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Dashboard

The staff dashboard shows two things:

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Where: Restaurant → Dashboard. Everyone sees it; managers see more.

Counter staff

The staff dashboard shows two things:

  • Needs attention: problems with the counter tablet or ticket printer, such as a printer that's offline or out of paper. "Everything is working." means there's nothing to fix.
  • Scans today: how many tickets have been redeemed today.

Select Scan a ticket to go straight to Scan & redeem.

The counter staff dashboard

Managers

The manager dashboard adds your restaurant's money and board details to the staff view.

The manager dashboard with Needs attention, the escrow wallet balance and ticket counts
  • Needs attention: lists hardware and account problems along with what to do about each one. Check Email me when a printer or tablet needs attention to get an email during opening hours when something goes wrong, and again when it's fixed. If it says Payouts are on hold, Forward Tab is reviewing recent activity: keep serving meals as usual, and payouts resume when the review is complete.
  • Escrow wallet balance: donations held for your restaurant in Forward Tab's 501(c)(3) escrow account. When the wallet reaches the amount needed for the next ticket (your cheapest active menu item, or a higher threshold if Forward Tab has set one) and there's room on the board, a new ticket is issued. Toward next ticket shows how close you are.
  • Ticket counts:
    • Issued: on the board.
    • Pending: being redeemed.
    • Redeemed: served.
    • Quarantined: held for review by Forward Tab.
  • Wallet health: how much is needed for the next ticket, the total value of tickets outstanding, when the wallet was last funded, and the last price true-up.
  • Community Board: how many tickets are on your board out of its Board size, which can be 1–200.
    • Change the size and select Save. Lowering it never removes tickets already up; refills just pause until there's room.
    • When more money is waiting than the board can hold, choose how many tickets under Print more now and select Print to print them right away.
  • Restaurant logo: upload a PNG, JPEG or WebP up to 2 MB. Donors see it when they search for your restaurant.
  • Opening hours: the hours Forward Tab has on file. A scan more than 30 minutes before opening or after closing is flagged for review, so ask Forward Tab to update them if they change. If no hours are on file, no scan is flagged for the time of day.

The wallet holds money from donors, Regulars, grants and your board's sponsors (a board can have up to five). However it was funded, you're reimbursed the full menu price for every meal you serve, except any part you chose to match (see Match patron donations).

Match patron donations

Managers can choose to match patron donations in kind, to show donors you're part of it. Under Match patron donations:

  1. Turn the switch on. It then reads Matching on.
  2. Set Donations to match per day (up to 999) and Daily match maximum ($) (up to $999.00). 0 means unlimited for either one. The last match of the day may be partial.
  3. Select Save.

Each patron donation is then matched dollar for dollar, up to your limits. Tips are never matched. Your match puts extra meals on your board, but you aren't paid for the matched part of a meal: it's your contribution. A meal that's fully your match has no payout. Changes apply to later donations; matches already made stand. The panel shows how many donations you've matched today.

Your match shows up in your reports:

  • [Reconciliation](/help/reconciliation): "incl. $X your match" under a ticket's value, "Your match: no payout" for a meal that was fully your match, and "$X your match (in-kind, not paid)" in the summary line.
  • [Statements](/help/statements): a Your match (in-kind) column in the settlement ledger and a Your match (in-kind meals contributed) total in the annual statement.
  • [Grant audit](/help/grant-audit): "$X paid · $Y your match" under a ticket's value.

Your page on forwardtab.org

Your restaurant has a page on the Forward Tab website, where search engines and donors find you as a community-minded local business. Managers can edit it under Your page on forwardtab.org:

  • About your restaurant: a sentence or two about your food and your neighborhood, up to 1,000 characters. The first 160 or so appear in search results.
  • Your website: optional. It starts with https://.

Select Save. Your page shows the change within a few minutes. Select View your page to see it.

Sponsor spotlight

Sponsors on the Enterprise insights tier get a monthly Restaurant Spotlight: a short post about the restaurant that served the most meals from their funds that month, which they can share on their social channels, such as LinkedIn. Your restaurant is featured only if a manager agrees.

Under Sponsor spotlight, tick Sponsors may feature us in their Restaurant Spotlight to agree. It saves straight away. A post about your restaurant uses your name, city, logo, the description from Your page on forwardtab.org and how many meals from that sponsor you served. Untick it at any time to stop being featured.

The Sponsor spotlight setting on the restaurant dashboard

It's off until you turn it on, and it doesn't change how meals are funded or paid.

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