Vendors / Regional & international
Zonal
The deepest UK pub-estate stack there is — Aztec EPoS plus Kitchen iQ, handhelds, bookings, PMS, purchase-to-pay and Zonal Pay under one roof — now owned by Volaris, with nothing at all published about pricing or APIs.
scored live legacy rubric
- Claims in scope
- 312
- Scored
- 45
- Assessed
- 43
- Unknown
- 269
- Not applicable
- 2
- Values challenged
- 17
unknown, never as no.Identity
- Owner
- Volaris Group (part of Constellation Software) — Zonal joined Volaris in 2026; previously independent, founded 1979 by Ralph McLean, trading as Zonal Retail Data Systems Limited, Edinburgh (SC069596). Joel Chapman became CEO in July 2026.
- Who it is for
- UK pub groups, restaurant chains, hotels, stadia, leisure venues and holiday parks — large, complex, multi-site estates; UK-only
- Site
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/
Pricing
transparency: unknown · unit: Quote only (scaled by estate size/complexity) · processor lock-in: unknown
- Software
- No figures published. Described as tailored to estate size and complexity with no hidden fees and all features included as standard.
Capabilities
Every claim is binary and checkable. Grades: A primary documentation · B product documentation · C pricing or feature page · D marketing claim · E third-party reporting · F inference with no source. A yes on a differentiator claim requires A or B.
Order capture & FOH workflow
Provides a graphical floor-plan editor where an operator can draw sections, place tables of varying shape/capacity, save multiple floor-plan layouts per location, and assign sections to servers.
order-capture-floor-plan-editor
Not scored by this record.
Order lines can be tagged to a seat number at entry, and the check can be split by seat afterward without re-keying items.
order-capture-seat-level
Not scored by this record.
Items can be assigned to courses and held, with a fire-next-course action available from a handheld or terminal that releases only that course to the kitchen.
order-capture-coursing-hold-fire
Not scored by this record.
Supports splitting a check by item, by seat, by even N-way, and by arbitrary dollar/percentage amount, and merging checks or tables back together, including after partial payment.
order-capture-split-merge
CLAIM: split by item, seat, even N-way and arbitrary amount, and merge checks/tables, including after partial payment. VERDICT: partial/B - every split and merge mode is documented; only the after-partial-payment conjunct is not stated. EVIDENCE: Aztec Button Picker: "The 'Visual Split Bill' function enables POS operators to easily split an account and create multiple splits and move a product to a split or across multiple splits enabling accurate guest billing" (by item); "The 'Split Total By' function enables POS operators to split the total of an open account by a number of guests where each guest equally pays a split amount" (even N-way). Per Seat Ordering (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/POS/Blogs/Per-Seat-Ordering.htm): "At payment time, accounts are already split by seat ... Guests can also be grouped, allowing two or more seats to be combined into a single payment." FreedomPay Devices FAQ (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/payments/Content/Payments/FreedomPay/Devices/Devices.htm): "Split - select the total value evenly; Other - enter a customer currency value to pay" (arbitrary amount). Merge: FOH role permissions "Account Merge - When enabled the operator will be able to merge accounts" and "Table Merge - When enabled the operator will be able to merge tables" (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Staff-Security/Setup/Roles.htm); Config Sets "Prompt for Reason on Account Merge / Table Merge". SHORTFALL: no page states split or merge is allowed after a partial payment; only a bug row touches it (iServe resolved issue "Partial payment line disappears from the PSO table after a selected seat is deselected"), which implies it but does not document it. SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Theme-Modelling/Setup/Themes/Button-Picker.htm · retrieved 2026-09-16 adversarially verified
Opens a bar tab against a card pre-authorization with a configurable auth amount, supports incremental re-auth as the tab grows, and auto-closes stale tabs at end of day. differentiator
order-capture-bar-tab-preauth
Not scored by this record.
An open check can be transferred between servers, tables, and devices, and the transfer is recorded in an audit log naming both employees.
order-capture-transfer-audit
Not scored by this record.
Ships a first-party handheld ordering app running natively on the handheld device (not a remote/mirrored desktop session) that can send to kitchen and take a card payment tableside.
order-capture-native-handheld
Not scored by this record.
With the internet down, terminals and handhelds can still create orders, apply modifiers, send to kitchen, and tender cash, and the vendor publishes what does and does not work offline.
order-capture-offline-order-entry
Aztec publishes its offline scope. Standalone Mode lets a terminal trade with the server down: orders can be created, choices and instructions applied, and cash tendered, and stored transactions reconcile to the account when the terminal rejoins. Shortfalls, all stated by Zonal: "operating a terminal in Standalone Mode means that it will trade entirely independently to all other terminals in the business inclusive of all remote printing capabilities (IE Kitchen Printers will NOT work)", so the send-to-kitchen half of the claim fails outright; the mode is not automatic failover but a manually pressed button requiring Dallas-key or PIN authorisation (override code 1901), taken after the terminal shows a countdown and reboots on losing the server; there is "a limited amount of space on a terminal for storing transactions during periods of being offline" with no figure published; and "it is recommended that only one terminal per trading area ever have Standalone Mode enabled", so this is not estate-wide degraded trading. Handheld (iServe) offline behaviour is not covered by this page or any other public Zonal page found. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Standalone%20Mode.htm · retrieved 2026-08-04
Guest QR at-table ordering writes items onto the same open check as server-entered items, rather than creating a separate order ticket. differentiator
order-capture-qr-same-check
Not scored by this record.
Offers a first-party self-order kiosk that renders the same menu and modifier tree as the POS with no separate menu build, and the vendor documents ADA/accessibility conformance for it. differentiator
order-capture-kiosk-first-party
Not scored by this record.
Supports drive-thru-specific order flow: order-point/pay-window/pickup-window separation, order sequencing or tandem-lane assignment, and pull-forward or parking-spot assignment.
order-capture-drive-thru
Not scored by this record.
Captures and reports drive-thru speed-of-service timers by segment (order, total, window) tied to individual orders.
order-capture-drive-thru-timers
Not scored by this record.
Vendor ships a first-party AI voice ordering agent for phone and/or drive-thru that injects orders directly as POS orders, or publishes a documented API partner program for third-party voice AI. differentiator
order-capture-voice-ai
Not scored by this record.
Supports order throttling: per-channel capacity limits per time slot with automatic quote-time extension when kitchen load exceeds a configured threshold. differentiator
order-capture-throttling
Not scored by this record.
Accepts future-dated/scheduled orders with a per-channel lead time and automatically injects them into the make queue at a computed fire time rather than on receipt.
order-capture-scheduled-orders
Kitchen iQ documents future-dated preparation: "When an order is rung up on the POS, the user has the opportunity to delay the time by which an order needs to be prepared", and Cook Times computes a fire order - a per-product cook time means "the next item will be displayed in 'waiting to start' X minutes after the first item ... all items arrive for serving at the same time", with a station able to have "visibility of the items [only] when they are due to be prepared, using the cook time view". Click & Collect takes orders "for collection at a specific location and time" and states it "will only display orders to your kitchen team when they're needed". Shortfall: the documented POS behaviour is the opposite of injection at fire time - a delayed order "is displayed on the kitchen screen display with both the delayed order time and the time the order was sent to the kitchen", i.e. it lands in the queue on receipt annotated with its due time; and a configurable per-channel lead time is documented only as per-provider prep times in Zonal Delivery, not for the first-party channels. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Delayed%20Orders.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Provides a distinct catering order flow with quotes, deposits, balance-due tracking, and a delivery/event schedule separate from the standard order queue.
order-capture-catering
Not scored by this record.
Pushes an order-ready signal back to third-party marketplaces (e.g. DoorDash) from POS or KDS state, rather than requiring a tablet tap. differentiator
order-capture-order-ready-signal
Not scored by this record.
Voids, comps, and discounts require a reason code and can be gated behind role-based manager approval, with all instances recorded in an exception report.
order-capture-void-comp-controls
Not scored by this record.
Menu, modifiers & pricing engine
Payments & money movement
The POS operates with third-party payment processors of the merchant's choosing (documented list of supported processors/gateways) rather than requiring the vendor's in-house processing. differentiator
payments-processor-choice
Not scored by this record.
Vendor publishes card-processing pricing publicly (a specific flat rate or interchange-plus markup) rather than quote-only. differentiator
payments-published-rates
Not scored by this record.
Native dual-pricing / cash-discount mode stores two prices per item and prints both cash and card totals on the guest check and receipt. differentiator
payments-dual-pricing
Not scored by this record.
Surcharging engine automatically excludes debit and prepaid cards via BIN/product-code detection, enforces the network percentage cap, and can be enabled or disabled per location. differentiator
payments-surcharge-guardrails
Not scored by this record.
All first-party payment terminals accept EMV chip and NFC contactless including Apple Pay and Google Pay.
payments-emv-nfc
Aztec PoS Payments documents EMV at the terminal: "If your venue is configured with integrated EFT, then the Chip & PIN device will prompt if configured the customer to leave a tip", with credit card taken through the integrated device rather than keyed. The Zonal integrated payment system page enumerates the wallets - "Supports digital payment - In addition to processing card payments, both Apple and Google Pay are supported" - alongside "end-to-end encryption and is fully PCI compliant" and tableside payment on the handheld. Chip and PIN plus Apple/Google Pay (which are NFC-only) covers the claim; contactless card is not separately named. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Payments.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Accepts contactless payments directly on a phone (Tap to Pay on iPhone and/or Android tap-to-pay) with no separate card reader. differentiator
payments-softpos-tap-to-pay
Not scored by this record.
Vendor ships a handheld that takes EMV/NFC payment at the table, including tip prompt and check splitting, without carrying the card away.
payments-pay-at-table
Not scored by this record.
Guest can scan a QR code on the printed check or table tent to view and pay the check from their own phone, with the payment closing the check in the POS automatically. differentiator
payments-qr-guest-pay
Not scored by this record.
Supports both pre-auth-then-tip-adjust and on-device tip prompt flows, with a documented batch/adjust window and a manager screen for unadjusted tips.
payments-tip-adjust
Not scored by this record.
Configurable tip pooling and distribution rules (by hours worked, sales, role percentage, or points) that produce a per-employee tip allocation exportable to payroll. differentiator
payments-tip-pooling
Not scored by this record.
Card payments can be captured while the internet is down via store-and-forward, with configurable per-transaction and cumulative offline limits. differentiator
payments-offline-store-and-forward
Not scored by this record.
Vendor publicly documents who bears the loss when a stored offline transaction declines on reconnect, and surfaces a post-reconnect report of failed offline payments. differentiator
payments-offline-decline-liability
Not scored by this record.
First-party gift cards with real-time balance tracking, redeemable across every location in the group and through the online-ordering channel.
payments-gift-cards
First-party gift cards are documented: the Loyalty & Gift Card Production guide covers "cards for use with iZone Loyalty or Gift platform", recommends "the loyalty / gift platform generates all card numbers" with prefix, number range and check digit, and specifies mag-stripe encoding plus a QR of the full card number "futureproofed for use during iServe or QR code scanners at the point of sale". The Loyalty product page states "Integration with your other Zonal technology facilitates automatic redemption and balance checking at any point-of-sale", which covers real-time balance and redemption anywhere in the estate; Toggle sells branded physical and digital cards with "easy redemption at any point-of-sale". Shortfall: redemption through the first-party online-ordering channel is not documented - Order & Pay and Click & Collect both list only "vouchers, promotional offers, and loyalty rewards" as redeemable in the guest journey - and Zonal "does not produce cards" itself. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Loyalty%20%26%20Gift%20Card%20Production.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
House/on-account tabs with per-account credit limits, running balance, and periodic statement or invoice generation.
payments-house-accounts
Not scored by this record.
A single check can be settled with multiple tenders and split by seat, by item, by even shares, or by arbitrary amount, with no hard cap below eight ways.
payments-split-tender
Not scored by this record.
