock. They look similar but track different things — don’t mix them up.

2.1 Units of Measure — Settings → Inventory → Manage Units & Conversions

Before you create a single raw material, define the units you’ll measure things in. The common ones — kg, g, litre, ml, piece, packet, bottle — ship with the system. Add anything missing: bunch, tray, dozen, crate.

For each unit you can also configure conversions (the Unit Conversions Editor): 1 kg = 1000 g, 1 litre = 1000 ml, 1 dozen = 12 piece. This lets you buy chicken in kilograms and consume it in grams via a recipe without doing the math by hand.

2.2 Storage Locations — More → Masters → Locations (or via the Inventory sheet)

A location is a physical place stock lives — Main Kitchen, Cold Storage, Dry Store, Bar Cellar, Outlet-2 Backroom. Even single-outlet setups benefit from at least two: a working location (kitchen) and a storage location (cold room / dry store). Movements between them are recorded as stock transfers, which is how you spot wastage and theft.

Each location has just two fields:

• Name
• Description (optional)

2.3 Raw Material Categories — More → Masters → Raw Materials → Categories

(It’s the Categories button at the top of the Raw Materials list.)

Categories are how raw materials get grouped in reports — Vegetables, Dairy, Spices, Meat & Poultry, Beverages, Disposables. Five to fifteen categories is usually plenty. Don’t get carried away: the goal is a readable purchase report, not a perfect model of your stockroom.

2.4 Suppliers — More → Masters → Suppliers

For every vendor you buy from:

Field	Notes
Name	Vendor display name
Contact Person	The person you actually call
Phone, Email	Reference contact details
Address	For the supplier ledger and purchase orders
GST Number	Drives input tax credit on purchase entries
Payment Terms	Free-form (e.g. net 30, 15 days, on delivery)

You can bulk-import suppliers from a spreadsheet via the Import button if you already have a list — there’s a downloadable template.

(There’s no “opening balance” field on the supplier record itself. Outstanding amounts get recorded later through the Supplier Ledger as actual unpaid purchase entries.)

2.5 Raw Materials — More → Masters → Raw Materials

A raw material is anything you consume — tomatoes, paneer, oil, gas, packing boxes. The catalogue row is intentionally lean:

Field	Notes
Name	What you’d call it on a purchase order
Category	From the list you just made
Unit	The canonical unit (the one its conversions are based on)
Notes	Optional

Reorder levels, costs, and storage locations are not properties of the raw material itself — they live on the stock item rows you create next, because the same raw material can be stocked at multiple locations with different reorder thresholds and costs.

You can also import raw materials in bulk from a spreadsheet — the template is on the same screen. For a 100-item restaurant this turns a 90-minute job into 5 minutes.

2.6 Stock Items & Opening Stock — More → Masters → Items and the Inventory sheet

Stock Items are the on-hand inventory rows that link your menu and your raw materials to actual quantities at actual locations. This is also where reorder level, cost per unit, and storage location are recorded.

To seed an opening balance:

1. Open the Opening Stock Import dialog from the Inventory sheet.
2. Download the template — it lists every raw material you’ve defined and prompts for location, quantity, cost per unit, and (optionally) reorder level.
3. Fill in the values, save the file.
4. Upload it back in.

For ongoing purchases use the Record Stock In dialog instead — picking the supplier, raw material, location, quantity, cost, and (if you track batches for first-expiry, first-out — FEFO — stock rotation) the batch and expiry.

💡 Negative stock is intentional. Meztezz lets you ring up an item even when stock is zero or negative. The cashier never gets blocked because of a stock discrepancy — you’ll just see the dip in the stock report and can correct it via a Physical Count later. Treat the in-app number as a guide, not gospel.

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Stage 3 — Menu Masters (the heart of the system)

Open More → Menu Management. There are two top-level tabs: Categories and Menu Items. Variants, Add-Ons, and Recipes are sections inside each menu item.

3.1 Categories — the first tab

Categories are what appear in the left sidebar of the billing screen. They’re how cashiers filter the menu grid down to “just the starters” or “just the cocktails”.

Keep it shallow. Two levels max:

• Top-level categories — Starters, Main Course, Breads, Desserts, Beverages, Bar
• Subcategories (optional, via the parent field) — under Starters: Soups / Salads / Tikka

For each category you set:

• Name
• Alcohol Category — flip this on for Bar / Wines / Spirits. It does two things: items in the category are taxed with state VAT instead of GST, and they can’t be added to Takeaway or Delivery orders (legal requirement in India) — the system blocks them with a message if you try.
• Tax Rate — optional override; only set if every item in the category uses the same non-default rate.
• Parent — leave blank for a top-level category; pick a parent for a subcategory.

If you imported sample data during setup and want a clean slate, delete the sample categories first; the menu grid will repopulate as you add yours. Veg/Non-Veg is set per item, not per category.

