October got off to a great start here at Sapaad. We’ve completely upgraded the workflow of Stock Takes, we’ve got a new-and-improved Business Summary on your dashboard, and we’ve made winning back “inactive” customers a whole lot smarter with insights into their Loyalty earnings.

Here are all the latest updates from our recent improvements to Sapaad:

1. Stock Take: Workflow!

We’ve completely upgraded Stock Takes with a new ‘workflow’ feature.

Now, Stock Takes go through three phases: Draft, Review, and Completed. Each section of the workflow also has distinct permissions, which is great for having your stock counts conducted by one member of your team, and the review done by another. The addition of the review phase also allows you to adjust and correct any discrepancies or pending stock while the stock take is still in progress. Here’s how the new workflow feature works:

a. Once a stock take is done, it is ‘submitted for review’. It will then show under the ‘Under Review’ tab. You can now review the stock counts and make sure everything is ok. While a stock count is ‘Under Review’, you can still make adjustments to your stock (e.g. receive pending stock, issue out stock as wastage, etc.). Simply refresh the tab to see the changes.

b. Once the Stock Take is reviewed, click ‘Complete’ to push it to the next stage, completed. In this stage, the data is committed, and you can then ‘auto reconcile’ the counts to do an adjustment to your stock.

c. We’ve also introduced new access rights and permissions for your staff. You can restrict the role of your staff to simply ‘Count Stock’ and/or ‘Review & Complete Stock Take’.

2. Enhanced Consistency and Usability

a. We’ve enhanced the consistency of in-report labels, icons and formatting for a much-improved clarity of your dashboard. We’ve also made several KPI figures much larger and bolder, for improved readability.

b. Mandatory fields throughout Sapaad now have a standard guideline for greater clarity and consistency.

c. We’ve introduced breadcrumb navigation in Setup > My Account > Billing History to improve usability when viewing your invoices.

d. When resetting the password of your Sapaad account, an alert message now pops up on your screen notifying you of an instruction email sent to your inbox.

e. For a few more 3-decimal countries, we’ve updated the format of numerical values to display up to three decimal places.

3. New-And-Improved Business Summary

We’ve revamped the Sales Summary Report; and it’s better than ever! We’ve introduced a new section called ‘Wastage’ that gives you a complete breakdown of your total wastage costs across various wastage scenarios, at a glance. (Note that data in this section will only show from September 20th).

4. Delivery Manager Improvements

Idle home delivery orders automatically disappear from the Delivery Manager 24 hours after the order is placed. If you modify an unpaid order in the Total Orders report on your dashboard, the order will show up again on the Delivery Manager.

5. Loyalty in Inactive Customers Report

We’ve updated the Inactive Customers report with a new column called ‘Available Loyalty’. Now, identify customers who haven’t ordered in a while, and easily analyse their loyalty earnings. You can instantly reach out to them with an SMS encouraging them to redeem loyalty on their next order. It’s a great way to win them back at your restaurant! (Haven’t signed up for our awesome Loyalty module yet? Learn more about Sapaad Loyalty.)

6. Low Stock Reports Enhanced

We’ve added a new column for ‘Par Level’ in the Low Stock – Ingredients and Low Stock – Finished Goods reports. This way, you have everything you need to keep an eye on your low running stock.

7. Theoretical Stock Report Enhanced

You can now monitor and analyse every aspect of your stock movement by quantity or by purchase value, with our new filter dropdown in the Theoretical Stock Report.

8. Improved Wastage Cost Report

We’ve enhanced the Wastage Cost report to give you a detailed insight into the total wastage cost of each inventory item. Get an instant breakdown of wastage costs by movement types: wasted and stock adjustment.

9. Purchase Orders Updated

We’ve added back the ability to delete Sent Purchase Orders. However, only the Admin can delete a sent purchase order.

10. Updates to Inventory Setup

a. For Recipes, we’ve introduced breadcrumb navigation to improve the ease when editing a Recipe. We’ve also taken off the Duplicate button from the Recipe listing page alone.

b. We’ve enhanced usability when searching for an item to add as a Finished Good.

11. Other fixes and performance improvements:

-Resolved issue in Split Bill to equally divide surcharges when splitting a bill.
-Fixed issue to correctly apply discounts to the total bill amount.
-Resolved issue when applying 100% discount to an order to correctly account for inventory in the Wastage Cost report.
-Fixed issue when sorting Top Selling Items, Top Grossing Items, and Total Orders reports.
-Fixed overlapping issue when displaying customers’ past order details in CRM.
-For recipes defined as finished goods, resolved issue to correctly display history in Batch Production and Stock Receipts.
-Fixed display issue when modifying an order and adding a new item to an order.
-Resolved multiple tab issue for Dine-In orders.
-Under Stock Requests/Transfer > Received Stock, duplicate receipts are now correctly displayed with the prefix ST_ and not PO_.
-Resolved data mismatch issue in the Top Customers report.
-Resolved alignment issue in the Total Surcharges report.

Want to get started using Sapaad’s in-built SMS module?

If you’re an existing Sapaad customer, simply visit Setup > My Account to activate an SMS plan.

Not using Sapaad yet?

Sign up for a FREE trial

With Sapaad, we use a simple yet secure process to ensure that redeeming loyalty is as fun as earning. All your customer needs is a regular mobile phone. No smartphones, no apps, no plastic cards, no complex gadgetry! It’s simple, fun, and secure.

We’ve also added all-new Loyalty widgets on your dashboard. You can easily monitor how your loyalty program is doing, how it’s boosting your sales, and you can keep track of your most loyal customers.

Sapaad Loyalty is available today from just $14 / month! If you’re an existing customer, simply visit Setup > My Account to enable Sapaad Loyalty for your business. Not using Sapaad yet? Sign up for a FREE trial.

Activate Sapaad Loyalty

Improved performance, a powerful new engine, an all new look.

We’re thrilled to launch our all new dashboard!

Dashboard 2.0 was designed to provide enhanced usability, performance and power. What’s more, we’ve completely revamped its look with cool design touchups and usability enhancements for an overall improved experience.

What’s new?

 The Sales Chart is back – and it’s better!