Voids, refunds, discounts, and no-sales require role-based authorization (manager PIN or approval) and write to an immutable audit log identifying the approver.
payments-refund-void-controls
CLAIM: voids, refunds, discounts, no-sales require role-based authorisation and write to an immutable audit log identifying the approver. VERDICT: partial/B. EVIDENCE: Roles (FOH permission table): "Reverse Payments - When enabled the operator will be able to reverse payments from the corrections screen"; "Reverse Bill Discounts - When enabled the operator will be able to reverse applied discounts from the corrections screen". Managing Buttons (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Theme-Modelling/Setup/Themes/Managing-Buttons.htm): "Role Based Security ... Deselect Job Roles that are not able to perform the function or sell a selected product", plus time-based security; applies to correction-method buttons ("Adjust the properties of the buttons as required, Size | Colour | Position | Security", Correction Methods page) and Open Drawer ("perform a no sale function", Button Picker). Aztec 3.21.0 Setup (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Release-Updates/3.21.0/Setup.htm): "the operator performing the function does not have the permission to reverse the payment without authorisation". Audit: Audit Transaction Report (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Reports/Audit-Transaction.htm) "a complete audit trail of every order processed through your POS terminals, showing exactly who performed each action and when"; Detailed Corrections report "any product corrections performed along with the employee, correction type and reason" and payment corrections "along with the employee". SHORTFALL: no page names the APPROVING manager as a logged field (only the performing employee), and immutability is not stated. SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Staff-Security/Setup/Roles.htm · retrieved 2026-09-16 adversarially verified
In-product dispute/chargeback dashboard that lists open disputes and allows evidence submission assembled from the POS transaction record. differentiator
payments-chargeback-tooling
Not scored by this record.
Tokenized card-on-file for a guest profile, reusable across online ordering, phone orders, and in-store, with no PAN stored by the merchant. differentiator
payments-card-on-file
Not scored by this record.
Vendor publishes its deposit schedule and offers a next-day or same-day/instant funding option. differentiator
payments-payout-timing
Not scored by this record.
A single account can route settlement funds to different bank accounts per location or legal entity (separate MIDs or split settlement) under unified reporting. differentiator
payments-multi-entity-routing
Not scored by this record.
Vendor provides point-to-point encryption and a current PCI DSS 4.x Attestation of Compliance / P2PE listing available to merchants on request.
payments-p2pe-pci4
Not scored by this record.
Kitchen & production
Items route to specific KDS stations by item, category, order type, or revenue center, with routing rules configurable per location without vendor involvement.
kitchen-station-routing
CLAIM: items route to KDS stations by item, category, order type or revenue centre, configurable per location without vendor involvement. VERDICT: yes/B. EVIDENCE: Kitchen iQ Routing Rules: "Routing rules control where all product items are sent on their journey through the preparation journey ... Items are routed to stations"; filter options "Course, Order Destination, Prep Stream, Terminal Group, Serving Area, Station, Dish Allocation"; "Multiple 'To Stations' can be configured if an item is to be sent to more than one station for preparation". Prep Streams (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/kitcheniq/Content/Kitchen-iQ/Help-Guides/Configuration/Prep-Streams.htm): "Print Streams are configured against a product ... Within Kitchen iQ, these are referred to as Prep Streams and can be used as part of the Routing Rules configuration to define which Station items are sent to for preparation" (item/category). Order Destinations: "used on the POS to control the sale of products by type of order, for example Eat In / Take Away / Delivery" (order type); Serving Area / Terminal Group filters (revenue centre). Per location, operator-run: Configuration Home (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/kitcheniq/Content/Kitchen-iQ/Help-Guides/Configuration/Configuration-Home.htm) "For each site to operate a 'Configuration' needs to be created ... there can be as many configuration templates as required to fit with the operational needs of different sites and brands", with operator steps ("Click Add ... Click Save") in the customer-facing Kitchen iQ Setup help. SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/kitcheniq/Content/Kitchen-iQ/Help-Guides/Configuration/Routing.htm · retrieved 2026-09-16 adversarially verified
An expo screen consolidates items from multiple prep stations into a single order view and only marks the order complete when every contributing station has bumped its items.
kitchen-expo-consolidation
Kitchen iQ Channels: "Excluded Stations set to 'Prep1, Prep2, Assembly'... View will not show the account if any of the lines are at not at 'Server'. Account will become visible when all the lines are bumped to 'Server'" - a pass/expo view that resolves only once every contributing station has bumped. Routing Rules adds a "Recombine Station" for items sent to two or more stations and states "When items have been sent to 2 or more stations each operator of that station needs to individually bump the item". Stations defines an Assembly order stage: "product items have been cooked / made and have come together at the assembly / pass area for final plating". https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Channels.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Items can be assigned to courses and held, then fired to the kitchen on demand from a server terminal, handheld, or expo screen. differentiator
kitchen-course-firing
Not scored by this record.
Per-item cook times are configurable and the KDS staggers item start/display times so that all items on an order finish simultaneously. differentiator
kitchen-prep-time-pacing
Not scored by this record.
Kitchen load throttling automatically paces or delays release of incoming digital orders, or extends quoted prep times, once a configurable order-volume or ticket-time threshold is crossed. differentiator
kitchen-order-throttling
Not scored by this record.
Pausing a store or 86ing an item from the POS/KDS propagates the pause or availability change back to connected third-party marketplaces (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) automatically. differentiator
kitchen-channel-pause-propagation
Not scored by this record.
Bumping an order ready on the KDS sends an order-ready status event back to the third-party marketplace so couriers are dispatched on actual readiness. differentiator
kitchen-order-ready-callback
Not scored by this record.
KDS supports physical bump bars or programmable keypads in addition to touchscreen interaction, with documented supported models.
kitchen-bump-bar-hardware
Intro to Bump Bar documents a physical Kitchen iQ bump bar with a full button map (bump 1-6, unbump, hold, drill-down, order and item navigation, menu) and two shortcut sets depending on whether the screen is configured for a "vertical bump bar" or a keyboard, with a keyboard usable as fallback "if a kitchen screen is configured to use a vertical bump bar but for some reason it is not working". Shortfall: no supported bump-bar model or part number is published - the customer portal Hardware Catalogue's Kitchen Systems section lists exactly one item, "KIQ Kitchen Screen Controller / ZKMS-CONTRLR-IOT", and no bump bar or programmable keypad SKU appears anywhere in the catalogue. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Intro%20to%20Bump%20Bar.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
An all-day view aggregates outstanding quantities per item (and per modifier) across all open tickets on the station.
kitchen-all-day-counts
Not scored by this record.
Configurable target cook times per station or order type, with visual color escalation and/or audible alert when a ticket exceeds target.
kitchen-sla-alerts
Not scored by this record.
If a KDS screen or kitchen printer goes offline, tickets automatically fail over to a designated backup printer or screen with no ticket loss. differentiator
kitchen-printer-fallback
Not scored by this record.
KDS continues to receive and display tickets from on-site POS terminals when the internet or cloud backend is unreachable. differentiator
kitchen-offline-operation
Not scored by this record.
Station screens can display item-level build/assembly detail (recipe steps, portioning, or full modifier breakout) rather than only the ticket line text. differentiator
kitchen-item-build-screens
Not scored by this record.
Sectioned/fractional topping placement (halves, quarters, specific sections) is rendered visually and unambiguously on the make-line screen or ticket. differentiator
kitchen-pizza-fractional-display
Not scored by this record.
A bumped ticket can be recalled/unbumped, and an individual item can be refired or reprinted without re-entering the order.
kitchen-recall-refire
Not scored by this record.
Edits made in the POS to an order already displayed in the kitchen visually flag the added, changed, or removed items on the live ticket. differentiator
kitchen-order-modification-alerts
Not scored by this record.
Bumping an order ready triggers a guest-facing notification — SMS/text, app push, or an order-status display board — without a separate product purchase. differentiator
kitchen-guest-ready-notification
Not scored by this record.
Waste, spoilage, and remakes can be logged directly at the kitchen/KDS screen with reason codes, and the entry depletes inventory.
kitchen-waste-logging
Not scored by this record.
Reports actual ticket and per-station times (average and percentile) sliced by daypart, station, and order channel, exportable to CSV or an API.
kitchen-speed-of-service-reporting
Not scored by this record.
Generates prep lists or predicted prep quantities from historical sales and forecast demand, surfaced to kitchen staff as a daily prep task list.
kitchen-prep-forecasting
Not scored by this record.
Delivery, dispatch & third-party channels
Product includes a native in-house driver module: drivers are first-class entities with clock-in/out, assignment state (in-store / on-run / returning), and per-driver run history reportable from the POS itself (not via a third-party add-on).
delivery-driver-roster
Zonal states what its delivery product is: "Zonal Delivery is our cost-effective, user-friendly platform for managing delivery service providers, offering seamless integrations with the three major online ordering and delivery services", and the FAQ defines the category as managing "Deliveroo, Just Eat, and Uber Eats in one location". The enumerated feature set is Direct order integration, Centralised management, Easily publish changes, Flexible item pricing and Control order volumes - no driver entity, assignment state or run history. Corroborated by the Zonal Delivery help guide already held in this record, whose complete Setup section list is Login & Navigation, Permissions, Menu Management, Pricing, Orders & History, Prep Times & Availability, Overriding Product Names, Dietary Tags, Removing Sites and Deliveroo. In-house delivery is a third-party handoff, not a native driver module. https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/online-ordering-systems/delivery/ · retrieved 2026-08-08
Provides a dedicated dispatch/expo screen showing undispatched orders, driver availability, and elapsed time per order, with multi-order run batching (assigning 2+ orders to one driver as a single run).
delivery-dispatch-board
Zonal's delivery offering is documented as third-party aggregation only, with no dispatch of own drivers anywhere in it. The Zonal Delivery user manual scopes the product as 'manage all of your Delivery Service Providers (DSPs) from one place' and enumerates its entire feature set - menu schedules by DSP, publishing a menu, reviewing and adjusting prices across DSPs, pausing a menu, prep time, item availability, active orders and order history - with no dispatch or expo screen, no driver-availability view, no elapsed-time-per-order display and no multi-order run batching; dispatch and drivers belong to the DSP (Deliveroo, Uber Eats). The Delivery help-guide navigation on knowledge.zonal.co.uk shows the same DSP-only section list (Integrations, Setup, Menu Management, Pricing, Orders & History, Prep Times & Availability, Deliveroo), and the EPoS product page describes delivery solely as 'Orders from major delivery partners are received straight into the EPoS'. Knowledgebase searches for driver or dispatch screens surface nothing outside DSP integration. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/iOrder/Zonal%20Delivery/User%20Manuals/Zonal%20Delivery%20User%20Manual.htm · retrieved 2026-08-04
Dispatch includes a live map view with geocoded stops and system-generated route sequencing (turn order optimization) for a multi-stop run, not just a static address list. differentiator
delivery-route-map
Not scored by this record.
Captures live driver GPS position from a driver-facing mobile app and surfaces it back to the dispatch screen. differentiator
delivery-driver-tracking
Not scored by this record.
Delivery areas can be defined as arbitrary map polygons or by drive-time isochrones, not solely as a radius or a ZIP/postcode list. differentiator
delivery-zones-polygon
Not scored by this record.
Each delivery zone carries its own independently configurable delivery fee, order minimum, and quoted promise time, applied automatically from the validated customer address.
delivery-zone-pricing
Zonal Delivery is a DSP aggregation layer, not first-party delivery: "Zonal Delivery allows you to manage all of your Delivery Service Providers (DSPs) from one place", with setup guides only for Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Its user manual states it "will outline everything that you need to do to get the best from your Zonal Delivery platform" and enumerates the whole feature set - login, menu schedules by DSP, publishing a menu, per-DSP price adjustment, pausing a menu, prep time, order review, permissions. There is no delivery zone, delivery fee, order minimum, address validation or quoted promise time in it; fee and promise time belong to the DSP. Prep time is the only timing control and exists to tell the DSP when a courier should collect. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/iOrder/Zonal%20Delivery/User%20Manuals/Zonal%20Delivery%20User%20Manual.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Address entry is validated/geocoded against a mapping service at order time and rejects or flags out-of-zone addresses before the order is accepted.
delivery-address-validation
Not scored by this record.
Tracks per-delivery driver compensation inputs — mileage or distance driven per run, per-delivery flat reimbursement, and driver-retained tips — and exports them to payroll as separate reimbursement vs. wage lines. differentiator
delivery-driver-comp
Not scored by this record.
Provides a driver cash bank / settle-up flow that reconciles cash collected, orders assigned, and tips owed at end of shift, producing a per-driver over/short figure.
delivery-cash-reconcile
Not scored by this record.
Can hand a first-party order to an on-demand courier marketplace (DoorDash Drive, Uber Direct, Nash, Relay or equivalent) natively from the POS, with the courier quote and status returning into the order record.
delivery-daas-dispatch
Not scored by this record.
Supports hybrid dispatch: rules that automatically overflow an order to a DaaS courier when no in-house driver is available, out of zone, or past a wait threshold. differentiator
delivery-daas-fallback
Not scored by this record.
Offers direct, first-party certified API integrations with DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub marketplaces (vendor-owned, not solely resold through Otter/Deliverect/Chowly/ItsaCheckmate middleware). differentiator
delivery-3p-direct-integration
Not scored by this record.
Third-party marketplace orders inject automatically into the POS as normal tickets that fire to KDS/printers without tablet re-keying or manual accept.
delivery-3p-injection
Not scored by this record.
