This is a part of a series of Solutions on creating a menu in Aura. You can find the other parts here:

  1. Creating Stock - Categories
  2. Creating Stock - Items
  3. Creating Menu Items - Categories
  4. Creating Menu Items - Menu Items
  5. Creating Picklists


The full guide can be downloaded as a PDF here:

AURA Menu Creation Guide

Menu Items refer to any item that comprises the invoice that is created for the customer through Invoicing. So, not only are these the products that are sold to the customer, but also menu instructions, promotions, and choices. Typically, menu items contain a specified recipe which represents the ideal quantity of stock to be used whenever a menu item is purchased. This ideal stock usage is recorded in Aura as Theoretical stock sales, which is then compared against actual stock usage worked out from stocktake records, to give you a variance figure which tells you if stock is being under or over used. As you can imagine, this means that having correct recipes is very important.

Unless specifically set otherwise, any menu item you create in Backoffice will display in Invoicing under the Menu Item Selector screen when ringing up an invoice.


3.Creating Menu Categories

Menu categories are used to divide your menu into separate sub divisions to make it easier to find and ring up an item in Invoicing. How you choose to create categories is up to you, but it’s recommended that you keep them similar to your print menu for convenience sake. (e.g. DRINKS, BURGERS, BREAKFAST etc.)


NB: You can subdivide your categories further using the Size option in Menu Items, which we will look at later on in the guide.


In Backoffice, navigate to the Menu Categories page:

  • Lists > Menu> Categories




As with stock categories, you may create a category by clicking the [+] button, and enter the name of each category in the cell under Description. Click the [✔] to save the category.

On the right, there are several options that can be set for each menu item:

  • Touchscreen Buttons: When Invoicing is set to Touchscreen interface, the menu categories appear as buttons on the screen. Use Font to set the colour of the text, and Brush to set the colour of the button. (By default, None will show white text on a blue background).
    Colour Example 1.png


  • Transaction Settings: The option Grid Font sets the colour that every menu item in the category will appear on the Invoicing screen. Indent will offset the text of every menu item by the number of spaces indicated. These settings are very useful if you want to highlight items of a particular category (a popular choice is to use green and red colours for Extra and None items respectively, to make them more noticeable for the cashier).
    Colour Example 2.png


  • Hot Key: This can be used to set a ‘shortcut’ key for a category. If invoicing is set to the touchscreen view, these items will appear as shortcut buttons along the bottom of the screen as well.
    Shortcut Buttons.png


  • Type: This function is no longer being used and may be ignored.

  • Order: By default, Menu categories are sorted into alphabetical order on the Invoicing screen. This can be overridden here by setting the categories by order


Hidden Category: Ticking this option hides the selected category button from the Invoicing screen. This is useful for categories that contain items for picklists that you don’t want to appear except when the parent item is selected (e.g “Upsell” items).

Part 4: Creating Menu Items - Menu Items