Our new-and-improved sales graph gives you an ‘at a glance’ real-time overview of your sales across any specific date or time range. Stay on top of your sales curve while making sure your business growth is consistent and on track.

 New, improved query engine

Our new query engine increases the amount of data you can access at any time. This means no more having to export reports to CSV for large date ranges. You can now access business information from up to two to five months right on your dashboard.

 Faster!

You’ll notice that your dashboard loads instantly, even for data across large date ranges.

Enjoy accelerated loading times and access your business reports faster than ever.

Beautiful new look!

We’ve completely revamped the look of your dashboard with design and usability touchups that enhance your experience.

We’ve improved readability and simplified the way you resize and move about widgets to customize your dashboard.

And more…

We’ve gone in and touched up individual reports with additional powerful features such as in-report search, caching, and more.

Dashboard 2.0 is FREE for existing Sapaad users and is available today. 

Get a FREE Sapaad Trial

It’s no secret: the customer is king. Keeping customers waiting for their food leads to frustration, lost sales, and a bad reputation for your business.

With Sapaad, you have the ability to be in total control of your restaurant’s home delivery process. Monitor every stage of deliveries in real-time, identify and control bottlenecks, and optimise your overall delivery efficiency.

Here are 7 brilliant ways Sapaad can help you take control of your home delivery management and keep your customers happy.

1. Boost Customer Engagement

With Sapaad, you can build a comprehensive customer database. So each time a customer calls to place an order, you instantly know their name, order history and favourites from the menu. This not only empowers your order-taking staff, it also boosts customer engagement.

2. Manage Phone Orders Centrally

Sapaad’s integrated call center module completely simplifies phone order management. You can take phone orders at each of your locations, or seamlessly set up a central call center to manage phone orders for all your locations. Orders are printed directly to the respective kitchen.

3. Monitor Deliveries In Real-time

Sapaad’s ‘Delivery Manager’ lets you track home deliveries as they happen — from the minute your customer places an order to when it is delivered at their doorstep. With great insights into how long your customer has been waiting, the order preparation time and the delivery time, your staff can operate keeping the most important aspect of your business always on high priority — your customer.

4. Keep Your Customers In The Loop

Keep your customers informed on their order status with Sapaad’s in-built SMS feature. Send out pro-active, instant SMS alerts at every stage of order fulfilment; a ‘Thank you for your order!’, or ‘Your meal is on the way. Enjoy!’, and so on. Your customers will appreciate knowing what’s happening while waiting for their meal, and save you the hassle of receiving follow-up calls.

5. Optimise Delivery Driver Communication

During busy hours, it’s essential to tighten communication with your delivery drivers. Sapaad’s ‘Delivery Assistant’ is an awesome mobile app that synchronises your POS system with your driver’s mobile phone. You can keep them informed on what orders to deliver and where, how long a customer has been waiting, and more.

6. Assess Delivery Personnel Performance

With Sapaad, you can assess which of your delivery personnel is getting more deliveries done on time, and making maximum sales. The ‘Delivery Report’ helps you identify and thus incentivize your top performing delivery personnel to increase the motivation of your entire team.

7. Analyse & Identify Bottlenecks

Sapaad’s ‘Delivery Report’ gives you brilliant insights into your entire home delivery process. Analyse the elapsed time between order placed and delivered, track time spent on the road, identify late and on-time deliveries. This helps you detect obstacles in your operations so as to take necessary action and improve your overall delivery process.

Learn more about Sapaad’s Delivery Manager

The month of August introduced lots of exciting enhancements to Sapaad, including powerful new inventory reports, additional in-report columns and search fields for enhanced visibility of your business, a new billing section to keep track of your Sapaad subscription, and much more!

In case you missed it, here’s a look back at some of our recent improvements.

1. NEW: Stock On Hand Report

We’ve introduced an all-new, powerful inventory report that gives you a LIVE comprehensive account of your stock on hand at that particular instant. View the quantity and value of stock on hand for all your ingredients and finished goods, as well as that of pending purchase orders corresponding to each item.

2. NEW: Stock Transfer Report

Our all-new ‘Stock Transfer’ report on the inventory dashboard gives you a complete overview of Stock Transfers between your locations. Monitor the quantity of ingredients and finished goods transferred in and transferred out due to stock transfers between locations, and get a detailed insight into each of them.

3. ‘Total Purchases’ Report on Dashboard

We’ve updated the ‘Total Purchases’ report on your dashboard with a new search field called ‘Search for a Supplier’. Now, when analysing your completed purchase orders, you can instantly filter purchase orders corresponding to a particular supplier.

4. Inventory Setup Improvements

a. When defining a Recipe as a Finished Good, you will no longer need to enter supplier details. We’ve eliminated the ‘Suppliers’ section for recipes defined as finished goods in order to minimise potential errors including ones like raising purchase orders for recipes defined as finished goods.

b. We’ve updated the new ‘Sub Recipe’ icon to display details of Sub Recipe Ingredients. This means, when editing a recipe that has a sub recipe, you can get a quick glimpse of ingredients used in the sub recipe by simply placing your cursor on the icon.

5. Purchase Orders Update

We’ve updated the Open Orders and Sent Orders section under Inventory > Purchase Orders with a new search field called ‘Supplier or Email’. You can now do a quick and easy search for purchase orders corresponding to a particular supplier by simply entering the supplier name or email address in the search field.

6. “Change Due Date” ability for Sent POs

We’ve introduced the ability for your staff to easily update the due date for a sent purchase order. A new ‘Change Due Date’ button now appears in the Due Date column of the Sent Orders section under Purchase Orders. Your staff can instantly change the due date for a corresponding sent PO.

7. New ‘Receive Date’ column for Purchase Orders and Stock Requests/Transfer

We’ve updated the ‘Total Purchases’ report on your dashboard, as well as the ‘Received Orders’ section under Purchase Orders, and the ‘Received Stock’ section under Stock Requests/Transfer with a new ‘Received Date’ column. You now have the ability to easily determine the date of receipt of items into your inventory against a particular purchase order and stock request.

8. New ‘Stock On Hand’ column

a. We’ve introduced a new ‘Stock On Hand’ column under Batch Production. Now, when producing a batch, you are able to view stock on hand for the batched item before processing it.

b. In addition, we’ve introduced a new ‘Stock On Hand’ column for Issue Stock. This means, when issuing out stock at your location, you now have the ability to view stock on hand for that particular item before issuing it out.