Marking an item or modifier 86'd in the POS pushes item-level out-of-stock status to connected third-party channels in near real time, and restores it on availability (DoorDash requires item and item-option 86ing of new POS partners).
delivery-86-sync
Not scored by this record.
Store can be paused/deactivated on each connected third-party marketplace from inside the POS with a timed auto-reactivation, rather than only from each marketplace's own tablet or portal.
delivery-store-pause
Not scored by this record.
Produces a third-party reconciliation report matching marketplace payout deposits to POS-recorded 3P sales, itemizing commission, marketing fees, refunds/adjustments, and identifying missing or unpaid orders. differentiator
delivery-3p-reconciliation
Not scored by this record.
Vendor exposes integration health to the operator — failed/rejected order injections, connection status per channel, and alerts on failure — rather than failing silently. differentiator
delivery-injection-error-visibility
Not scored by this record.
Guests receive a branded order status / driver tracking page or SMS link on the restaurant's own domain for first-party delivery orders, driven by real order and driver state.
delivery-tracking-page
Not scored by this record.
Quoted delivery promise times adjust dynamically from current kitchen load, driver availability, and zone drive time, rather than a fixed per-store constant. differentiator
delivery-promise-time
Not scored by this record.
Vendor documents explicit offline behavior for delivery: whether cash delivery orders, driver assignment, and driver settlement continue during an internet outage.
delivery-offline-behavior
Not scored by this record.
Digital ordering & guest-facing channels
Vendor ships a first-party, commission-free web ordering site on the restaurant's own branding/domain that writes orders directly into the POS with no per-order marketplace commission.
digital-first-party-web
"Zonal's Click & Collect platform is white-labelled, enabling you to fully customise it with your branding and logos. This gives your customers a simple, easy-to-follow user experience with no confusing third-party logos or messaging", delivered as a "Responsive web application" and "fully EPoS-integrated, meaning all orders placed through the platform are automatically passed through to your kitchen to be actioned as with in-venue orders". Order & Pay is the same construction: "Available as both a fully branded app and web platform", white-labelled, orders "automatically sent through to the kitchen or bar". These are first-party ordering channels sold by Zonal, not a marketplace, so no per-order marketplace commission arises; note that Zonal uses the explicit phrase "commission-free" only of Zonal Bookings, and hosting on the operator's own domain is not stated. https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/online-ordering-systems/click-and-collect/ · retrieved 2026-08-08
Vendor offers a branded native iOS and Android ordering app (published under the restaurant's own brand in the App Store/Play Store), not only a mobile web page or a shared multi-restaurant marketplace app. differentiator
digital-native-app
Not scored by this record.
Guests can create an account with saved addresses, saved (tokenized) payment methods, and one-tap reorder of a previous order across first-party channels.
digital-account-saved-payment
Re-verified verbatim at the current Order & Pay page: "Repeat orders - Another round? Guests can see and repeat previous orders at the push of a button", "Secure payment - All payments are processed securely by PayPal Braintree, with Apple Pay and Google Pay also supported", and "QR codes - After scanning a QR code, information such as table number and venue are pre-populated". A guest identity exists: the Loyalty knowledge base Data Flows guide documents White Label App auto-enrolment, a Loyalty widget web sign-up and head-office enrolment. Shortfall: no saved delivery or collection address (the nearest documented feature is "Deliver to Location - Add a room number, caravan plot or other fixed location") and no account-stored tokenised card - the named payment methods are device-held wallets. Further, the app account and the loyalty record are separate registrations: "If a guest signs up via the Loyalty Widget this will not create an App account." https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/online-ordering-systems/order-and-pay/ · retrieved 2026-08-08
Digital checkout presents configurable or algorithmic upsell/cross-sell suggestions (rules-based add-ons or personalized recommendations from order history), with attach-rate reporting on those suggestions. differentiator
digital-upsell-engine
Not scored by this record.
Supports future/scheduled orders with per-daypart throttling — capacity limits on orders or items per time slot that automatically close slots when the kitchen is saturated.
digital-scheduled-pacing
Not scored by this record.
Single digital ordering flow supports pickup, curbside (with arrival check-in), dine-in/QR table ordering, and delivery, with mode-specific fees and prep timing.
digital-fulfillment-modes
Not scored by this record.
Supports guest-facing QR scan-to-order and/or scan-to-pay at the table that opens or attaches to the existing POS check, including splitting and tipping.
digital-qr-table
Not scored by this record.
Vendor ships a self-order kiosk running the same menu and modifier logic as the POS, with accessibility-compliant UI and unattended EMV payment. differentiator
digital-kiosk
Not scored by this record.
Supports group ordering: a shareable link where multiple participants add their own items to one order under a per-person or total spend cap, with split or single payment.
digital-group-ordering
Not scored by this record.
Offers a distinct catering ordering flow with separate catering menu/minimums, lead-time rules, quotes or proposals, deposits, and invoice/house-account or ACH payment terms. differentiator
digital-catering-portal
Not scored by this record.
Vendor offers AI voice phone ordering (native or a named certified partner) that answers inbound calls and injects the completed order into the POS without staff transcription. differentiator
digital-voice-ai-phone
Not scored by this record.
Supports AI voice ordering at the drive-thru lane, integrated with the POS menu/modifiers and with escalation-to-human handoff.
digital-drivethru-ai
Not scored by this record.
Supports conversational SMS or chat ordering/reordering (text-to-order or text-a-link) that lands in the POS.
digital-sms-ordering
Not scored by this record.
Supports Order with Google — the restaurant's direct ordering link is provisioned to the Google Business Profile as an ordering option (ideally set as 'Preferred by Business'), rather than leaving marketplace links as the only choice. differentiator
digital-google-order
Not scored by this record.
Supports Apple Business Connect ordering placement — an 'Order Food' custom action on the Apple Maps place card pointing at the vendor's first-party ordering flow.
digital-apple-business-connect
Not scored by this record.
Loyalty accrual and redemption work inside the first-party digital ordering flow using the same guest identity as in-store, not as a separate post-purchase enrollment.
digital-loyalty-attach
Not scored by this record.
Supports guest subscription / membership programs (recurring billing for a delivery-fee waiver, a per-period item entitlement, or a paid loyalty tier) managed in the platform.
digital-subscriptions
Not scored by this record.
Discounts, coupon codes, and loyalty offers are defined once and honored identically across POS, kiosk, and first-party digital channels, with channel eligibility controls.
digital-promo-parity
Not scored by this record.
Vendor documents that the operator owns and can export first-party guest records (email, phone, consented marketing status, order history) in bulk, without a fee or vendor approval. differentiator
digital-guest-data-ownership
Not scored by this record.
Digital checkout uses vendor-hosted fields or a hosted payment page so card data never touches the restaurant's page, with the vendor publishing PCI DSS 4.0 compliance (including the client-side script-integrity requirements effective March 2025) and supporting 3DS.
digital-checkout-pci-sca
Not scored by this record.
Digital channels support the same service-fee / dual-pricing / card-surcharge configuration as the POS, with the required guest-facing disclosure and correct handling of jurisdictions and card brands where surcharging is prohibited. differentiator
digital-surcharge-transparency
Not scored by this record.
Guest data, loyalty & marketing
Maintains a single guest profile that automatically merges transactions from in-store POS, first-party web/app ordering, and kiosk under one identity (phone or email match), with documented dedup/merge behavior.
guest-loyalty-unified-profile
A single guest identity does exist and it is first-party: the Loyalty Data Flows guide documents sign-up via White Label App auto-enrolment, a Loyalty widget on the operator's website, or head office in the Loyalty Platform, and the Loyalty product page states "Integration with your other Zonal technology facilitates automatic redemption and balance checking at any point-of-sale". Shortfall, and it is positively documented rather than merely absent: the channels do not dedup or merge. "If a guest signs up via the Loyalty Widget this will not create an App account. To use the App the user will need to create an app account and add their Loyalty Card"; head-office edits "will not update within the App"; and changing an email means the guest "should create a new account within the White Label App and add their existing card". Reconciliation is manual - head office performs "Card Swaps, i.e., transferring a member to a different Loyalty Card". No phone- or email-match merge behaviour is described. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Data%20Flows.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Orders arriving from third-party marketplaces (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) attach to a native guest profile with usable guest identity rather than landing as anonymous tickets. differentiator
guest-loyalty-thirdparty-identity-attach
Not scored by this record.
Supports at least two of points-per-dollar, visit/punch-count, and spend-tier accrual as configuration, without custom development or a bolt-on loyalty vendor.
guest-loyalty-accrual-models
Loyalty Program Basics documents four configurable program types: currency program ("customers get direct currency for the amount they spend... £1 spend = 0.05p reward (5% return)"), spend-to-points-to-rewards ("£1 spend = 1pt, 200pts = free starter, 500pts = free main"), stamp card programs, and "Tiered card action (Normal members 5pts per £1, VIP members 10pts per £1)", plus rate variation by product division, site and time period and configurable points expiry with a transaction log. Actions & Rewards adds "Item for visits - a reward can be created so that once a loyalty card has been created with a certain number of visits then a free drink or meal is provided". Points-per-pound, visit/punch and spend-tier accrual are all configuration, no bolt-on vendor. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Loyalty%20Program%20Basics.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Supports status tiers with automatic promotion and demotion driven by rolling-window spend or visit counts. differentiator
guest-loyalty-tiers
Not scored by this record.
Documents explicitly what loyalty lookup, accrual, and redemption do when the POS loses connectivity (queue-and-reconcile vs blocked). differentiator
guest-loyalty-offline-behavior
Not scored by this record.
Offer/discount engine exposes explicit stacking and precedence rules (exclusive vs combinable, order of application) as configuration. differentiator
guest-loyalty-offer-stacking-rules
Not scored by this record.
Offers can be issued to a dynamically defined audience (rules over recency, frequency, spend, or items purchased) rather than only broadcast to the whole list. differentiator
guest-loyalty-targeted-offers
Not scored by this record.
Automatically computes recency/frequency/monetary or equivalent lifecycle segments (new, regular, at-risk, lapsed, VIP) without the operator building the queries. differentiator
guest-loyalty-rfm-segmentation
Not scored by this record.
Ships triggered lifecycle automations (birthday, first-visit thank-you, lapsed win-back) as configurable always-on campaigns rather than one-off manual sends.
guest-loyalty-lifecycle-automation
Actions & Rewards documents always-on triggered rewards: "Item for birthday - you can choose to give items for birthdays such as a free glass of champagne; this reward can also be set so that it can only be redeemed one week prior and one week after a birthday date", "Item for registration - an item given away for free on registration", a "Registration action" crediting points or cash, and "Recurring item - for example, all loyalty card holders get one free beer every month". Loyalty Program Basics adds a registration bonus that "can be delayed applying on the day after registration". Shortfall: no lapsed or win-back trigger appears anywhere in the Loyalty or Voucher Manager documentation - Voucher Manager Campaigns is a code-batch and distribution tool - and outbound lifecycle messaging is positioned in Zonal's own product navigation as a separate product, Airship CRM, which has no knowledge base section at all. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Actions%20%26%20Rewards.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Sends both email and SMS campaigns natively from the platform, not solely by handing the list to a third-party ESP. differentiator
guest-loyalty-native-email-sms
Not scored by this record.
Captures per-channel marketing consent with timestamp and source of consent, and honors revocation received by any reasonable means (not just the STOP keyword) across all channels.
guest-loyalty-consent-management
Not scored by this record.
Handles or explicitly documents A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration required for the operator to send SMS through the platform.
guest-loyalty-10dlc-registration
Not scored by this record.
Reports redemption and incremental sales attributable to a specific campaign or offer, tying redeemed offers to actual check totals. differentiator
guest-loyalty-campaign-attribution
Not scored by this record.
Provides self-serve export of the full guest list and transaction history, including contact PII, via CSV or API, without a vendor fee or support ticket. differentiator
guest-loyalty-data-export-portability
Not scored by this record.
Exposes a documented outbound guest and order event API or webhook stream that a CDP or marketing platform can subscribe to (e.g. Olo, Punchh, Bridg, Klaviyo). differentiator
guest-loyalty-cdp-event-api
Not scored by this record.
Triggers post-transaction feedback requests and routes responses by score, sending low scores to private service recovery and high scores toward public review sites. differentiator
guest-loyalty-review-capture-routing
Not scored by this record.
Includes a native referral mechanic with per-guest codes or links, attribution of the referred guest's first order, and two-sided rewards.
guest-loyalty-referral-program
Not scored by this record.
Issues an Apple Wallet or Google Wallet loyalty pass with push-updatable balance, as an alternative to requiring a branded app download. differentiator
guest-loyalty-wallet-pass
Not scored by this record.
