Guide
Amber POS — User guide
This guide walks you through Amber from the first sign-in to the end of a trading day: setting up the outlet, the menu and the stock, buying from suppliers, selling food, and checking the money. Every chapter has a short video, screenshots and a checklist.
Follow the chapters in order the first time. They tell one story: a small restaurant, Amber Bistro, gets set up and sells its first meal. Each chapter starts where the last one stopped.
Chapters
| # | Chapter | Who uses it | What you get | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00 | Run Amber locally with demo data | Whoever prepares the demo | Amber running on your computer with demo staff and menus | — |
| 01 | Signing in and finding your way | Everyone | Sign in with a role PIN, use the menu, lock the screen | ▶ 01 |
| 02 | Setting up the outlet | Admin | Receipt and company details, staff, PINs, floor plan | ▶ 02 |
| 03 | The menu (Catalog) | Admin, manager | Categories and dishes with sizes and extras | ▶ 03 |
| 04 | Setting up stock | Admin, storekeeper | Suppliers, stock items, drinks (soda, water) and recipes that link dishes to stock | ▶ 04 |
| 05 | Buying stock | Storekeeper, manager | Purchase order → approval → delivery → invoice → payment | ▶ 05 |
| 06 | Selling food | Waiter, kitchen, cashier | A table's order from seating to receipt | ▶ 06 |
| 07 | Daily stock checks | Kitchen, storekeeper, manager | Stock after sales, "86" a dish, record waste | ▶ 07 |
| 08 | Money and reports | Admin, manager, cashier | Order history, sales by payment method, cashbook, petty cash, profit | ▶ 08 |
| 09 | Common problems | Everyone | What a message means and what to do | — |
How Amber fits together
Settings ─▶ Catalog (what you sell) ◀── recipes ──▶ Inventory (what you buy and keep)
│ ▲
▼ │ deliveries
Waiter ─order─▶ Kitchen ─ready─▶ Cashier ─paid─▶ Receipt │
│ Suppliers ┘
▼
Accounting (sales, cashbook, profit)- Catalog is the menu: everything a waiter can order, with prices.
- Inventory is the store: everything you buy, how much you have and what it cost.
- A recipe joins the two. When a dish is sold, its ingredients leave stock by themselves.
- Accounting brings together sales, money paid to suppliers and petty cash.
Who does what
Everyone signs in by picking their role and typing that role's 4-digit PIN. Each role sees only its own part of Amber.
| Role | Main work | Demo PIN |
|---|---|---|
| Admin | Owner. Everything, including settings and staff | 1234 |
| Manager | Floor, catalog, approvals, accounts | 2580 |
| Cashier | Bills, payments, receipts | 4321 |
| Waiter | Tables and orders | 1111 |
| Kitchen | Kitchen tickets, dish availability, waste | 7834 |
| Store | Stock, purchase orders, deliveries, counts | 5566 |
These PINs are for the demo only. Change them before real use (chapter 02).
The demo people
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Amber Admin | Admin |
| Amina Otieno, James Kariuki, Grace Wanjiku | Waiters |
| Mary Achieng, Peter Mwangi | Cashiers |
| Wanjiru Kamau | Kitchen (added in chapter 02) |
| Otieno Ouma | Storekeeper (added in chapter 02) |
Conventions in this guide
| You see | It means |
|---|---|
| Settings | A menu entry, button or tab to tap |
| Inventory › Items | Open Inventory, then the Items tab |
| Draft | A field name, or a status shown on screen |
523401 |
Something to type exactly |
All amounts are in Kenya shillings (KES). "Tap" and "click" mean the same thing: Amber works with a mouse or a touch screen.
About the videos and screenshots
The videos are recorded from a real Amber running the demo data. Yellow step captions at the bottom
say what is happening, and a yellow ring shows each button before it is pressed. They live in
videos/ as .mp4 files: open one from the table above, or from the top of each chapter.
The screenshots and videos are made by scripts in tools/, so they can be made again after Amber changes. Chapter 00 explains how.