9. ‘Stock Takes’ Widget Update

We’ve updated the ‘Stock Takes’ widget on your dashboard to now display the total number of completed stock takes at your location during the selected date range.

10. ‘Item Notes’ displayed in order details

We’ve updated Sapaad to display ‘Item Notes’ in order details. This means, notes informing your staff about a customer’s request or modification to an item in their order now show up in the order details, just like modifiers.

11. New features added to Sales reports

We’ve updated the ‘Sales By Location’ and ‘Orders By Location’ reports on your sales dashboard with new columns ‘Orders’, ‘Sales’ and ‘Average Per Cheque’ as well as a powerful graphical representation of your sales trends. Now, get a daily breakdown of total number of orders, total sales, and average amount per cheque at each of your locations.

12. ‘Top Selling Items’ Report Enhanced

The ‘Top Selling Items’ report on your dashboard can now be filtered by a combination of filters. This means, you can now identify and upsell menu items with high profitability across a combination of Staff, Tags and Categories selected from the respective filter dropdown buttons.

13. Improved ‘Total Orders’ Report

We’ve updated the ‘Total Orders’ report on your dashboard to display a new ‘Ready At’ column when exported to CSV. This means, for Walk-in, Dine-in and Online orders made ready from the bump screen, you can now determine the time at which the orders were ready.

14. Delivery Report Update

We’ve updated the denomination of time in the Delivery Report on your dashboard, when it is exported to CSV. Now, data in columns ‘Preparation Time’, ‘Pickup Time’, ‘Delivery Time’, and ‘Total Time’ are displayed in the denomination of “minutes” and not “hours”.

15. New ‘Tax’ column added to reports

If you’ve enabled Tax at your location, a new column ‘Tax’ will be displayed in the ‘Total Orders’ and ‘Sales Summary’ reports on your dashboard. It’s a great way to account for total tax at your location.

16. Account for your Sapaad subscription invoices

We’ve made it easier than ever to keep track of your Sapaad subscription billing. You can now view all your monthly invoices by simply visiting the ‘Billing’ section under Setup > My Account.

We’re always working hard to make Sapaad more fun and useful for you. This week, we’ve introduced several exciting enhancements. We’ve polished areas of Sapaad for greater clarity and consistency, we’ve introduced additional in-report columns and filter abilities, and we’ve revamped a few aspects of the Inventory module for a much-improved Inventory experience!

Here’s a quick round-up of our latest updates and performance improvements:

1. “Current Stock” Improvements

Under Inventory > Current Stock, when viewing the history of stock movement for a particular ingredient or finished good, you now have the ability to view complete details of all stock movement for that item.

2. “Purchase Orders” Enhancements

a. When raising a purchase order, the search field now auto-predicts supplier names, so you can easily search for and add items to a purchase order for a supplier.

b. Under Sent Purchase Orders, you now have the ability to ‘Print’ a sent purchase order.

c. We’ve made additional improvements to sending purchase orders: we’ve got an all-new design for the purchase order email, and we’ve also added a ‘Preview’ button; do a quick preview of a purchase order before hitting send.

d. For the search field under Received Purchase Orders, in addition to searching by order and invoice number, you can now do a search by Supplier as well. Fine-tune your searches to get all received purchase orders corresponding to a particular supplier.

3. Enhanced “Batch Production”

We’ve redesigned the batch production experience for enhanced clarity and visibility into the stock requirements and stock availability to process the batched item.

4. “Stock Issues” Update

We’ve introduced a ‘Sales Return’ dropdown option when issuing out stock. This ensures all damaged and expired items that are returned to the supplier are accounted for.

5. Top Inventory Modifiers Report

The ‘Top Inventory Modifiers’ report has a new column called ‘Menu Item’. Now, easily identify menu items with the most frequently-ordered inventory modifiers.

6. Table Wise Sales Report

The ‘Table Wise Sales Report’ can now be filtered by ‘Dine-In Areas’. A great way to identify which of your dine-in areas are generating the maximum business in a day.

7. Theoretical Stock Report

When exporting the ‘Theoretical Stock Report’ to a CSV file, you now get complete visibility into total stock moved in and out of your inventory, with the new Total In and Total Out columns.

8. New and Improved In-app Consistency: In this update, we’ve polished areas of Sapaad for greater clarity and consistency.

9. Other fixes and performance improvements:

+ Due Date is non-editable when creating a new purchase order.
+ Resolved issue of deleting default supplier when adding a new supplier for ingredients and finished goods.
+ Inventory Modifier stabilisation.
+ Improved display of stock movement type in Theoretical Stock Report.
+ Fixed an issue when saving Stock Takes with a large number of items.
+ A new location now adds all ingredients for a newly-created location.
+ Resolved issue in Finished Goods and Recipes to correctly calculate COGS.
+ Fixed data mismatch issue in ‘Cancelled Orders’ report.
+ Stock issued out due to stock adjustment is correctly accounted for in the Wastage Cost Report.
+ Fixed issue of repetition of ingredients when displaying a recipe.
+ Fixed issue of repetition of supplier names when displaying a purchase order.
+ Information pop-ups are now displayed correctly.
+ In ‘Total Purchases’ report, fixed issue to correctly display the Received Quantity.
+ We’ve disabled the Order Types filter dropdown from specific inventory reports where order types is irrelevant.

Are you tired of spending hours updating your accounts? Accounting shouldn’t be a chore. Introducing the all-new Sapaad and Xero integration!

Now, managing your back-office accounts is easier than ever. No complicated accounting systems, no piles of paperwork, no accounting headaches. Connect Sapaad and Xero for a better overview of your finances and a much-improved workflow!

What is Xero?

Xero is a beautiful accounting software that makes it incredibly easy to run your back-office accounts. Designed exclusively for small businesses, Xero, like Sapaad, runs on the cloud, and works anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

4 Awesome Benefits of Integrating Sapaad and Xero

1. Seamless Integration

As Xero is cloud-based, connecting your Sapaad account and Xero is incredibly simple and only takes a few minutes. All your business transactions including sales, discounts and payment types can easily be linked to the correct accounts.