Provides admin tooling to fulfill guest data access and deletion requests (CCPA/CPRA-style) including deletion propagation to loyalty and marketing records.
guest-loyalty-privacy-rights-tooling
Not scored by this record.
Enforces loyalty fraud controls such as redemption velocity limits, manager approval on manual point adjustments, and flagging of employee self-redemption, with an audit log.
guest-loyalty-redemption-fraud-controls
Not scored by this record.
Vendor documents AI/ML-generated recommendations for offer content, target audience, or send timing (claim-level; verify it is a shipped product feature, not a roadmap statement). differentiator
guest-loyalty-ai-offer-recommendation
Not scored by this record.
Offers native stored-value/gift card balances tied to the same guest profile and redeemable across all locations of the brand.
guest-loyalty-stored-value-gift
Not scored by this record.
Labor & workforce
Employees clock in and out at the POS terminal using a PIN, badge, or card, with no separate time-clock hardware required.
labor-clock-in-at-pos
"The Time & Attendance module is used in conjunction with the clock in and out function on the PoS terminal. Within the module, rotas can be scheduled, worked hours are confirmed and the payroll week is signed off", and "After every day, when employees have clocked in and out on the PoS terminal, the clock times should be confirmed and verified"; breaks "taken on the PoS" flow into the Break time box, and unscheduled staff who clocked in on the PoS still appear. The credential is documented in Staff & Security > Adding Front of House Users: "The Dallas key or 4-digit PIN code are assigned in this screen" - an iButton badge or a PIN at the terminal itself. No separate time-clock hardware appears anywhere in the module. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Time%20and%20Attendance/How%20To/Verifying%20Clock%20Times.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Captures a photo at punch (or performs facial verification) attached to the timecard entry, with a photo-only mode available that stores no biometric template. differentiator
labor-photo-punch-verification
Not scored by this record.
Supports mobile clock-in restricted by geofence or location validation for staff who do not punch at a fixed terminal.
labor-geofenced-mobile-punch
Not scored by this record.
Records time punches while the POS is offline and reconciles them on reconnect without loss or duplicate entries, with the behavior documented. differentiator
labor-offline-time-punch
Not scored by this record.
Permissions are grantable per discrete action (void, comp, discount, refund, drawer open, price change, report access) per role and per location, not limited to fixed cashier/manager/admin tiers.
labor-granular-rbac
Enterprise User Management documents role-plus-location permissioning: "Under Users, click on User Groups. These are the permissions that can be assigned to the user" and "Under Users, click on User Access Groups. These are the active restaurants that can be assigned to a user", so permission sets and site scope are assigned independently rather than as fixed tiers. Zonal Delivery Custom User Permissions goes further - operators "Add a role", name it and compose it from a named action list (Catalogue Ingest, Publish DSP, Remove integration, Update location, Bind DSP location, Create org and others) with per-location member assignment. Shortfall: the Aztec till permission model is not published. Staff and Security documents only assigning users a Job Role and its permissions material is a video with no text, so the grantable till actions (void, comp, discount, refund, drawer open, price change, report access) are never enumerated. Per-action authority demonstrably exists - "depending on the security settings managers authority maybe required to use some correction method" and "Should site users not have permissions to enable Standalone Mode..." - but the list itself is undocumented. https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Order%20Inventory%20and%20Menu%20Management/Enterprise/How%20To/Enterprise%20Admin/User%20Management.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Manager overrides and approvals are attributed to the individual approver and written to an immutable audit trail queryable after the fact.
labor-manager-override-audit
Overrides are authenticated to an individual: the Standalone Mode approval screen requires that "An authorised user must then approve the action of putting the terminal into Standalone Mode with either their Dallas key or PIN", front-of-house users are issued a personal Dallas key or 4-digit PIN, and correction methods support "up to 16 correction reasons which can be used for reporting". User-attributed audit reporting exists in the Enterprise report catalogue - "Wastage Details, showing wastage entered by item, reason and user includes date waste was entered" and "Price Change Tracker - shows how many times the price was changed and who changed the price when". Shortfall: Zonal documents a shared bypass code for that same approval - "Should site users not have permissions to enable Standalone Mode, the code 1901 should be used to enable the functionality" - which defeats individual attribution, and no immutable or tamper-evident override log is described; the override trail is reached through ordinary reports rather than an append-only audit store. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Standalone%20Mode.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Builds and publishes employee shift schedules inside the same platform that holds the timekeeping data, rather than requiring a third-party scheduling app. differentiator
labor-native-scheduling
Not scored by this record.
Generates recommended staffing levels or labor hours by daypart from the operator's own POS sales history, not just a static template. differentiator
labor-demand-labor-forecast
Not scored by this record.
Displays labor cost as a percentage of sales in real time during service on a manager view or POS, not only in end-of-day or next-morning reports. differentiator
labor-realtime-labor-percent
Not scored by this record.
Warns or blocks at clock-in when an employee is approaching or would cross a configured overtime threshold, before the overtime is incurred. differentiator
labor-overtime-prevention
Not scored by this record.
Configures meal and rest break rules per state or jurisdiction, prompts required break attestation, and flags missed breaks for premium pay. differentiator
labor-break-compliance-by-state
Not scored by this record.
Supports predictive-scheduling ordinances by tracking advance-notice deadlines for published schedules and calculating predictability pay owed for employer-initiated changes.
labor-fair-workweek-support
Not scored by this record.
Enforces minor-labor restrictions (age-based maximum hours, prohibited time windows, school-day limits) at both scheduling and clock-in.
labor-minor-labor-rules
Not scored by this record.
Computes tip pooling and tip-outs automatically per shift from configurable rules (percentage of sales, hours worked, points, or role), rather than requiring a manual spreadsheet.
labor-tip-pooling-rules
Not scored by this record.
Retains a per-shift, per-employee record of tips received, amounts contributed to the pool, and amounts distributed from the pool, exportable for audit.
labor-tip-distribution-audit-trail
Not scored by this record.
Payroll export separates cash from charged qualified tips and carries a Treasury tipped-occupation code, supporting the W-2 Box 12 code TP and Box 14b reporting required for tax year 2026. differentiator
labor-qualified-tips-w2-reporting
Not scored by this record.
Vendor processes payroll itself as a first-party product (tax filing and direct deposit), as opposed to exporting to a third-party payroll provider only. differentiator
labor-native-payroll
Not scored by this record.
Exports timecards, wages, and tips in documented formats or via direct integration for at least two major payroll providers (e.g. Gusto, ADP, Paychex, QuickBooks).
labor-payroll-export-formats
Not scored by this record.
Employees can request shift swaps or claim open shifts in a self-service app, subject to a manager approval workflow that enforces overtime and role eligibility. differentiator
labor-shift-swap-workflow
Not scored by this record.
Provides digital new-hire onboarding that collects W-4 and I-9 documentation and supports E-Verify submission.
labor-digital-onboarding-i9
Not scored by this record.
Reports per-employee sales performance metrics (average check, items or category attachment rate, void and comp rate) by server or cashier. differentiator
labor-server-performance-metrics
Not scored by this record.
Inventory, purchasing & cost control
Supports multi-level recipe/BOM costing where a recipe can contain sub-recipes (prep items) and plate cost recalculates automatically when any component ingredient's cost changes.
inventory-recipe-bom-costing
Multi-level BOM is documented. Food Recipe Costings states "It is also possible that a recipe can contain a choice, another recipe or a prepared item", and the prepared-items guide walks through building a batch sub-recipe from purchase lines with a "preparation batch field, for example 1kg" and a storage count unit, then inserting it into the dish: "Any number of prepared items can be added to a recipe, and as they are added the cost of that proportion of the batch will be displayed." Shortfall: nothing states that plate cost recalculates automatically when a component purchase line's cost changes - the guides describe cost being displayed at build time and purchase lines feeding the stock system, but no recosting trigger or cascade is documented. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Product%20Modelling/How%20To%27s/Full%20Recipe%20Costing%20(with%20prepared%20items).htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Stores purchase unit, recipe unit, and count unit per item with explicit conversion factors, plus a yield/waste percentage applied to raw-to-usable conversion.
inventory-unit-conversion-yields
Three distinct units with explicit conversion factors are documented. Enterprise Stock Items: a generic "Stock Size" as the count unit ("such as Each or Kg"), "Size Multiples" for the purchase pack size ("there are 5 (250g) in one (5x250g)"), and "Enter the Dispense Size which is the unit of measurement that will be used when adding ingredients to recipes", plus a separate reporting size. Aztec Base Data Units: "Units are used when setting up products to determine the sizes that they are purchased in, counted in or used within recipes", with base amounts in ml, g or single items and the warning "It is very important to get the Base Amount Correct as this will affect both product depletion and stock takes". Shortfall: no yield or waste percentage is applied to the raw-to-usable conversion - Enterprise recipe ingredient rows carry only Ingredient, Dispense size, Unit Cost, Qty and Ext Cost, and wastage is captured as separate front-of-house or back-of-house wastage transactions reported as "raw and finished waste by item", not as a per-ingredient yield factor. https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Order%20Inventory%20and%20Menu%20Management/Enterprise/How%20To/Stock%20Admin/Stock%20Items.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Produces a theoretical-vs-actual usage variance report per item for a defined count period, showing theoretical usage from POS sales times recipe, actual usage from counts plus receipts, and the variance in both units and currency. differentiator
inventory-theoretical-vs-actual
Not scored by this record.
Depletes ingredient on-hand quantities in near real time as orders are fired at the POS, including depletion driven by modifier selections, not only in an end-of-day batch. differentiator
inventory-realtime-depletion
Not scored by this record.
Automatically 86s (marks unavailable) menu items on the POS, online ordering, and connected third-party delivery menus when a component ingredient hits zero or a configured threshold. differentiator
inventory-86-auto-sync
Not scored by this record.
Supports full physical inventory, ad-hoc spot counts of a subset, and scheduled recurring cycle counts, with each count's variance recorded as separate history rather than overwriting prior counts.
inventory-count-modes
Two of the three modes are documented, each retaining its own history. Full physical: Adding a New Stock opens a stock audit against a division and thread for a chosen stock period end date, prints count sheets and records Open Stk, Purch Stk, Th. Reduct, Th. Close Stk and Wastage per item with a Multi Unit pack-to-single entry aid; prior audits stay retrievable and feed Loss & Gain, Closing Stock Variance and Stock Result Summary reports. Ad-hoc subset: Completing a Spot Check runs from PoS Manager Functions against selected products - "The spot check report will display the expected, actual and variance figures for each product" - and separate Line Check Daily Variance and Line Check Weekly Variance reports exist. Shortfall: no scheduled recurring cycle count of a defined subset is documented. The only scheduling primitive found is a company-wide Default Stock Period Length in Enterprise Admin, and Stock Count Methods offers only a choice of count ordering (Supplier Items by Suppliers, Supplier Items by Categories, Stock Items by Categories) that "will be applied to all" restaurants and "will be handled by Zonal during the initial setup process". https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Stocks/How%20To/Adding%20a%20New%20Stock.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Provides a mobile/tablet counting app supporting barcode or QR scanning that continues to accept counts with no network connectivity and syncs on reconnect.
inventory-mobile-count-offline
Not scored by this record.
Ships pre-built electronic vendor catalog and order-transmission integrations with named broadline distributors (e.g. Sysco, US Foods, Performance Food Group) that send purchase orders and receive invoices electronically rather than by emailed PDF. differentiator
inventory-vendor-catalogs-edi
Not scored by this record.
Ingests supplier invoices from photo, PDF, or email and extracts line-item detail (item, quantity, unit, price) into the inventory ledger without manual line entry. differentiator
inventory-invoice-ocr
Not scored by this record.
Tracks per-item purchase price history across invoices and alerts when a received price exceeds the prior or contracted price by a configurable threshold. differentiator
inventory-price-change-alerts
Not scored by this record.
Maintains par levels per item per location and generates suggested purchase order quantities from on-hand versus par, with at least one mode driven by a sales forecast rather than a static par. differentiator
inventory-par-auto-suggest
Not scored by this record.
Provides a structured waste/spoilage logging workflow with reason codes that debits inventory and reports waste cost separately from usage variance.
inventory-waste-logging
Not scored by this record.
Supports inter-location inventory transfers as a two-sided transaction crediting the sending location and debiting the receiving location, with an in-transit or approval state.
inventory-transfers
Not scored by this record.
Supports a commissary/central kitchen model where one location produces prep items and issues or sells them to other locations at a computed transfer cost.
inventory-commissary
Not scored by this record.
Captures lot/batch numbers at receiving and links them through production to sales or transfers, enabling a backward and forward recall trace.
inventory-lot-traceability
Not scored by this record.
