Setting up Foodpanda and Keeta auto-accept

What auto-accept actually does

When a customer orders on the platform, the platform notifies your POS over an API. The POS creates the order, routes items to the right stations by menu category, and prints the kitchen ticket — with nobody typing anything.

Compared with a platform tablet, the gain is not only speed: items, notes, cutlery counts and pickup times all arrive as data, so nothing is lost to a mis-typed line during a rush.

Prepare first: menu mapping

The slow part of any integration is menu mapping — every product on the platform has to correspond to a product in your POS. If names differ, or the platform carries combinations your POS does not, incoming orders will not reconcile.

The smoothest approach is the reverse of what most shops do: get the menu right in the POS first, then push it up to the platform. The two are then identical by construction, and a price change only has to be made once.

• Confirm your POS categories, option groups and combo structure are correct first
• Push the menu from the POS rather than building it by hand in the platform portal
• After pushing, place test orders on a few complex items and check the notes survive

Accept mode: automatic or manual confirmation?

Most platforms allow either: accept the moment an order arrives, or hold it as pending until staff tap.

Automatic saves real effort during a rush, but if you routinely sell out of certain dishes, manual confirmation is safer — cancelling after accepting hurts your store rating far more than declining up front. Many shops split it by time of day: automatic at lunch, manual otherwise.

Prep time and marking food ready

The platform dispatches riders based on your stated prep time. If reality runs slower, riders wait in your shop and your rating drops.

The right setup notifies the platform the moment staff tap "ready" in the POS, so riders are not left waiting — while keeping buttons to adjust prep time on the spot. Adding five minutes during a rush is better than every order running late.

What actually breaks

Once live, the recurring problems are rarely exotic. Almost all of them are one of these:

• The menu changed but was never re-pushed, so the platform still sells a deleted item
• An item was marked sold out in the POS but not synced, so customers keep ordering it
• No replay of orders that arrived during a network outage — those orders simply vanish
• Note fields not mapped, so "no ice" never reaches the kitchen ticket

How to sign it off

An integration being "connected" is not the same as it working. Before you rely on it, place real test orders yourself: one complex combo, one with customer notes, and one you cancel immediately. If all three behave, it is genuinely done.