 2. Automatically Sync Daily Sales

Sapaad automatically posts sales data to Xero at the end of your business day. You can even customise the time you wish to schedule the daily sync, and we take care of the rest!

 3. Multi-location Friendly

Got multiple locations? No problem! With just a single click, you can effortlessly map sales data to the right location.

 4. Save your business time, money and effort!

With Xero, spend less on your accounting, and more on growing your business!

Learn More

Nicky Ramchandani, a young entrepreneur based in Dubai, is the creator of Zen – an authentic, uber-popular Oriental restaurant in the heart of the city’s central business district. Nicky’s passion for great food and his dream to bring authentic Thai and Chinese cuisine to a city thriving with food lovers led to a career switch back in 2005.

We caught up with Nicky at his restaurant just before the busy office lunch hour. Nestled amid Business Bay’s towering skyscrapers, this charming little space is big on authenticity. It’s no surprise then that Zen is one of the top-rated Asian restaurants in Dubai.

Excerpts from our meeting.

Can you tell us a little bit about Zen and what inspired you to start it?

Zen is a product of my passion for food. I’m very passionate about food. I love researching new trends and fads in the cooking world.

Back in 2005, it was hard to find a restaurant in Dubai that served authentic yet great food that could be eaten everyday at a reasonable price. There weren’t many Thai and Chinese restaurants at that time. Most restaurants were into fusion, and compromised on ingredients, altering tastes to suit customers’ palates.

This inspired me to start a concept that served food the way it’s traditionally done on the streets of Thailand and China. We fly in our ingredients like chillies, herbs and noodles every week from Thailand and Hong Kong. We make our curry paste in-house. This is what makes Zen stand out from the rest. We stay true to the core of Asian culture and flavours.

What are the challenges you faced in starting up and running a restaurant in Dubai?

The biggest challenge in Dubai is sourcing the right ingredients. In Dubai, most of the produce are imported. So every six months, the ingredients available are of a completely different variety or country. This makes it very difficult to maintain the quality and taste of food.

Also, as a single-owner small business, another challenge was to put in place the right technology to keep me competitive. And to give me business intelligence to improve my customer engagement. Typically, such systems are unaffordable for start-ups. Luckily, I found Sapaad. Sapaad gave me all of that and because it’s a monthly subscription, it was affordable for a new business. A lot of our initial business challenges were addressed.

What has Sapaad’s role been in helping you achieve your business goals?

With Sapaad, I have instant access to critical sales information. This has helped me make informed business decisions in our year-round assessments. Last year, we were able to knock off 20 items from our menu that weren’t gaining us high profit.

Sapaad gives us great insights into sales trends in our home delivery areas. It helped us carefully-target our marketing efforts, and even cut down our monthly marketing budget.

I love Sapaad. I would, without a doubt, recommend Sapaad to other business owners.

What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs looking to make their mark in the restaurant business?

Focus on customer service. Because at the end of the day, the whole restaurant business revolves around your customers. We have over 10,000 customers in our database. When a customer calls, we have all the customer’s information at our finger tips. We address them by name. We know what they like, what’s their favourite food. Customers love this type of engagement. These little things go a long way.

I also advice to keep a record of your accounts from day one. And put aside 5% of your sales from day one, regardless.

Finally, what are the top three must-haves at Zen?

Our BBQ Chicken is a top favourite. Also, there’s the Spicy Papaya Salad, the Red Curry Based Stir Fry, and the Pad Kee-Mao Noodles (pictured here) made with noodles flown in straight from Thailand.

Follow Zen Dubai on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @zendubai or order online zendubai.com.

October got off to a great start here at Sapaad. We’ve completely upgraded the workflow of Stock Takes, we’ve got a new-and-improved Business Summary on your dashboard, and we’ve made winning back “inactive” customers a whole lot smarter with insights into their Loyalty earnings.

Here are all the latest updates from our recent improvements to Sapaad:

1. Stock Take: Workflow!

We’ve completely upgraded Stock Takes with a new ‘workflow’ feature.

Now, Stock Takes go through three phases: Draft, Review, and Completed. Each section of the workflow also has distinct permissions, which is great for having your stock counts conducted by one member of your team, and the review done by another. The addition of the review phase also allows you to adjust and correct any discrepancies or pending stock while the stock take is still in progress. Here’s how the new workflow feature works:

a. Once a stock take is done, it is ‘submitted for review’. It will then show under the ‘Under Review’ tab. You can now review the stock counts and make sure everything is ok. While a stock count is ‘Under Review’, you can still make adjustments to your stock (e.g. receive pending stock, issue out stock as wastage, etc.). Simply refresh the tab to see the changes.

b. Once the Stock Take is reviewed, click ‘Complete’ to push it to the next stage, completed. In this stage, the data is committed, and you can then ‘auto reconcile’ the counts to do an adjustment to your stock.

c. We’ve also introduced new access rights and permissions for your staff. You can restrict the role of your staff to simply ‘Count Stock’ and/or ‘Review & Complete Stock Take’.

2. Enhanced Consistency and Usability

a. We’ve enhanced the consistency of in-report labels, icons and formatting for a much-improved clarity of your dashboard. We’ve also made several KPI figures much larger and bolder, for improved readability.

b. Mandatory fields throughout Sapaad now have a standard guideline for greater clarity and consistency.

c. We’ve introduced breadcrumb navigation in Setup > My Account > Billing History to improve usability when viewing your invoices.

d. When resetting the password of your Sapaad account, an alert message now pops up on your screen notifying you of an instruction email sent to your inbox.

e. For a few more 3-decimal countries, we’ve updated the format of numerical values to display up to three decimal places.

3. New-And-Improved Business Summary

We’ve revamped the Sales Summary Report; and it’s better than ever! We’ve introduced a new section called ‘Wastage’ that gives you a complete breakdown of your total wastage costs across various wastage scenarios, at a glance. (Note that data in this section will only show from September 20th).

4. Delivery Manager Improvements

Idle home delivery orders automatically disappear from the Delivery Manager 24 hours after the order is placed. If you modify an unpaid order in the Total Orders report on your dashboard, the order will show up again on the Delivery Manager.