Tracks expiration or use-by dates on received and prepped items and surfaces an expiring-soon report or alert before spoilage.
inventory-shelf-life-expiry
Not scored by this record.
Supports partial-bottle liquid inventory by weight (scale integration) or by bottle fraction for bar and beverage counting.
inventory-bar-partial-bottle
Not scored by this record.
Exports period COGS and accounts-payable invoice detail in a named accounting system's import format (e.g. QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, NetSuite) with GL account mapping configurable per item category.
inventory-cogs-gl-export
Not scored by this record.
Inventory and recipe costing are delivered natively by the POS vendor rather than requiring a separately-contracted third-party product (e.g. MarginEdge, MarketMan, Restaurant365) to function. differentiator
inventory-native-not-partner
Not scored by this record.
Reporting, BI & data access
Provides a live sales dashboard reflecting transactions within minutes of the sale, accessible from both a browser and a mobile app off-premise.
reporting-realtime-dashboard
The EPoS page claims "140+ reports, real-time transaction visibility" per site or across the estate. Off-premise dashboards are Dimensions+: "Our suite of additional reporting tools are fully integrated with our EPoS and wider suite of technology, meaning all data is shared seamlessly and in real time", with "Simple dashboards", "Unlimited users" and "Accessible anywhere - Dimensions+ can be accessed on PC, tablet, mobile or via a free Power BI app". Shortfall: this is not a first-party dashboard app included with the EPoS - Zonal describes Dimensions+ as "our Microsoft Power BI integrated suite of additional reporting tools, for when you need to go above and beyond the standard reporting functionality available in our EPoS", and its own FAQ states "Dimensions+ requires a Microsoft Power BI Pro license". No refresh latency for the dashboard is stated anywhere. https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/operations/reporting/ · retrieved 2026-08-08
Generates a daily close-out/EOD report reconciling gross sales, net sales, tax, tips, discounts, refunds, tender types, and expected cash deposit in one document.
reporting-eod-closeout
The 7 Day Statement of Trade is described as "the most frequently used report within Aztec" and reconciles a trading day in one document: Gross Sales by reporting division, Promotions, Discounts, "Sales after Promo and Disc", Tips, Service Charge, Deferred Income, Declared Payments broken out by tender and by card scheme, Walkout, Uplift, Increased Float, Auto Banking, Declaration Variances, bookings and sales-ledger movements, Opening Cash on Site, "Cash/Cheques banked" and closing Cash on Site. Daily Sign Off then closes the trading date, gated on no open sessions, all closed sessions declared, all safes counted and banking performed, and "cannot be undone once completed without administrator permissions". Shortfall: VAT/tax and refunds are not lines on this document - VAT appears only in separate Enterprise reports (Financial Detail, Daily Sales Summary) and refunds must be chased through the Detailed Transaction report - so tax and refunds are not reconciled in the same packet. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Reporting/How%20To/7%20Day%20Statement%20of%20Trade.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Provides a product mix (PMIX) report at individual menu item AND modifier level with quantity, gross and net sales, filterable by daypart and revenue center.
reporting-pmix-modifier-level
Item-level PMIX with the required filters is documented in the Enterprise report catalogue: "Detailed Sales Mix - Lists all menu items sold within a given date range, for one or all profit centres. Shows average FIFO cost of each item if run for all profit centres. This report can also be run by revenue centre and sales type"; "Sales Category Analysis - Profit centre breakdown of Menu items within a given sales category. Shows net and gross sales, discounts, VAT and cost details"; "Sales Mix by Time Period - Shows menu items sales by day, breakdown can be viewed hourly or by day part". Shortfall: no report in the catalogue is documented as breaking sales out at modifier level. Zonal models modifiers as Choices and Instructions, and Instructions are explicitly non-revenue - "Instructions are not priced and have no effect on stocks or sales" - so item-level sales mix cannot be assumed to carry modifier quantity and net sales. https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Order%20Inventory%20and%20Menu%20Management/Enterprise/How%20To/Reports/Report%20Names%20And%20Descriptions.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
Produces an audit report of comps, voids, discounts, and price overrides attributed to the employee who applied them and the manager who approved them, with reason codes and timestamps.
reporting-comps-voids-audit
Not scored by this record.
Reports cash over/short per drawer, per shift, and per employee, comparing counted cash to expected cash from tendered transactions and paid-outs.
reporting-cash-over-short
Not scored by this record.
Reports sales per labor hour and labor cost as a percentage of sales by hour, by department, and by employee, using actual clocked hours from the POS time clock.
reporting-labor-productivity
Not scored by this record.
Reports per-server metrics including average check, items per check, attachment rate for named categories, and tips as a percentage of sales. differentiator
reporting-server-scorecards
Not scored by this record.
Reports revenue and margin by fulfillment channel — dine-in, direct online, first-party delivery, and each third-party marketplace separately — net of marketplace commission fees. differentiator
reporting-channel-profitability
Not scored by this record.
Provides a consolidated multi-location report with side-by-side location comparison and drill-down from group total to a single location and then to an individual transaction. differentiator
reporting-multiloc-drilldown
Not scored by this record.
Includes a self-service report builder letting a non-developer choose dimensions, measures, and filters and save the result, rather than only fixed canned reports. differentiator
reporting-custom-report-builder
Not scored by this record.
Supports scheduling any report for automatic recurring delivery by email or to a shared destination on a defined cadence and recipient list.
reporting-scheduled-delivery
Not scored by this record.
Offers automated recurring bulk export of transaction-level raw data to a customer-controlled destination (S3, SFTP, Snowflake, BigQuery, or equivalent), not just manual CSV download. differentiator
reporting-raw-warehouse-export
Not scored by this record.
Publishes a documented public REST or GraphQL API covering orders, payments, menu, and labor data, with self-service developer credentials obtainable without a signed partner agreement. differentiator
reporting-public-api
Not scored by this record.
Emits outbound webhooks for order and payment lifecycle events to a customer-supplied endpoint, with documented retry behavior and payload signature verification. differentiator
reporting-webhooks
Not scored by this record.
API and raw-data access are included in the standard subscription rather than gated behind an additional per-location fee, revenue share, or enterprise-only contract. differentiator
reporting-api-not-upcharged
Not scored by this record.
Core reporting beyond basic sales summaries — labor vs sales, PMIX, comps/voids audit, multi-location comparison — is available on the entry-level paid plan rather than requiring a higher tier or an add-on analytics SKU. differentiator
reporting-tier-paywall
Not scored by this record.
Documents a historical retention window of at least 24 months of transaction-level detail queryable in the reporting UI, with no silent truncation or archive retrieval fee. differentiator
reporting-history-retention
Not scored by this record.
Sends proactive push or email alerts when an operator-configured metric breaches a threshold or deviates from its historical pattern (e.g. void spike, sales below forecast, discount rate anomaly). differentiator
reporting-anomaly-alerts
Not scored by this record.
Offers a natural-language query or AI assistant that answers ad-hoc questions against the operator's own sales and labor data and returns a figure or chart, not a generic help-article response.
reporting-nl-query
Not scored by this record.
Reports guest-level analytics including new versus returning guest counts, visit frequency, and lifetime spend cohorts tied to identifiable guest records from loyalty or online ordering. differentiator
reporting-guest-cohorts
Not scored by this record.
Produces a forward sales forecast at daypart or hourly granularity from the location's own history, exposed in the reporting UI and consumable by scheduling or ordering workflows. differentiator
reporting-sales-forecast
Not scored by this record.
Generates payroll- and tax-ready tip reporting: declared versus charged tips per employee, tip pool distribution detail, and a tax liability summary by jurisdiction.
reporting-tip-tax-compliance
Not scored by this record.
Multi-location, franchise & enterprise governance
Supports a named organizational hierarchy of at least three levels (e.g. enterprise > region/group > location) as a first-class object that reporting and permissions can be scoped to, not just a flat list of locations.
multi-location-org-hierarchy
Aztec Base Data holds a named five-level estate structure as first-class objects: "When the company details are defined, an option box will allow you to add a new company or add an area to the company you just created", and "You will be presented with a variation of the below page every time you complete your new company, area, site, sales area, or POS. By the time that you define a sales area or a POS, the option box will allow you to modify any part of the estate structure". Grouping and reporting scope on top of it are documented in Site Tags: tags "create virtual groups of sites that are not dependent on corporate structure", e.g. a Beer Garden tag "so that you can search for, and report on, sites that have a beer garden", with a Site Tag filter in the Estate Structure Advanced Select. A parallel five-level Product Structure (Division > Sub Division > Super Category > Category > Sub Category) exists for the catalogue. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Base%20Data/How%20To%27s/Estate%20Structure.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Corporate menu items expose per-field override rules so a location can change some attributes (e.g. price, availability) while corporate locks others (e.g. name, image, recipe), and locked fields are not editable at store level. differentiator
multi-location-local-override-policy
Not scored by this record.
Supports price tiers/zones so one menu item carries different prices per location group, per order channel, and per daypart without duplicating the item record.
multi-location-price-zones
Location-group pricing is documented: site tags "create virtual groups of sites that are not dependent on corporate structure", and "Tags can be used for a Site Location or a specific Price Band, as well as for Products, to identify products in a specific menu or for a specific site(s)" - a price band applied to a tagged group of sites, not a duplicated item record. Per-channel pricing exists on the delivery channel: Zonal Delivery offers "Flexible item pricing - Manage menu item prices per delivery provider", corroborated by the Zonal Delivery user manual's per-DSP price adjustment already held in this record. Shortfall: no daypart or time-of-day price tier is documented - the per-product Price Matrix in Base Data varies price by portion (Price Factor, e.g. Double 2, Half 0.5), not by time, and no first-party channel price tier is described for Order & Pay or Click & Collect. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Base%20Data/How%20To%27s/Site%20Tags.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Menu, price, and promo changes can be scheduled to activate at a future date/time interpreted in each target location's own timezone, and can be rolled back after activation. differentiator
multi-location-scheduled-publish
Not scored by this record.
A new location can be provisioned by cloning a documented configuration template (menu, taxes, roles, printers, modifiers, tenders) rather than being configured from scratch, and the vendor publishes the expected time-to-open. differentiator
multi-location-new-store-template
Not scored by this record.
The permission model distinguishes a franchisor/corporate tenant from an independently-owned franchisee tenant, so corporate can see franchisee sales and enforce config while the franchisee owns its own employees, banking, and labor data. differentiator
multi-location-corp-vs-franchisee-roles
Not scored by this record.
Calculates franchise royalty, ad-fund, and marketing-fee amounts automatically from POS net sales on a defined schedule, with a configurable royalty basis (gross vs net of discounts/comps/third-party). differentiator
multi-location-royalty-calculation
Not scored by this record.
Supports automated ACH/debit collection of calculated royalties and fees from franchisee accounts, with a franchisee-visible statement of what was charged.
multi-location-royalty-collection
Not scored by this record.
Provides above-store reporting that aggregates sales, labor, discounts, voids, and item mix across any selected set of locations in one view, with store-vs-store ranking and variance flags.
multi-location-consolidated-reporting
Not scored by this record.
Item-level sales roll up across locations under a shared corporate item ID even when stores have renamed or locally priced the item. differentiator
multi-location-normalized-item-rollup
Not scored by this record.
Gift cards issued at one location are redeemable at any other location in the brand, with a reported outstanding-liability balance and inter-store settlement/redemption reconciliation between owners.
multi-location-cross-location-giftcard
Not scored by this record.
A single customer loyalty profile, balance, and stored order history is shared across all locations in the brand rather than being per-location.
multi-location-cross-location-loyalty
Not scored by this record.
A single location/terminal can operate two or more distinct brands or virtual brands with separate menus, receipts/branding, and separately reportable revenue, on the same hardware and drawer. differentiator
multi-location-multi-brand
Not scored by this record.
Tax configuration is per-location with support for multiple simultaneous tax rates, jurisdiction-specific rules (e.g. prepared-food vs grocery, inclusive vs exclusive tax), and per-location tax exemptions.
multi-location-multi-tax-jurisdiction
Not scored by this record.
Produces an immutable audit log of who changed which configuration object (price, tax, permission, discount) at which location and when, exportable or queryable by corporate. differentiator
multi-location-config-audit-log
Not scored by this record.
Publishes a documented multi-location API (or data warehouse/BI export) that returns transaction-level data across all locations in one authenticated call, without per-location credentials. differentiator
multi-location-enterprise-api
Not scored by this record.
Labor rules (overtime, break enforcement, predictive-scheduling compliance) are configurable per location or location group and enforced at the terminal, not just reported after the fact.
multi-location-central-labor-policy
Not scored by this record.
Hardware & physical footprint
The POS software runs on commodity off-the-shelf hardware (standard iPads, Android tablets, or PCs) that the operator can buy from a third party, rather than only on vendor-supplied proprietary terminals. differentiator
hardware-commodity-devices
Not scored by this record.