3.2 Menu Items — the second tab

For each dish or drink on your menu:

Field	Notes
Name	What appears on the bill and the KOT
Short Name	Optional shorter version — used on narrow 58mm KOT printers
Category	From your Categories list
Price	Base price. Variants override this (see below).
Tax Rate	Leave on default unless this item has a non-standard GST slab (e.g. 28% sin tax)
HSN Code	Optional, for GST compliance
Veg / Non-Veg / Vegan	Drives the green/red dot on the menu card and the “Vegan” tag
Station	The kitchen station this item routes to — Tandoor, Bar, etc. Drives KOT routing (and, for the bar station, drink-recipe tracking). What marks an item as alcohol is its category’s Alcohol Category flag, not the station.
Available	Untick to hide an item without deleting it (e.g. 86’d for the day)
Preparation Time	Optional minutes; surfaces on the KDS
Description, Image	Optional, used in QR-ordering and aggregator integrations
Allergens	Toggles for nuts, gluten, dairy, shellfish, eggs, soy, sesame

You can also do a bulk menu import from a spreadsheet (More → Menu Management → Import). The template includes columns for categories, variants, and add-ons, so you can stand up a 200-item menu in one shot.

3.3 Variants — same items, different sizes

A variant is a size or version of a menu item that customers choose between — Small / Medium / Large, Half / Full, Glass / Quarter / Half / Full Bottle. Each variant has its own price.

Add variants from the Variants tab inside the menu item dialog. Mark one as default — that’s the one pre-selected when a cashier taps the item card.

3.4 Add-Ons — optional extras

Add-ons are paid extras a customer can tack on — Extra cheese (+₹40), Add paneer (+₹60), Make it spicy (free). They appear in the same selection dialog as variants.

Two things to keep in mind:

• Add-ons are per-item, not global. If “Extra cheese” applies to ten dishes, you’ll add it to ten dishes. (Bulk-import makes this fast.)
• Add-ons have their own price — they show up as a separate line on the bill and are taxed at the same rate as the parent item.

3.5 Recipes — link the menu to inventory

This is what closes the loop between billing and stock. Open the Recipe tab inside a menu item and define what raw materials get consumed when one is sold.

Example for Paneer Tikka:

Raw material	Quantity	Unit
Paneer	150	g
Capsicum	30	g
Onion	20	g
Cooking oil	10	ml
Spice mix	5	g

When a paneer tikka is rung up, those quantities are auto-deducted from the kitchen location’s stock.

Recipes are optional. Skip them if you only want item-level sales reporting and don’t need ingredient-level stock. You can come back and add them later.

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Stage 4 — Operations Masters

Everything below this point is about how the front of house and customer experience work. You can do them in any order.

4.1 Tables — billing screen, table-selection view

Tables only matter if you’re doing dine-in. There’s no separate menu for them — you add and edit them straight from the billing screen’s table view, using the + Add Table button.

1. Tap + Add Table and give each table a table number, seating capacity, and a section label (Indoor, Garden, AC, Private Dining, Rooftop — whatever fits your floor plan). Sections appear as tabs on the table screen.
2. Save. The new tables show up immediately on the table screen.

Table statuses and their colours:

• Available — green (ready for a new order)
• Occupied — red (an active order is on this table)
• Reserved — yellow (held for a reservation)
• Blocked — grey (out of service)

Only Available tables can accept a new order. Status transitions are automatic — you don’t toggle them by hand.

4.2 Customers — More → Masters → Customers

You don’t need to pre-load customers — they get created naturally when a cashier attaches a phone number to a bill. But you can bulk-import an existing customer list if you’ve migrated from another POS.

Customers unlock:

• Loyalty points earned per bill (configure in Settings → Loyalty)
• Khata / credit accounts — let regulars run a tab and settle later
• Customer history — what they’ve ordered, when, how much they spend

4.3 Offers — Settings → Offers (optional)

Offers are reusable promotional templates: BOGO (“Buy 1 Get 1 Free”), happy hour discounts, percentage-off combos, first-time-customer offers. Define them once here and the cashier just picks them from a list at the bill screen.

We recommend using only one of offer, discount, or coupon per bill — stacking them gets confusing fast and makes the totals hard to reconcile. (Note that an applied offer auto-clears if you change the items on the bill, so re-apply it after editing.)

4.4 Loyalty — Settings → Loyalty (optional)

If you want customers to earn and burn points:

• Set the earning rate (e.g. ₹100 spent = 1 point)
• Set the redemption value (e.g. 1 point = ₹1)
• Cap the max redemption per bill (e.g. 20% of the order)
• Configure tiers (Bronze / Silver / Gold / Platinum) with multipliers if you want VIPs to earn faster

4.5 Khata — Settings → Credit / Khata (optional)

Toggle Enable Credit Payments on, set a default credit limit (overridable per customer), and let staff settle balances through the dedicated Credit / Khata screen. Outstanding “udhar” then shows against each customer until it’s cleared.