5. Loyalty in Inactive Customers Report

We’ve updated the Inactive Customers report with a new column called ‘Available Loyalty’. Now, identify customers who haven’t ordered in a while, and easily analyse their loyalty earnings. You can instantly reach out to them with an SMS encouraging them to redeem loyalty on their next order. It’s a great way to win them back at your restaurant! (Haven’t signed up for our awesome Loyalty module yet? Learn more about Sapaad Loyalty.)

6. Low Stock Reports Enhanced

We’ve added a new column for ‘Par Level’ in the Low Stock – Ingredients and Low Stock – Finished Goods reports. This way, you have everything you need to keep an eye on your low running stock.

7. Theoretical Stock Report Enhanced

You can now monitor and analyse every aspect of your stock movement by quantity or by purchase value, with our new filter dropdown in the Theoretical Stock Report.

8. Improved Wastage Cost Report

We’ve enhanced the Wastage Cost report to give you a detailed insight into the total wastage cost of each inventory item. Get an instant breakdown of wastage costs by movement types: wasted and stock adjustment.

9. Purchase Orders Updated

We’ve added back the ability to delete Sent Purchase Orders. However, only the Admin can delete a sent purchase order.

10. Updates to Inventory Setup

a. For Recipes, we’ve introduced breadcrumb navigation to improve the ease when editing a Recipe. We’ve also taken off the Duplicate button from the Recipe listing page alone.

b. We’ve enhanced usability when searching for an item to add as a Finished Good.

11. Other fixes and performance improvements:

-Resolved issue in Split Bill to equally divide surcharges when splitting a bill.
-Fixed issue to correctly apply discounts to the total bill amount.
-Resolved issue when applying 100% discount to an order to correctly account for inventory in the Wastage Cost report.
-Fixed issue when sorting Top Selling Items, Top Grossing Items, and Total Orders reports.
-Fixed overlapping issue when displaying customers’ past order details in CRM.
-For recipes defined as finished goods, resolved issue to correctly display history in Batch Production and Stock Receipts.
-Fixed display issue when modifying an order and adding a new item to an order.
-Resolved multiple tab issue for Dine-In orders.
-Under Stock Requests/Transfer > Received Stock, duplicate receipts are now correctly displayed with the prefix ST_ and not PO_.
-Resolved data mismatch issue in the Top Customers report.
-Resolved alignment issue in the Total Surcharges report.

Want to get started using Sapaad’s in-built SMS module?

If you’re an existing Sapaad customer, simply visit Setup > My Account to activate an SMS plan.

Not using Sapaad yet?

Sign up for a FREE trial

We caught up with Ali Sidani, the CEO & Founder of Pollo Pollo, at his restaurant in Dubai — an elevated-casual dining space with a warm, homestyle appeal  — and talked about the rich cultural heritage of Peruvian cuisine and how Sapaad helps him run Pollo Pollo.

Before Ali founded Pollo Polo — the first-of-its-kind authentic polleria in the Middle East — he took two fascinating culinary tours through Peru’s small coastal towns and its capital Lima. At Pollo Pollo, the signature Peruvian Pollo a la Brasa or rotisserie chicken takes center stage.

“My mission at Pollo Pollo is to take people on a mini vacation to Peru.” says Ali. And with good reason — everything at Pollo Pollo, from the cuisine prepared by the team of Peruvian chefs, to the Inca Empire-inspired decor, is authentically Peruvian.

Peru’s Culinary Heritage

“Peru’s culinary tradition is a blend of various cultural influences that can be attributed to the country’s political history.” says Ali.

He adds, “Spain colonised Peru for centuries. The most evident manifestations of the Spanish culinary influence is in the introduction of rice and citrus in the cuisine. The Chinese community then arrived during the construction of Peru’s railway network, and they introduced the Chaufa — a Chinese-Peruvian fried rice specialty.”

Ali goes on to tell us about the Japanese cultural influence that emerged in Peru after World War II, and the Japanese-Peruvian fusion cuisine called Nikkei that is now very popular. In addition, Peru has a diverse topography with the Amazon, the Andes, the Pacific coast and the desert.

“That’s what makes Peruvian cuisine so special,” he says. “And that’s why today it is the avant-garde cuisine worldwide.”

Peruvian Chicken

The Pollo a la Brasa had humble beginnings in Lima back in the 1950s. Today, pollerias are all over the country. “In the evenings, everyone from the President to the porter go to the pollerias to have their chicken.” he says of the popularity of rotisserie chicken in Peru.

Pollo Pollo’s in-house maestro pollero, Chef Jose, has 15 years of experience with rotisserie chicken. “You can say he’s a black belt in rotisserie chicken!” he quips.

Ali adds that the chicken used at Pollo Pollo is naturally-grazed; no hormones, no antibiotics. “We marinate it overnight in our special recipe and cook it the next day in our rotisserie ovens, which we’ve sourced from Peru.”

He talks about their initial challenge of finding the perfect sauces and marinades to use in their dishes. He sampled products from several suppliers, but did not find the flavours authentic enough. “We then had our chef go to Lima and based on his own special recipe, create and ship the sauces and marinades especially for Pollo Pollo. So that’s really where we take things to the next level.”

Signature Dishes

Every dish offered at Pollo Pollo has an interesting story behind it. The Causa De Pollo, for instance, originated during the war between Peru and Chile. “It was the wartime comfort food of villagers, made with mashed potatoes and filled with creamy chicken with aji Amarillo and avocado.” says Ali. The Quinoto is like Italian risotto, but made with quinoa. And the Aji De Gallina and Ceviche are very popular among patrons.

Pollo Pollo are also the first to bring the Inca Kola — Peru’s national cola, so to say — to the region. They also prepare a delicious natural drink called Chicha Morada from a unique purple corn that is native to Peru. He adds, “With the essence of this purple corn, we also make a special dessert Mazamorra Morada. That one’s a favourite.”

Other signature desserts at Pollo Pollo are the Picarones, which are like Peruvian donuts, served with Amazonian sugarcane honey; and the Alfajores, exquisite cookies filled with Dulce de Leche.