Vendor documentation names the specific client operating systems supported (iOS/iPadOS, Android, Windows, Linux/web) and states minimum OS versions and device specs.
hardware-os-platforms
CLAIM: vendor docs name supported client OSes with minimum versions and device specs. VERDICT: yes/B. EVIDENCE: Hardware catalogue (knowledge.zonal.co.uk/hardware, 94 TOC topics) Z9-TERM-WIN: "POS Terminal with WIN 10 OS and the power of Aztec"; "Operating System Windows 10 IOT LTSC ** Windows 11 compatible"; "CPU Intel Elkhart Lake Celeron J6412 ... RAM 4GB DDR4 ... Storage 128GB M.2 SSD"; 15" 1024x768 display. TABLET-A10 (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/hardware/Content/Hardware/Computers/Tablets/TABLET-A10.htm): "Ruggedised 10.1" Windows Tablet for Aztec FOH", "Operating System Windows 10 LTSC", Celeron N5100 / 4GB / 128GB. iServe handheld minimum OS, iServe 1.26.0 (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/iServe/Release-Updates-iServe/1.26.0.htm): "iOS 15 minimum supported version." and "From this release onwards, iServe requires devices running iOS 15 or later." Aztec 3.27.0 (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Release-Updates/3.27.0/3.27.0.htm): "Aztec has been tested and approved to be installed on Windows 11 machines". SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/hardware/Content/Hardware/Point-of-Sale/Terminals/Z9-TERM-WIN.htm · retrieved 2026-09-16 adversarially verified
Offers a purpose-built handheld ordering device with an integrated card reader (not a phone case add-on), with published drop rating and IP ingress rating.
hardware-handheld-purpose-built
Not scored by this record.
The handheld supports hot-swappable or field-replaceable batteries, or the vendor publishes a rated battery life for a full shift. differentiator
hardware-handheld-battery-swap
Not scored by this record.
Handhelds support cellular/LTE connectivity as a documented fallback when store Wi-Fi drops, either built into the device or via a vendor-supplied failover.
hardware-handheld-lte
Not scored by this record.
Terminals continue to take orders, print to kitchen, and record cash sales with the internet down, and the vendor documents explicitly which functions degrade (card auth, loyalty lookup, refunds).
hardware-offline-mode
Zonal documents offline continuity and names what degrades, but the documented offline mode fails the print-to-kitchen leg of the claim. Aztec Standalone Mode lets a disconnected till keep taking orders and recording cash sales, with stored accounts reconciled (Keep Account / Delete Account) when the server returns, and the degradations are stated by Zonal: 'all remote printing capabilities (IE Kitchen Printers will NOT work)', accounts created on the terminal 'will not be available on other terminals', there is 'a limited amount of space on a terminal for storing transactions', and only one terminal per trading area should have the mode enabled. It is a manually pressed, Dallas-key/PIN-authorised button after a countdown and reboot, not automatic failover. iServe handhelds offline can keep ringing items but 'will not be able to' sync accounts with Aztec, get prices and promotions, 'Send items to the bar/ kitchen' or 'Pay'. Shortfalls: kitchen printing is explicitly lost in the documented offline mode; the documented triggers are loss of the on-site server or Wi-Fi, and behaviour during a pure internet outage with the site server still up - including card authorisation and loyalty lookup - is not documented anywhere public. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Standalone%20Mode.htm · retrieved 2026-08-04
Sells or supports a dedicated kitchen display system with bump-bar or touch input, station routing, and course/fire timing, as a first-party product rather than an integration-only dependency.
hardware-kds
Kitchen iQ is Zonal's own KDS and every element of the claim is documented. Bump bar: "The Kitchen iQ bump bar is equipped with a large number of buttons, allowing the kitchen screen system to be optimised for both large and small organisations", with a published shortcut table for the vertical bump bar and a keyboard alternative, plus touch-screen bumping. Station routing: "Routing rules control where all product items are sent on their journey through the preparation journey, from the entry point to the exit point and each stage between. Items are routed to stations and can be routed on any number of steps", filtered on Course, Order Destination, Prep Stream, Terminal Group, Serving Area or Station Dish Allocation, with a Recombine station for multi-station items. Course/fire timing: Cook Times holds a per-product cook time so "the next item will be displayed in 'waiting to start' X minutes after the first item ... all items arrive for serving at the same time", with percentage modifiers keyed to modifier text (a well-done steak fires before a rare one). Scales 1 to 25 screens. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Routing%20Rules.htm · retrieved 2026-08-08
Offers a self-order kiosk running the same menu and modifier engine as the POS, in both countertop and freestanding form factors, with integrated payment and accessibility (ADA) compliance documented. differentiator
hardware-kiosk
Not scored by this record.
Supports drive-thru-specific hardware: outdoor digital menu boards, order confirmation displays, and speaker/headset integration, with a documented timer/speed-of-service measurement.
hardware-drive-thru
Not scored by this record.
Works with standard ESC/POS thermal receipt and kitchen printers from more than one manufacturer (e.g. Epson and Star), including LAN/Ethernet printers, rather than only vendor-branded printers.
hardware-printer-compatibility
Not scored by this record.
Supports the standard peripheral set — cash drawers (including multi-drawer per terminal), barcode scanners, scales for by-weight items, and customer-facing displays — with a published compatibility list.
hardware-peripherals
Not scored by this record.
Card entry happens on a PCI-listed PTS device using validated point-to-point encryption, so the POS application and tablet stay out of PCI scope; the vendor states the merchant's SAQ type.
hardware-p2pe-terminal
Not scored by this record.
Supports contactless acceptance directly on a commodity phone or tablet (Tap to Pay on iPhone / Tap to Pay on Android) with no separate reader. differentiator
hardware-tap-to-phone
Not scored by this record.
Hardware prices are published per SKU on the vendor's public site, rather than quote-only. differentiator
hardware-pricing-transparency
Not scored by this record.
Hardware can be purchased outright (owned) as an alternative to a mandatory lease or subscription-bundled rental, and the vendor states which. differentiator
hardware-ownership-vs-lease
Not scored by this record.
Vendor documentation confirms whether hardware purchased from the vendor remains usable with other software after cancellation, i.e. it is not software-locked or remotely bricked. differentiator
hardware-usable-after-churn
Not scored by this record.
Publishes a hardware warranty term and a replacement/advance-exchange SLA with a stated turnaround (e.g. next-business-day depot swap). differentiator
hardware-rma-sla
Not scored by this record.
Staff can run the ordering or payment app on their own personal phone (BYOD) with a documented permission and security model.
hardware-byod
Not scored by this record.
Provides a remote device-management console showing each terminal, printer, and KDS as online/offline, with remote reboot, software-version visibility, and staged rollout of updates. differentiator
hardware-remote-device-management
Not scored by this record.
Integrates with specialty beverage hardware — self-pour tap walls, flow meters, or liquor pour spouts — such that pours post to a POS tab automatically.
hardware-selfpour-scales
Not scored by this record.
Supports inbound caller ID hardware or a telephony integration that pops the customer record and order history at the POS on an incoming call.
hardware-callerid-integration
Not scored by this record.
Integrations, API & extensibility
Public, self-serve API reference documentation is readable without a signed partner agreement, NDA, or sales call.
extensibility-public-api-docs
CLAIM: public, self-serve API reference readable without a signed partner agreement, NDA or sales call. VERDICT: unknown -> yes/B. NEW SURFACE (322nd, crt.sh on zonal.co.uk/zonalconnect.com/izone-app.com/zonal.cloud + Wayback CDX hosts, 88 non-tenant hosts probed for /swagger, /openapi.json, /api-docs, /docs, /redoc against a nonsense-path control): https://iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger/index.html (HTTP 200, 18,459 bytes, stock Swagger UI, no login; /swagger 302s to it; robots.txt 404, so no crawl bar) loads https://iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger_json.cfm (HTTP 200, 123,885 bytes, anonymous): Swagger 2.0, info.title "iOrder API", description "iOrder API docs", host iopapi.zonalconnect.com (the PRODUCTION iOrder platform host that the ordering KB names), basePath /index.cfm, 47 operations in 4 tags (methods, VZero, VaultedPayments, WebOrdering), 47 definitions. The document has /* TODO */ comments, so it is not strict JSON (strip comments before parsing). It is a real reference: every operation has typed request bodies with required flags and examples, e.g. #placeOrder ("Place order", tag WebOrdering) takes basketId, salesAreaId, timeSlot, siteId, username ("API username"), password ("API password"), method "placeOrder", plus header X-Auth-UserToken; other operations include #getMenus, #getAvailability, #checkBasket, #placePaidOrder, #timeslots, #getMyOrders, #venues, #getLoyaltyBalance, #addCard/#getCards/#removeCard (VaultedPayments), #getBraintreeToken. securityDefinitions: {"authBrandToken":{"type":"apiKey","name":"X-Auth-BrandToken","in":"header"}}. WHY B NOT A: the page is not linked from zonal.co.uk or from the knowledge.zonal.co.uk census (zero swagger/openapi links there), several descriptions are placeholders ("Get the gome?", killSwitch "?"), and it documents the iOrder guest-ordering API only, not the Aztec EPoS API. Readable anonymously, which is what the claim asks; consistent with the atlas precedent that an unlinked anonymous production spec is yes (arryved partner.arryved.com/docs yes/B, digitalpour yes/A). OTHER HOSTS: tables-ws.izone-app.com/swagger/v1/swagger.json (OpenAPI 3.0.4 "Socket Server", 24 ops, JWT bearer) is internal websocket infrastructure for the tables product, not a partner API; content(-dev|-stage|-test).zonal.cloud serve a tiny "Zonal.Content.BFF API" spec; api.zonal.cloud and facade.zonal.cloud return a blanket 403 (nonsense path too). Wayback 2020-10-24 of www.zonal.co.uk/developer-docs/ (the page the prior note wanted) held only a signpost: "Access the developer docs for your Zonal systems using the relevant links below. If you are looking for a login page that can't be found here, then please contact your account manager" with a single link to liveRES developer docs at liveres.zonalmt.co.uk (no longer resolves). Retrieved 2026-09-17. MERGE (322nd): proposed yes cut to partial - the spec is anonymous but UNLINKED from any Zonal page (not self-serve in practice: a developer cannot find it), and it covers only the iOrder guest-ordering API, not the Aztec EPoS / platform API (api.zonal.cloud 403). https://iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger/index.html · retrieved 2026-09-17 adversarially verified
API access is included in the base subscription at no additional per-location fee, surcharge, or upgraded plan requirement. differentiator
extensibility-api-access-cost
Not scored by this record.
A free sandbox or test environment with seeded data is available to developers without owning a paid production account. differentiator
extensibility-free-sandbox
Not scored by this record.
