Restaurant billing software in the UAE: what it must produce

Restaurant billing software is bought for one reason. Somebody has to hand a customer a document that says what they bought and what tax was on it, and somebody has to hand an accountant a set of records that agree with the money in the bank. When those two things drift apart, the arguments start at the end of the quarter.

This page sets out what the paperwork has to contain here, what to check before you pay for a system, and where an ordering page fits into it.

What the rules actually ask for

Value Added Tax has been in place in the Emirates since the start of 2018. The Ministry of Finance states that VAT was introduced across the UAE on 1 January 2018 at a standard rate of 5%, and that every business needs to record its financial transactions and keep those records accurate and current.

Registration is not automatic. The Federal Tax Authority sets the mandatory registration threshold at AED 375,000 of taxable supplies and imports over the previous twelve months, or if the business expects to pass it within the next 30 days. Below that, registration is voluntary once supplies or expenses pass AED 187,500, as the Ministry of Finance also explains on the page above.

Two practical points fall out of this for a small kitchen. If you are registered, the document you give a customer needs your tax registration number on it. And whatever produces those documents has to keep producing them in one continuous run, because a numbering series with holes in it is the first thing anybody looks at.

Four things to check in any billing system

Does the total equal the sum of the lines? This sounds obvious. It stops being obvious the moment discounts, delivery fees and rounding are in the same document. A total calculated separately from the lines above it will disagree with them eventually, usually by a few fils, usually on the invoice somebody questions.

Are the invoice numbers continuous? Every document should draw the next number in one series that never skips and never repeats.

Does the document match the order? A billing system that keeps its own copy of your prices will slowly disagree with the menu your customers are reading.

Can you get the data out? You should be able to export what you sold to a spreadsheet on any day, without asking anybody's permission.

Where Get Menu fits

Get Menu is ordering software, not a bookkeeping ledger. It is the part in front: the page your customers order from, the messages that reach your team, and the documents that come out of a finished order. Your accounts stay wherever they are today.

Each restaurant gets an ordering page on its own address on getmenu.ae, included from the first day. There are 12 page layouts, a set of colour themes and a font picker, so the page carries your name rather than ours. Building the menu is a single upload if it already sits in a spreadsheet, and items can be dragged into whatever order reads best.

The money side is built to satisfy the four checks above.

Each tax invoice comes out as a PDF with your registration number printed on it, and the customer downloads it with no account and no login. Numbers are drawn from one unbroken sequence. The total on the document is the sum of the lines printed above it, always, because it is calculated from them rather than beside them. Cash totals are rounded to 25 fils so a driver is not hunting for small change at a door.

"Most billing problems I have looked at were never really billing problems. The order was recorded in one place, the money in another, and the paperwork tried to guess which was right. Fix the order and the invoice stops being an argument." — Agha Shah Zaman, co-founder of Get Menu

Why the order has to be right first

An invoice is only as honest as the order it came from, so the order is where the care goes.

Prices are read from your live menu at the moment the customer confirms, so the number they agreed to is the number they are billed. A second tap on a slow connection cannot produce two orders. Every order carries a status page of its own that the customer opens without a login, which is also the page they reach for when they want to check what they were charged.

Options and add-ons carry their own prices, and a choice can be marked required so nothing reaches the kitchen half-specified. Stock counts fall as orders arrive, and an item greys itself out at zero, which prevents the worst kind of billing dispute: paying for something the kitchen ran out of an hour ago.

Delivery charges follow the building, picked from a list you control, and you can set a total above which delivery costs nothing. Inside the restaurant, a QR code is generated for every table, printed in your own colours from a print pack we email you, and the table is what the ticket carries instead of a number somebody typed.

What you see afterwards

The moment an order is placed, three messages go out in about 2 seconds: a confirmation to the customer, the ticket to your managers' group, and for deliveries a dispatch link to the riders' group carrying the GPS pin the customer set. Every message is logged with whether it arrived.

A sales dashboard splits what you sold by day, by item and by the channel it came through, and the whole lot exports to a spreadsheet whenever you ask. Repeat business is handled in the same place, with stamps earned per order or per dirham, tiers your regulars grow into, and a loyalty card that lives in Google Wallet and updates itself. The Apple version is finished and waiting on a certificate. Coupons carry caps, exclusions and expiry dates, so a code cannot quietly run for a year.

For the wider category, point of sale software for restaurants covers counter systems, restaurant point of sale covers the hardware question, and takeaway ordering systems covers collection and delivery orders.

What it does not do

There are no online payments in Get Menu. The customer pays cash or uses your card machine when the food arrives, which is also why no card details sit anywhere in the system.

It does not keep your ledger, raise purchase orders, track supplier accounts or run payroll, and it does not file returns. It records what you sold, produces the customer's document, and hands the numbers over cleanly to whoever does your books.

Money terms are short. One flat monthly fee, 0 percent taken from sales. Your customer list exports on any day you ask for it, and details on orders older than 120 days are wiped without anybody remembering to do it. A new account is free for 15 days and opening one needs no card.

Frequently asked questions

Does Get Menu produce a proper tax invoice?

It produces a PDF invoice carrying your tax registration number, numbered in one unbroken series, with a total that is the sum of its lines. Your accountant still owns the filing; this is the document the customer receives.

Is this a replacement for accounting software?

No. It handles ordering and the customer's invoice. Ledgers, supplier accounts, payroll and tax returns belong in accounting software, and the sales export is what you hand across.

Can customers pay online?

No. Payment is cash or a card machine at the door. It is a genuine limit on what we do, and it means there is nothing sensitive about a customer's card stored on our side.

What happens to the invoice if an order is cancelled?

The order is cancelled and the stock it held goes back to the counts. Nothing quietly disappears from the record, which is the behaviour an audit expects.

Can I get my sales figures out of the system?

Yes. Sales export to a spreadsheet whenever you want, and your customer list exports on any day, including the day you decide to stop using us.