Running Pollo Pollo

“We’ve been in business for a year now, and the response has been great. At Pollo Pollo, we’re driven by passion and believe in serving quality.” says Ali.

He talks about how important it was for them to align with a technological system that would back them in their commitment to quality. “We looked at several systems. But we’re very happy we found Sapaad. We were introduced to Sapaad by our restaurant consultants and we’ve been using it since day one. The implementation was smooth. And we’re very happy with their professionalism and support.” he says.

Ali adds, “As a point of sale system, Sapaad has a great interface. The ease of use is fantastic; my staff are able to use it very well. A lot of our initial business challenges were addressed, and I’ve introduced Sapaad to many other restaurant owners.”

As for their future plans, Pollo Pollo aim to rack up their already impressive home delivery business even farther, and are also looking to expand into catering. Peruvian catering is a unique concept, and more people are now looking for something unique for their events, so they see the potential to grow in that dimension.

Ali has ambitious plans for Pollo Pollo, including franchising and expanding as a global presence.

We believe great things are in store for Pollo Pollo — the food and the experience are awesome —and Sapaad is thrilled to be a part of their inevitable journey to success!

Gallus, a charming French restaurant, gets its name from the Latin word “Gallus Gallus Domesticus” meaning “chicken”. Rotisserie Chicken is the central dish, alongside an array of French classics like Mushroom Soup, Gratin Dauphinoise and Rainbow Mille-feuille.

We caught up with Antoine Rontiex, one of the founders of Gallus, at his restaurant. Antoine, who has over 15 years experience in the F&B industry, in a career spanning 10 countries, shared his entrepreneurial journey and told us how he uses Sapaad to operate his business.

“We launched Gallus a year and a half ago,” says Antoine. “The spit-roasted chicken is a very popular dining tradition in France. And we wanted to bring that concept to the city.”

Gallus imports the best quality chicken exclusively from the region of Mayenne in France. “We are always in control of the quality of our food,” adds Antoine. “Our chicken is farm-fresh, and all our dishes are homemade and prepared with French recipes.”

When looking for a restaurant management system, Antoine wanted one that would not just help him “run” his restaurant but also provide business intelligence to help make quick and effective strategic decisions.

He says, “Since we specialise in home deliveries, we found Sapaad’s ‘Delivery Manager’ to be a critical component. It has changed the way we manage our deliveries and has tremendously improved our delivery time.” Antoine loves Sapaad’s ability to monitor and track home deliveries as they happen, all from a single screen.

“Sapaad’s support team is very professional,” he adds. “They are very prompt in the rare case I need any clarifications.”

Gallus has a niche fan-following of local and international diners. The ‘Gallus Lover‘ offer on their menu is a bestseller — it features a whole roast chicken served with a choice of two sides and three sauces. You can opt for their signature, homemade sauces like the Gallus Sauce, Piri Piri Sauce or Mushroom Cream Sauce.

Follow Gallus on Facebook @gallusrotisserie or visit their website gallus.ae.

The month of May introduced lots of exciting enhancements to Sapaad, including the ability to customize address labels in CRM, an improved usability of payment processes, an easier-than-ever flow when reviewing Stock Takes, and much more!

In case you missed it, here’s a complete round-up of our recent improvements and fixes.

1. Custom CRM Address Labels

You can now customize the way you capture your customer’s addresses so that it’s better suited to your country, region and location. You’ll find a new section under Setup > Global Settings called “CRM Address Labels”. Simply override the default labels and the new labels will immediately reflect in your CRM “New Customer” and “Edit Customer Address” screens. For e.g. You might want to change “Street” to “Zone” to reflect your country’s geographic address system. This will also reflect in Sapaad’s Online Ordering module if you’re using it.

2. Enhanced Payment Processes

In our effort to simply and improve your Sapaad’s user experience, we’ve improved the usability of how the payment process works in Sapaad when billing your customers.

We’ve made the way you select the payment method incredibly easier for both touch screen and desktop users. You can also customize payment types with clearly identifiable icons by selecting from a list of beautiful default icons. You can do this either when creating a new payment type or editing an existing one. Now when settling an order, all your Payment Types configured in Sapaad are displayed as beautiful buttons making payments quicker and easier than ever! You can also order your payment methods any way you like so that they’re displayed in the order of your preference. Visit Setup > Global Settings > Payment Types to do this.

3. Order Notes on Delivery Assistant

Order Notes will now be displayed on the Delivery Assistant. Now along with the order number and customer’s address, drivers have a quick at-a-glance view of any special requests or modifications to the order.

4. Updated Nomenclature

We’ve updated the term “Number of Persons” to “Number of Covers” throughout Sapaad for enhanced in-app consistency and to more accurately represent this aspect of the Dine-In module.

5. Improved Clarity of Order History

When viewing the Status History of a closed order, we’ve updated the order history details to provide a clearer and more granular representation of the order’s history. You will see new statuses such as “modified”, “updated”, and “reprinted” that reflect the activities of users.

6. Delivery Manager Update

Future Orders listed in the Delivery Manager now also display the customer’s name along with the order details.

7. New ‘Payment Received By’ filter

We’ve introduced a new filter dropdown in the Total Orders Report called “Received By”. You can now filter orders by staff who have received payments. Also, we’ve renamed the existing dropdown button “Staff” to “Order Taken By” to more clearly represent this feature.

8. Auto-notification when you’re running out of SMS

If you’re using Sapaad’s SMS Module, the administrator of your account will be notified by email when you’ve reached the limit of your current SMS Plan.

Additionally, when sending SMS from the Top Customers Report, Inactive Customers Report and the Open Send field, you will be informed if you’ve reached or crossed the limit of your current SMS plan.

9. PDA Improvement

In PDA, we’ve disabled the “Add Item” button after a single click to prevent accidentally clicking the button multiple times.

10. CRM Update

If you are not using Sapaad’s Loyalty program, you can now update the primary telephone number of your customers in CRM.

11. Capture Reference Code option disabled for payment type Loyalty

For Loyalty under Payment Types, we’ve made the Capture Reference Code option N/A by default as reference codes are irrelevant to Loyalty.