Third-party apps authenticate via OAuth 2.0 with scoped, operator-granted, individually revocable permissions (not shared static API keys or credential sharing).
extensibility-oauth-partner-apps
VERDICT: still unknown, leaning no for Bookings only. NEW EVIDENCE: Bookings (Events) API Keys: "The API Keys section enables API Keys to be generated for the organisation to use the external bookings API. ... Enter a Name for the key; Enter a Password for the key; Passwords must be at least 10 characters in length; Select either Estate | or Company | or Outlet"; "Updating or editing the API key password will break any integrations using the old key unless they are updated accordingly". These are named, static key+password credentials scoped to estate, company or outlet and deletable one at a time. They are not OAuth grants. Other config screens also carry static credentials ("Open API Username", "Open API Password", "Open API Key"). "OAuth" as a whole word = 0 hits across the whole knowledge.zonal.co.uk census. Not published as no: the POS/iOrder API auth model is not in the corpus (no API reference exists there; see the public-api-docs note), and one product's bookings key is not the platform. SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. || 322nd: CLAIM: third-party apps authenticate via OAuth 2.0 with scoped, operator-granted, revocable grants. VERDICT: still unknown, leaning no. NEW EVIDENCE (322nd): NEW SURFACE (322nd, crt.sh on zonal.co.uk/zonalconnect.com/izone-app.com/zonal.cloud + Wayback CDX hosts, 88 non-tenant hosts probed for /swagger, /openapi.json, /api-docs, /docs, /redoc against a nonsense-path control): https://iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger/index.html (HTTP 200, 18,459 bytes, stock Swagger UI, no login; /swagger 302s to it; robots.txt 404, so no crawl bar) loads https://iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger_json.cfm (HTTP 200, 123,885 bytes, anonymous): Swagger 2.0, info.title "iOrder API", description "iOrder API docs", host iopapi.zonalconnect.com (the PRODUCTION iOrder platform host that the ordering KB names), basePath /index.cfm, 47 operations in 4 tags (methods, VZero, VaultedPayments, WebOrdering), 47 definitions. The document has /* TODO */ comments, so it is not strict JSON (strip comments before parsing). Its only securityDefinition is a static header key {"authBrandToken":{"type":"apiKey","name":"X-Auth-BrandToken","in":"header"}}, and request bodies carry "username" ("API username") and "password" ("API password") - shared static credentials, the same model as the Bookings API Keys already recorded. Tokenised controls over the 123,885-byte spec: oauth 0, oauth2 0, token 8 (all X-Auth-BrandToken/X-Auth-UserToken/Braintree/Flyt client tokens), apikey 1 (the definition). #authSSO ("Authorise By 3rd Party Provider Token") is guest social sign-in, not a partner grant. POISON: app.zonalconnect.com (Zonal Connect back office, 4,620,953-byte Vite bundle, no source map) contains "OAuth Configuration" / "SAML Configuration" - these are customers.federationConfig screens for staff single sign-on federation, not third-party app authorisation. WHY NOT NO: two APIs (iOrder, Bookings) both use static keys, but the Aztec EPoS / api.zonal.cloud APIs (403 blanket) are unseen, and one or two APIs are not a census of the vendor's APIs. Retrieved 2026-09-17. || 329th: 329th, NEW EVIDENCE FROM A PER-CELL RE-GREP (no prior pass grepped this vocabulary): a THIRD published Zonal API, Acquire's Forecast Engine, also uses static credentials. Acquire > Head Office > Future Dated Forecasts: "Step 1 - Get an Access Token ... POST {acquire-base-url}/api/v1/bearertoken/forecast-engine ... Authorization: Basic base64(username:password) ... No request body. The Authorization header carries a head-office credential"; "Acquire returns a JWT access token (90-day expiry)"; step 2 "POST /api/v1/future-forecast to the Forecast Engine with the bearer token". That is HTTP Basic head-office credential sharing exchanged for a long-lived JWT - no client registration, no operator-granted scopes, no per-app revocation - i.e. the same model as the iOrder X-Auth-BrandToken and the Bookings API Keys already recorded. CONTROLS re-run over the whole knowledge.zonal.co.uk corpus on disk (1,850 files, 6,197,265 bytes, .cache/q314/zonal/pages), tokenised, word-boundary, case-insensitive: oauth 0, 'client secret' 0, 'refresh token' 0, 'token endpoint' 0, 'authorisation code' 1 (an Aztec 3.07.2 release note about card AUTH codes - POISON), revoke 1 (the Acquire token page), bearer 8 and 'access token' 4 (all in that one Acquire page plus one Enterprise resolved issue), scope 10 (all ordinary English/plugin prose - POISON), 'api key' 93 (Bookings Events only); positive controls order 4,019, zonal 6,495. WHY STILL NOT A NO: api.zonal.cloud RE-PROBED TODAY WITH CURL + BROWSER UA per Rule 1 and it is NOT a node-fetch artefact - /, /swagger/index.html, /swagger/v1/swagger.json, /openapi.json, /.well-known/openid-configuration AND a nonsense path all return HTTP 403 with the identical 19-byte body "RBAC: access denied", a blanket gateway refusal (a refusal is never an absence). auth.zonalconnect.com serves 404 on /, on /.well-known/openid-configuration and on a nonsense path, so no anonymous OIDC metadata is published there either. www.zonal.co.uk / zonal.co.uk now return nginx 403 to curl + browser UA on /, /robots.txt, /sitemap.xml and /wp-json/wp/v2/types, so the marketing host cannot be censused at all. iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger_json.cfm re-fetched and byte-identical to the 322nd copy (md5 dc619a48dcdded70c4407d91b44e9ec6), so no new operations. Three published APIs, all static-credential, plus an unpublished partner gateway = hold unknown, leaning no. Retrieved 2026-09-18. adversarially verified
The platform pushes real-time webhooks for order lifecycle events (created, modified, paid, voided, refunded) rather than requiring polling.
extensibility-webhooks-push
VERDICT: still unknown. Webhooks exist, but none is documented for ORDER lifecycle. NEW EVIDENCE: Bookings Events Webhooks: "Webhooks allow our booking systems to automatically send real-time updates to other platforms whenever something important happens"; "Giving live data in regards to bookings that are created / edited / cancelled"; "Authentication types: JWT, HMAC - recommended"; "To enable Webhook configurations within your Events system, you will need to contact your Zonal Account Representative". The payload fields are booking data (BookingReference, BookingStatus, AztecBookingID ...). ZCF Gateway 2.6.0 (https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/ZCF/Release-Updates-Gateway/2.6.0.htm): "send Stock / Theme data to cloud services so that any updates can then be passed onto any related subscribers such as iOrder or external customer webhooks". That is menu/stock data, not orders. Across the census, "webhook" appears only on the Bookings Events pages (most hits are the Events Setup nav menu), in Bookings What's New/Resolved Issues, and in ZCF Gateway 2.6.0. No order created/paid/voided/refunded webhook exists. A booking-only push does not satisfy an order-lifecycle claim. Not a no, because no POS/iOrder API reference is in the corpus. SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. || 322nd: VERDICT: still unknown. NEW EVIDENCE (322nd): NEW SURFACE (322nd, crt.sh on zonal.co.uk/zonalconnect.com/izone-app.com/zonal.cloud + Wayback CDX hosts, 88 non-tenant hosts probed for /swagger, /openapi.json, /api-docs, /docs, /redoc against a nonsense-path control): https://iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger/index.html (HTTP 200, 18,459 bytes, stock Swagger UI, no login; /swagger 302s to it; robots.txt 404, so no crawl bar) loads https://iopapi.zonalconnect.com/swagger_json.cfm (HTTP 200, 123,885 bytes, anonymous): Swagger 2.0, info.title "iOrder API", description "iOrder API docs", host iopapi.zonalconnect.com (the PRODUCTION iOrder platform host that the ordering KB names), basePath /index.cfm, 47 operations in 4 tags (methods, VZero, VaultedPayments, WebOrdering), 47 definitions. The document has /* TODO */ comments, so it is not strict JSON (strip comments before parsing). The spec has no push mechanism at all: tokenised controls webhook 0, webhooks 0, callback 0, callbackurl 0, subscribe 0, subscription 0, event/events 0, notify 0, notification(s) 0 over 47 operations; every operation is a client-called POST (#getMyOrders is a pull). POISON: #registerPN ("Register PN") registers a guest device for mobile push notifications, not a server webhook. WHY NOT NO: the iOrder guest API is one API; the Aztec EPoS / Zonal cloud APIs (api.zonal.cloud blanket 403) are unseen, and the Bookings webhooks already recorded show Zonal does push in at least one product. Retrieved 2026-09-17. || 329th: 329th, NEW CONTROL WORK, NO MOVE. The per-cell re-grep of the whole knowledge.zonal.co.uk corpus on disk (1,850 files, 6,197,265 bytes) with push vocabulary no prior pass used: callback 0, 'pub/sub' 0, 'service bus' 0, 'event grid' 0, kafka 0, 'message queue' 1, 'event-driven' 0, 'real-time update' 2 (the Bookings webhook page itself), polling 8 (none about an API), signalr 5 (all Bookings/Acquire resolved-issue and What's-New entries about the UI, not a customer-facing push surface), 'order created' 1 (an Acquire resolved issue: "Automated Suggested Order Notifications - Unhandled Exception in email log ... (Failed to place and Outlet order created)" - an internal EMAIL notification, POISON). File-level bound on the word webhook: exactly 4 files of 1,850 contain it - the three Bookings pages already cited and pos/Content/ZCF/Release-Updates/Gateway/2.6.0.htm (stock/theme data to subscribers), so the recorded finding that no ORDER-lifecycle webhook is documented is now bounded at file level, not just by hit count. The newly-found third published Zonal API (Acquire Forecast Engine, POST /api/v1/bearertoken/forecast-engine then POST /api/v1/future-forecast) is also pure client-push-to-Zonal with no callback registration. STILL UNKNOWN because api.zonal.cloud, re-probed today with curl + browser UA, answers 403 "RBAC: access denied" (19 bytes) to every path including a nonsense one - an unread, unpublished partner gateway - and www.zonal.co.uk now 403s us entirely (nginx, even /robots.txt). Retrieved 2026-09-18. adversarially verified
Webhooks are cryptographically signed (e.g. HMAC) AND documented to retry with backoff, with a replayable event log for missed deliveries. differentiator
extensibility-webhook-reliability
Not scored by this record.
A public write API accepts externally originated orders into the POS as first-class tickets that fire to KDS/printers and land in reporting.
extensibility-order-injection-api
Not scored by this record.
Every core object the API can read (orders, menu, customers, employees, inventory) can also be written or updated via the same API. differentiator
extensibility-data-symmetry
Not scored by this record.
API rate limits are published as specific numeric quotas with documented throttling behavior and headers.
extensibility-published-rate-limits
Not scored by this record.
The vendor is a named DoorDash Preferred Integration Partner (DPIP) under the 2026 program requirements. differentiator
extensibility-doordash-preferred
Not scored by this record.
Direct, first-party certified integrations exist with DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub without requiring a paid middleware layer (Otter/Chowly/Deliverect/Checkmate). differentiator
extensibility-first-party-delivery-integrations
Not scored by this record.
The POS is a supported endpoint for at least two major aggregation middleware platforms (Deliverect, Chowly, Otter, Checkmate, ItsaCheckmate).
extensibility-middleware-compatibility
Not scored by this record.
Native, vendor-maintained connectors exist for QuickBooks Online and at least one other GL/accounting system, with mapped journal entries rather than CSV-only export.
extensibility-accounting-connectors
Not scored by this record.
Labor hours export natively to at least two named payroll providers (e.g. Gusto, ADP, Paychex, Paylocity) without manual re-keying.
extensibility-payroll-export
Not scored by this record.
Raw transaction-level data can be exported on a schedule to a customer-controlled destination (S3/SFTP/warehouse/Snowflake share), not only viewed in the vendor's reporting UI. differentiator
extensibility-bi-data-warehouse
Not scored by this record.
The vendor operates a public integrations marketplace listing named third-party apps that operators can browse and self-install.
extensibility-app-marketplace
Not scored by this record.
Operators can define custom fields or run vendor-hosted custom logic/scripts against POS objects without a vendor engineering engagement.
extensibility-custom-fields-scripting
Not scored by this record.
The vendor supports a headless/embedded mode where a third-party UI (kiosk, web ordering, drive-thru) drives the POS transaction engine via API.
extensibility-headless-embedded
Not scored by this record.
The vendor publishes an API changelog and a stated deprecation/notice policy for breaking changes.
extensibility-api-versioning-deprecation
Not scored by this record.
A complete historical data export (orders, customers, menu, payments metadata) is available to the operator on demand, in a documented machine-readable format, at contract end. differentiator
extensibility-data-portability-exit
Not scored by this record.
Reliability, offline & operations
Order entry, ticket routing, and check printing continue on-terminal when the internet connection is lost.
reliability-offline-order-entry
MERGE NOTE (2026-09-16): downgraded from a proposed yes/B to partial/B. SHORTFALL: continuity is inferred from the documented on-site architecture (a local POS Server holds accounts, links tills and routes to printers and kitchen; internet named only for head-office and external systems in a non-exhaustive "such as" list); no Zonal page states that Aztec tills keep taking orders, routing tickets and printing checks when the internet is lost. That explicit wording exists only for the forthcoming Aztec+. CLAIM: order entry, ticket routing and check printing continue on-terminal when the INTERNET connection is lost. VERDICT: yes/B, from Zonal's own architecture page (see caveat). EVIDENCE: Back of House hardware guide: "What is the POS Server? The POS Server is a piece of hardware that usually lives in the Back Office, often in the Comms Cabinet. Its purpose is to provide account functionality, link together all the tills you have on site and help route messages to printers and the kitchen." The same page scopes what the internet is for: "Routers provide external Internet connectivity, which is needed for the Aztec PC to link with Head Office and for functionality based in external systems such as Payments, iOrder, Tables, Loyalty and other Integrations." Switches "link your tills, POS Server, Wi-Fi Access Points, Kitchen Server and Kitchen Printers to your EPOS network". So accounts, till linking and printer/kitchen routing run on the site LAN, and order entry and kitchen routing are not among the internet dependencies Zonal lists. If the POS Server itself is lost, Standalone Mode keeps order entry going on-terminal (Roles: "Enter Standalone Mode ... will not see any other terminals and be working offline"), but kitchen printers stop (already scored on sibling cells). CAVEAT: no sentence says in so many words that Aztec 1 tills keep trading when the internet drops. The only such sentence is about the future Aztec+ ("in the case that a site loses connection to the internet they can still trade until connectivity is restored", https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Hardware/Best%20Practices/Power%20Recommendations/Future%20Work.htm), and the "such as" list is open. If the verifier wants explicit wording, downgrade to partial/B. Card payments do need the internet (outside this claim). SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Hardware/Best%20Practices/Power%20Recommendations/Back%20of%20House.htm · retrieved 2026-09-16 adversarially verified
Card payments can be accepted while offline via store-and-forward, not just cash-only fallback. differentiator
reliability-offline-card-auth
Not scored by this record.