4.6 Aggregators — Settings → Aggregators (optional)

If you take orders from Swiggy / Zomato / UrbanPiper, this tab is where you:

1. Enable Integration per platform and paste in API Key, API Secret (or Username for UrbanPiper), Webhook Secret, Restaurant ID.
2. Toggle Auto-Accept Orders and set the accept delay.
3. Flip your Outlet Status (Open / Closed / Busy) — same as the platform’s own dashboard.
4. Configure Channel Pricing — per-platform menu prices that override your in-house price (typical: cost + 20–25% to absorb the commission). The same dish can be ₹260 in-house / ₹320 on Swiggy / ₹320 on Zomato.
5. Flip on Show Aggregator Button to surface the aggregator tab in the top bar of the billing screen.

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A Sanity-Check First Order

Before going live, ring up one fake bill and verify everything end-to-end. This is the single best test you can run.

1. Open a new dine-in order, pick a table.
2. Add an item with a variant and an add-on.
3. Hit KOT (F5) — confirm the KOT prints to the right station’s printer.
4. Apply a small discount (manager PIN should be requested if the amount is above your threshold), then go to Pay (F6).
5. Pay in cash, print the bill, and confirm:
   • Restaurant name, address, GSTIN, FSSAI are all on the bill
   • Tax is split correctly (CGST + SGST for India GST, or whichever regime you picked)
   • The bill prefix matches what you configured
   • The KOT printed at the correct station
6. Go to More → Reports → Sales Report and confirm the order shows up with the right amount.
7. If you linked the cloud, refresh app.meztezz.com → Dashboard and confirm the order appears there too.

If any of those don’t match, the fix is almost always in Settings → Profile or Settings → Billing & Tax — go back and tweak.

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Quick Reference — The Full Setup Order

#	Step	Where	Required?
1	Restaurant Profile + Currency	Settings → Profile	✅
2	Tax regime, charges, payment controls	Settings → Billing & Tax	✅
3	Order types	Settings → Order Types	✅
4	Kitchen stations	Settings → Stations	✅
5	Printers (Bill / KOT / per-station)	Settings → Printer	✅
6	Staff accounts	Settings → Users / Roles	✅
7	Manager PIN, auto-lock, role config	Settings → Security	✅
8	Business-day hour, auto-backup	Settings → System / Backup	Recommended
9	Cloud link	Settings → License (Cloud Link)	Recommended
10	KDS bindings	Settings → KDS	If using KDS
11	Units of measure	Settings → Inventory → Manage Units & Conversions	Stock only
12	Storage locations	Masters → Locations	Stock only
13	Raw material categories	Masters → Raw Materials → Categories	Stock only
14	Suppliers	Masters → Suppliers	Stock only
15	Raw materials	Masters → Raw Materials	Stock only
16	Opening stock	Inventory → Opening Stock Import	Stock only
17	Menu categories	Menu Management → Categories	✅
18	Menu items	Menu Management → Menu Items	✅
19	Variants & add-ons	Menu item → Variants / Add-Ons tabs	If needed
20	Recipes	Menu item → Recipe tab	Stock only
21	Tables & sections	Billing screen → table view → + Add Table	Dine-in only
22	Customers (import)	Masters → Customers	Optional
23	Offers / Loyalty / Khata	Settings	Optional
24	Aggregators (integration + channel pricing)	Settings → Aggregators	If integrated

Print this and tick boxes as you go — it’s the cleanest way to ensure nothing important slipped through.

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A Few Habits That Will Save You Later

• Set the station correctly on day one. Re-routing fifty menu items because the Tandoor cook keeps getting Continental KOTs is a painful afternoon. (Liquor VAT and the dine-in-only rule are driven by the category’s Alcohol Category flag, not the station — so set that flag right too.)
• Use the bulk-import templates wherever they’re offered. A 200-item menu via the import sheet takes a fraction of the time of clicking through one at a time.
• Don’t switch tax-inclusive vs. tax-exclusive mid-trade. Historical bills get inconsistent and reconciliation breaks. Pick a side and stay there.
• Set the Manager PIN and the discount-approval threshold before anyone takes their first order. Without them, a cashier can comp anything they like.
• Verify cloud sync the first day, not the first month. Open app.meztezz.com → Outlets → your outlet → Dashboard and confirm yesterday’s sales total matches the terminal’s day-end Z-report.

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Stuck? We’re Here to Help

If anything didn’t line up — an option missing where this guide says it should be, a printer that won’t connect, a tax line printing the wrong rate — drop us a line at bazimat@gmail.com or contact us. Mention which Stage and step you’re on; we’ll usually have you sorted in a single back-and-forth.

Welcome to a properly-configured Meztezz. The data behind every report you ever pull, every kitchen ticket you ever route, and every paisa of tax you ever remit starts right here, in your Masters. 🎉