12. Inventory Enhancements

a. Reviewing stock takes is now easier than ever! When submitting a Stock Take for review, Sapaad now filters your list of inventory items and only displays the items that were part of the stock take i.e. the items for which the stock was counted.

b. We’ve moved the “Stock On Hand Now” widget on your dashboard to a new default location; you’ll notice this widget at the top left of your dashboard’s inventory section.

c. The email field when adding or editing Suppliers under Inventory Setup is now limited to 250 characters.

13. Access Control Improvements

In our effort to simplify and improve access rights and permissions and secure your business, we’ve improved the access control process for Order Transactions. There is now a new access permission (found in Setup > Staff) called “Modify Completed Orders”.

Using this permission, you can control staff permissions in a more granular manner, restricting their access to modify ‘closed’ bills in a more secure way. Only if a staff member is given the permission to ‘modify closed orders’ can he or she open past orders. (Note: This is separate from the ability for waiters to update orders at the table, which is covered by the “Create & Update Order” permission.)

14. In-app Help Widget

We’ve introduced a new Help widget in Sapaad. You’ll notice a “?” icon at the bottom right of your screen. If you have a general question about using Sapaad, you can simply click this icon and browse our Knowledge Base for walk-throughs on Sapaad’s features and answers to frequently asked questions.

15. Additional Fixes & Improvements

+ We’ve fixed a bug that prevented the POS order-taking screen from loading correctly if there was a “forward slash” special character in any of the menu items.

+ On the Dine-In order-taking screen, clicking “Print Bill” disables the order “Discount” button. This has been fixed.

+ Online orders will not show on the dispatch screen if the ‘Show Delivery Orders in the Dispatch Screen’ option is disabled.

+ When an item added to the PDA has a mandatory modifier, the “Update” button now remains enabled even after the mandatory modifier has been selected.

+ Call center delivery orders and take away orders placed when the Delivery Manager was disabled incorrectly recorded double payments. This issue has been resolved.

+ Take away orders that are scheduled for a later time during that particular day are now correctly listed under Future Orders and not Take Away Orders in your Delivery Manager.

+ We’ve fixed a bug that duplicated payments for orders on the Delivery Assistant.

+ Logging in using a swipe card now correctly takes you to the swipe screen page after logging out.

+ We’ve fixed a bug in the Total Orders Report that incorrectly recorded payments of online orders as null values, only in the case when Delivery Manager was disabled.

+ In a particular scenario, there was a discrepancy in the date and time displayed on the Total Orders Report when exported to CSV. This has been resolved.

+ The Theoretical Stock Report now correctly exports the report when viewed “By Quantity” or “By Value” respectively.

+ We’ve fixed a bug in Loyalty that incorrectly allowed redemptions that were more than the Maximum Redeem Value i.e. more than the maximum Loyalty a customer can redeem in a single transaction.

+ UI fix in the Business Summary.

Seamless integration for a total business solution.

Sapaad comes with out-of-the-box integration with a growing list of industry-leading accounting software including Xero and Tally.

Automate the daily sync of your sales data and manage your back-office accounting with incredible ease. Save time, improve accuracy and get a better overview of your finances.

The best part? Integrating Sapaad with your accounting software is quick and easy; you can get started in minutes!

Easy, one-step integration.

Xero

Sapaad integrates seamlessly with Xero – a beautiful cloud accounting software. All you need to do is enable Xero in Sapaad and link your business transactions to the right accounts in Xero. Learn more.

Tally

Sapaad + Tally integration is quick and easy; all it takes is two minutes. Simply download and install the Sapaad Tally Adapter on your computer and you’re up and running. Learn more.

Sync your daily sales.

Sapaad automatically posts your daily sales data to your accounting system at the end of your business day or at a time of your choice. No manual data entry, no human error; an overall improved workflow.

Even more coming soon!

We’re always re-imagining ways to help you streamline your business and get the best out of your Sapaad experience.

Watch this space for more updates on the latest apps joining our growing list of awesome and powerful third-party partner integrations.

Want to learn more?

Contact Us

Sapaad expertise at your fingertips!

Need help? We’ve got you covered with Sapaad’s comprehensive in-built help widget.

Access detailed walk-throughs of all of Sapaad’s powerful features and get answers to frequently asked questions that’ll help you run your business even more efficiently. It’s just a click away!

How it works

Click for help

Simply click the help icon at the bottom right corner of your screen in Sapaad and get access to a powerful context-sensitive help widget.

Get answers!

Type in your query or topic in the search field and instantly get answers, insights and power tips on Sapaad usage.

Introducing
Barcode Scanning

Sapaad now supports barcode scanning! Instantly add items to your bill by scanning their barcodes. Great for retail F&B and for rapid, easy checkout!

As easy as ‘point and shoot’ 

1. Add barcodes for your items 

Simply visit Setup > Menu Setup, edit your items, and enter their unique barcodes in the Barcode field.

2. Instant & efficient checkout!

Scan the item’s barcode with the hand-held scanner connected to your POS. The item instantly gets added to your bill.

We’re constantly working to make Sapaad the best it can be. This June, we introduced a ton of exciting enhancements to Sapaad including barcode scanning in the POS interface, the ability to enable discounts for specific order types, and much more!

In case you missed it, here’s what’s new:

POS Barcode Scanning

Sapaad now supports barcode scanning in the Point of Sale interface! Instantly add retail items to your bill by scanning barcodes. Great for retail F&B and for rapid, easy checkout! Learn more.

Discounts by Order Types

You now have the ability to enable item and order discounts for specific order types. For e.g. You might want to offer a special discount that applies only for your Delivery orders but not for your Dine-In orders. You can easily do that when creating a new discount or editing an existing one. Simply visit Setup > Location Setup > Surcharges and Discounts.

Export your Menu with cost/profit information!

You can now export a complete list of your menu items along with their respective cost, sale price and profitability. Simply visit Setup > Inventory Setup > Recipes and click on the new Export button on the upper right for an item-wise breakdown of your food costing.

Show orders on Dispatch Screen for specific Order Types

We’ve updated the Dispatch Screen section under Setup > Location Setup so that you can now choose which order types you’d like to show on the Dispatch Screen. For e.g. You may want only your Walk-In and Take-Away orders to show on the Dispatch Screen. To set this up, visit Setup > Location Setup > Dispatch Screen.

