Stations
Create and manage preparation stations to route print tickets to the right area and organise your workflow.
What are stations?
A station represents a physical preparation area in your business — such as a kitchen, bar, counter, or packaging area — where orders are prepared. Stations let you organise your workflow by routing print tickets to the correct location and tracking preparation times for each area.
Why use stations?
Stations solve several common problems in busy environments:
- Route print tickets to the right area — When an order contains items from different preparation areas, each station receives only the items relevant to it. A drink order goes to the bar printer while the food order goes to the kitchen printer.
- Track preparation times — Each station has a default prep time, making it easy to estimate when orders will be ready and identify bottlenecks.
- Organise your workflow — Clearly defined stations help your team understand responsibilities and keep operations running smoothly.
Creating a station
- 1
Navigate to Stations
Go to Devices → Stations from the sidebar navigation.
- 2
Click Add Station
Click the Add Station button in the top-right corner of the Stations page.
- 3
Name your station
Enter a descriptive name for the station, such as “Kitchen”, “Bar”, “Counter”, or “Packaging”.
- 4
Set the default prep time
Enter the default preparation time in minutes. This helps estimate when orders assigned to this station will be ready.
- 5
Add a description
Optionally add a description to clarify the station’s purpose — for example, “Handles all hot food items” or “Cocktails and beverages”.
- 6
Save
Click Save to create the station. It will immediately appear in your station list and be available for device and printer assignments.
Station creation form with name, prep time, and description fields
Assigning Edge devices to stations
Once a station is created, you can assign one or more Eleo Edge devices to it. This tells the system which physical computer (and its connected printers) serves that station. Navigate to the station detail page and select the Edge device from the dropdown list of paired devices.
A single Edge device can be assigned to multiple stations if it has printers that serve different areas. For example, a computer in the back office might have a label printer for packaging and a receipt printer for the counter.
Printer assignments
Each station can have one or more printers assigned to it. Printer assignments control how print jobs are routed when an order is sent to that station.
- Assign printers — Select one or more printers from the Edge device’s detected printers and add them to the station.
- Set the printer role — Each printer is assigned a role that determines the type of job it handles:
- Label — Product labels with barcodes and pricing.
- Receipt — Customer receipts after a sale.
- Ticket — Station preparation tickets for kitchen or bar orders.
- General — A catch-all role that handles any print job type.
- Set priority order — When multiple printers share the same role, the priority order determines which printer receives jobs first. If the primary printer is busy or offline, the system falls back to the next printer in the list.
- Toggle active/inactive — Temporarily disable a printer without removing it from the station. Inactive printers do not receive print jobs but remain configured for when you need them again.
Station detail page showing assigned devices and printers
Start with one station per preparation area and add more as your workflow demands. You can always split a station into multiple stations later — for example, separating “Hot Kitchen” and “Cold Kitchen” if a single kitchen station becomes a bottleneck.