Browser zoom support on the POS screen

We’ve enhanced the usability of the POS screen so that it works better when you use your browser’s “Zoom” feature (to fit more on your screen). When completing a transaction, the payment type buttons now play nice and have an improved response. However, please note that Sapaad has been designed to work best at standard 100% zoom.

Security Enhancement

If a user is assigned to a default page, however, does not have access permissions for that page, they will be informed to update the page permission settings for their Role in Setup or to contact their Administrator if they do not have access to Setup.

Improved Network and Latency Performance

We’ve upgraded our CDN infrastructure to provide improved latency and caching, resulting in responses that are more quick, reliable and secure.

Additional Updates

a. We’ve rearranged the sections under Setup > Location Setup for improved clarity: there are new sections called “Dispatch Screen” and “Token Screen” which include the settings for dispatch screen and token screen respectively.

b. There is now a new access permission under Setup > Staff called “View Token Screen” to enable staff access to the Token Screen.

c. When resetting a password, entering an incorrect email address will prompt an “Email not found” message.

d. When updating the price of a menu item under Setup > Location Setup > Menu, Sapaad now detects and disallows null values in the Branch Price field.

e. When updating your location details in Sapaad, under Setup > Location Setup > General Details, the country selected cannot be changed.

f. For Grouped Items listed under Setup > Location Setup > Menu, we’ve disabled the Branch Price field by default as prices are not relevant to Grouped Items.

g. For orders punched in the Offline Mode that are settled with a payment type other than cash, the invoice now displays the corresponding payment types.

h. Additional stability and performance enhancements.

We’ve got more exciting stuff coming up, and we can’t wait to share it with you! Be sure to keep checking back our blog, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Not using Sapaad yet?

Schedule your Discounts!

With Sapaad’s all-new, super flexible discount scheduler, gain full control of your discounts. Now, you can easily plan and set your discounts to run at specific times — certain days of the week, a date or time range, or a combination of both.

Easy to setup, easy to use!

You can set up a discount schedule easily while creating a new discount or editing an existing one. Visit Setup > Location Setup > Surcharges and Discounts to get started.

Schedule by Day of the Week

Select the days of the week that you want to run the discount e.g. every Monday.

By Date Range

Select a date range when you want to offer the discount for e.g. the month of December or during Summer.

By Time of the Day

Set a time of the day you want to offer the discount. For e.g. A lunch hour or happy hour discount.

Or all of the above!

You can also schedule by a combination of Day of the Week, Date Range, and Time. For e.g. You’re offering a Happy Hour discount every weekday between 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the month of December.

Now, your discounts appear on your Point of Sale right on schedule. It’s super easy and intuitive!

Scheduled Discounts is a FREE update for all Sapaad customers and is available today!

Not using Sapaad yet?

Burger28 is an elite burger drive-in that blends contemporary Emirati lifestyle with the familiarity of local traditional cafes. It is the brainchild of Alexander Debare, an entrepreneur with a passion for handcrafted burgers, honest cooking and unrivaled customer service.

We caught up with the founder himself who shares his inspiration behind Burger28 and how Sapaad complements his operations.

Q. Tell us all about Burger28.

Burger28 is a homegrown concept. It was my love of burgers that made me want to start my own burger concept. You have to agree, burgers are the universal comfort food!
At Burger28, we’re all about the car hop dining experience. Our tagline “Honk For Your Burgers” quite literally sums up how things work here: customers drive in, we go up to their car, take their orders on our iPads, and they get to enjoy their meal right in the comfort of their car. It’s a unique concept in the region. We were one of the first to capitalize on it, and we’re happy that it’s now become our signature.

Q. So what’s the story behind the 28 in Burger28?

The 28 in Burger28 represents two things: it’s the street where our first outlet began, that’s 28th Street MBZ City. Secondly, I was 28 when we started out back in September 2016. So it’s all about remembering where it all began. We’re proud of our roots.

Q. As Burger28 is your first venture in the F&B industry, what initial challenges did you face that you’d like to share with aspiring restaurateurs?

I’d say the biggest challenge for restaurateurs is making sure you have the right location. That, coupled with having all the government approvals in time for your opening. Sometimes the approvals take longer than you think.
On the tech front, it’s important to have the right restaurant technology as part of your business plan. I wanted to infuse technology in a smart way into my operations. My goal was to have a multifaceted, modern POS. That’s when I came across Sapaad in my research and found it to be the perfect fit.

Q. What are the ways Sapaad has helped you achieve your business goals?

The best part about Sapaad is that it is specifically designed for the restaurant business. The dashboard interface is perfect for a restaurant owner. It helps me not only track my sales, but also my food costing and inventory transactions.
Sapaad works on several platforms; this was an important factor when we first reviewed it. I can access Sapaad on my laptop, iPad or even my iPhone. Having the ability to take orders and complete transactions directly on an iPad makes all the difference. Especially since a quick and convenient customer experience is what we strive for. And speaking of customer experience, Sapaad’s customer support structure is fantastic. That’s always something that appeals to me when in a business partnership.

Q. What are the must-haves at Burger28?

We offer a limited menu of signature burgers that are mainly inspired by the local culture. Be it in terms of flavor or the name of the dish. The Dynamite28 and The Arbab are our most popular burgers. Arbab means boss in Arabic. It’s a spicy chicken burger that’s been given a crunchy texture with Chips Oman. For the unfamiliar, Chips Oman is a local potato chip brand that was available long before other brands came to the region. So it’s a nostalgic addition that reminds people of their time growing up here in the 80s and the 90s.
Also, you have to try our Wa7sh Fries. Wa7sh translates to beast; it’s fries topped with melted cheese, sour cream, jalapeños, beef bacon and our handcrafted Beast sauce.

Q. Finally, what’s next for Burger28?

We started out in an up-and-coming area to really test out our product and our brand. We’re thrilled with the response we’ve received from our niche clientele. For the future, we’ve got some ambitious plans. We’re keen to make a mark in the competitive market. We are opening our second location. That’s where Sapaad comes in again; I love the ease of scalability!

At Sapaad, we’re excited to be part of the Burger28 success story! Follow Burger28 on Facebook and Instagram @weareburger28 or visit their website burger28.com.