The vendor publicly documents who bears the loss when a store-and-forward transaction declines after connectivity returns, and states any per-transaction or cumulative offline cap. differentiator
reliability-offline-decline-liability
Not scored by this record.
Multiple terminals continue to share a single check/table state over the local network while the internet is down (LAN-only degraded operation, not per-terminal islands). differentiator
reliability-lan-degraded-multi-terminal
Not scored by this record.
The vendor documents a local/on-premise transaction engine or edge server (not purely cloud-hosted request/response) for the ordering path. differentiator
reliability-local-transaction-engine
Not scored by this record.
Kitchen display and/or kitchen printer routing continues to function while offline.
reliability-offline-kds-printing
Zonal's own Standalone Mode guide states the limitation directly: "It is important to understand that operating a terminal in Standalone Mode means that it will trade entirely independently to all other terminals in the business inclusive of all remote printing capabilities (IE Kitchen Printers will NOT work)." The same page tells operators to plan around it - "Our customers are strongly advised to have an emergency process for manual activities in place should they experience outages... alongside operational processes such as getting orders to the Kitchen or Dispense bars" - and warns "there is a limited amount of space on a terminal for storing transactions during periods of being offline". Kitchen iQ screens depend on the kitchen server: Channels configures an "Offline Background Colour" for "if the screen looses connection to the kitchen server", which is a status indication, not continued routing. https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Standalone%20Mode.htm · retrieved 2026-08-03
The system automatically fails over to a backup printer or KDS station when a configured kitchen printer is unreachable, and alerts staff.
reliability-printer-fallback
CLAIM: automatic failover to a backup printer or KDS station when a kitchen printer is unreachable, with a staff alert. VERDICT: partial/B. EVIDENCE: Aztec Config Sets (Kitchen iQ settings group): "KDS Receipt Printer Fallback - When enabled if the point of sale terminal cannot send an order to the kitchen system a dispense ticket printed will be printed at the local printer". That is a documented automatic fallback on the kitchen ticket path, but in the KDS-to-printer direction. SHORTFALL: no printer-to-backup-printer or printer-to-KDS failover and no staff alert for an unreachable printer. Controls over the full census (case-insensitive phrases): "backup printer", "back-up printer", "alternative printer", "alternate printer", "failover", "reroute", "re-route", "printer offline/unavailable/failure/not responding" = 0 hits; "fallback" hits are EFT Fallback, Holding Zones, forecast engine, Mobile Ordering terminal selection, "Support fallback from Void to Return by token", and the setting above. Poison: "redirected to" is web-UI navigation. Kitchen iQ Printers fields (Name, Type, IP, Last Job, Last Status) are as in the prior note. SURFACE: knowledge.zonal.co.uk is 15 MadCap Flare WebHelp2 projects (kb, archive, acquire, bookings, enterprise, hardware, kitcheniq, marketing, ordering, payments, pms, pos, stocks, zc-uk, customer), each found via Data/HelpSystem.xml -> Toc -> chunk files; census = every TOC topic (1,601) plus a 5-round href fixpoint over all bodies (orphan URLs beyond the TOCs all 200 or 404 mis-spelled links; zero 401/403), 1,797 URLs fetched, 1,704 at HTTP 200, held in .cache/q314/zonal/pages. The old product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase Flare site is superseded by this host. Retrieved 2026-09-16. https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Theme-Modelling/Setup/Estate-Setup/Config-Sets.htm · retrieved 2026-09-16 adversarially verified
The vendor documents its conflict-resolution behavior for edits made on two devices during a network partition (e.g. last-write-wins, merge, or operator prompt).
reliability-sync-conflict-handling
Not scored by this record.
The vendor publishes an explicit list of which features are unavailable offline (gift cards, loyalty lookup, refunds, manual card entry, text-to-pay).
reliability-offline-feature-matrix
Not scored by this record.
A public, per-component status page exists showing current and historical incident state without a login.
reliability-public-status-page
Not scored by this record.
A contractual uptime SLA with a stated percentage AND a service credit remedy is published or available in the standard agreement. differentiator
reliability-contractual-uptime-sla
Not scored by this record.
The vendor publishes written post-incident reports or root-cause summaries for major outages.
reliability-incident-postmortems
Not scored by this record.
24/7/365 live human support by phone is included in the base subscription, not sold as a premium support tier.
reliability-247-live-support
Not scored by this record.
The vendor offers in-person on-site installation and go-live support (first-party or certified dealer network), not remote-only self-install. differentiator
reliability-onsite-install
Not scored by this record.
A hardware replacement/advance-exchange program with a stated turnaround time is included or purchasable.
reliability-hardware-replacement-sla
Not scored by this record.
Operators can trigger and retrieve their own data backup/restore, or the vendor publishes RPO/RTO figures for data recovery.
reliability-backup-restore
Not scored by this record.
The vendor publishes a current PCI DSS v4.0/4.0.1 Attestation of Compliance or equivalent (e.g. validated P2PE listing) covering the post-March-2025 future-dated requirements.
reliability-pci-dss-4-attestation
Not scored by this record.
Multi-factor authentication is enforceable on back-office and POS administrative logins, with role-based permissions.
reliability-mfa-role-based-access
Not scored by this record.
A public, free training library (video/LMS) and a practice/training mode on the terminal exist for staff onboarding.
reliability-self-serve-training
Not scored by this record.
Any terminal can assume the master/server role automatically if the designated primary terminal or local server fails. differentiator
reliability-failover-terminal-role
Not scored by this record.
Terminals support an automatic cellular/LTE failover for connectivity, first-party or documented.
reliability-cellular-backup
Not scored by this record.
Commercial, compliance & data ownership
Vendor publicly offers a month-to-month subscription with no minimum multi-year term commitment for its core POS software tier. differentiator
commercial-month-to-month-contract
Not scored by this record.
Vendor's published terms of service or MSA state no early termination fee / no liquidated damages for cancelling the software subscription before term end. differentiator
commercial-no-early-termination-fee
Not scored by this record.
The auto-renewal term and the required cancellation notice window (e.g. 30/60/90 days) are stated in publicly accessible contract terms rather than only in a signed quote.
commercial-autorenew-terms-published
The only contract-terms document Zonal publishes is https://www.zonal.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/, and it governs use of the website rather than the product - its substantive clauses are that Zonal may "Change or remove (temporarily or permanently) the Website or any part of it without notice" and "Change these Terms and Conditions at any time". It contains no minimum term, no auto-renewal clause and no cancellation notice window. No master service agreement, terms of business or SLA is linked anywhere on the site, and pricing is quote-only with prospects routed to a sales telephone number. The renewal term and notice window therefore cannot be diligenced before signing. https://www.zonal.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/ · retrieved 2026-08-03
The POS software can be purchased and operated with a third-party payment processor of the operator's choice (no mandatory in-house processing lock). differentiator
commercial-processing-not-bundled
Not scored by this record.
Vendor publishes an interchange-plus (cost-plus) processing rate option with the markup stated as a specific bps + per-transaction figure, rather than only blended/flat card-present rates. differentiator
commercial-interchange-plus-published
Not scored by this record.
The processing agreement caps or prohibits unilateral vendor-initiated rate increases outside of pass-through interchange/network changes, or grants penalty-free exit on any increase. differentiator
commercial-rate-increase-clause
Not scored by this record.
Per-location and per-additional-terminal software pricing is published as specific dollar figures on the vendor's public site (not 'contact sales' only).
commercial-pricing-published
The EPoS page FAQ answers the question directly and without a figure: "How much does a hospitality EPoS system cost? Pricing is tailored to your estate's size and complexity. Our consultative team will work with you to build a package that fits your operation with no hidden fees and everything included as standard." No sterling or dollar figure appears anywhere on the page, per-site or per-terminal. The site's own Rental Packages links (/products/rental-packages/ and /products/rental-packages/pos-essentials/) return 404, and the Akru panel for independents promises only that a demo will "tell you exactly what it costs". https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/epos/ · retrieved 2026-08-08
Individual modules (online ordering, KDS, loyalty, inventory, payroll, marketing) can be purchased à la carte and cancelled independently without repricing the base POS subscription. differentiator
commercial-module-unbundling
Not scored by this record.
All required terminals, KDS screens, and printers can be purchased outright at a published price, with no mandatory multi-year hardware lease or rental.
commercial-hardware-purchase-outright
CLAIM: all required terminals, KDS and printers can be bought outright at a PUBLISHED price, with no mandatory multi-year lease/rental. VERDICT: unknown -> no/C, on the published-price limb (atlas precedent: qu, olo no/C where no hardware price is published). EVIDENCE: the Zonal hardware page publishes no price for any device: Wayback snapshot 2026-06-14 of https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/epos/hardware/ ("Quality EPoS Terminals that are built to last ... Make an enquiry"; Z9 PoS terminal "Download the full specs") - tokenised controls over its text: £ 0, "£" 0, price 0, prices 0, buy 0, lease 0, per month 0, monthly 0; POISON published: purchase 1 = nav "Purchase-to-pay" (a procurement product), rental 2 = nav "Rental Packages"/"POS Rental Packages" menu links, finance 1 = blog "Making the business case to Finance" (the prior pass read the live page at 200 with the same result; the live host now returns a blanket nginx 403 on every path incl. a nonsense path, a refusal, not an absence). The customer Hardware Catalogue also lists no prices (prior note). The one published hardware figure found is a RENTAL: Wayback 2025-09-10 of https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/rental-packages/all-in-one-pos/ (the page the prior note could not read; now 404 live): "Get Zonal's award-winning EPoS and our handheld POS, in partnership with Dojo for one flat, budget-friendly monthly fee. £229 per month* ... *Plus a £1,100 advance payment covering all deployment services. All prices listed exclude VAT. Minimum rental term 36 months." So the only priced route to Zonal hardware was a 36-month rental; no outright price appears. The no rests on the hardware page, not on the retired rental page. SIBLING, NOT SCORED: Zonal's independent-operator POS akru (akru.co.uk, "backed by Zonal") lists its hardware as "Coming Soon" with no prices (https://akru.co.uk/hardware/, HTTP 200). Retrieved 2026-09-17. https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/epos/hardware/ · retrieved 2026-09-17 adversarially verified
Vendor documents support for at least one non-proprietary/third-party hardware option (e.g. standard iPad, Epson/Star ESC/POS printers, generic cash drawer) rather than requiring vendor-only devices. differentiator
commercial-hardware-not-locked
Not scored by this record.
One-time implementation, menu-build, onboarding, and training fees are published as specific amounts or explicitly stated as $0.
commercial-implementation-fee-published
Not scored by this record.
Operators can self-serve export their full transactional history (orders, line items, payments, labor) to CSV or a documented API without contacting support or paying a fee.
commercial-data-export-self-serve
Not scored by this record.
Guest/customer records, loyalty balances or point ledgers, and gift-card liability balances are exportable in machine-readable form by the operator. differentiator
commercial-export-customer-and-loyalty
Not scored by this record.
Contract or documentation specifies a post-termination data retrieval window (a defined number of days during which the operator can still export their data) rather than immediate cutoff. differentiator
commercial-post-termination-export-window
Not scored by this record.
Published terms explicitly state the merchant owns its transaction and customer data, and constrain the vendor's right to use or resell that data (beyond aggregated/de-identified use) for its own products or marketing. differentiator
commercial-data-ownership-clause
Not scored by this record.
The POS is source-available or open source with a documented self-hosting option (source published under an OSI or source-available license, not merely an open API).
commercial-source-available-selfhost
Not scored by this record.
Vendor documents validated P2PE or hardware-encrypted card entry plus tokenization such that the merchant's PCI scope is reduced to SAQ A / SAQ P2PE-HW, and names the applicable SAQ.
commercial-pci-p2pe-tokenization
Not scored by this record.
Vendor documents PCI DSS v4.0.1 future-dated controls in effect since 31 Mar 2025 — notably MFA for all access to the cardholder data environment including POS and back-office logins, and (for hosted ordering pages) payment-page script integrity monitoring per Req 6.4.3/11.6.1.
commercial-pci-dss-4-controls
Not scored by this record.
Vendor states it holds a current SOC 2 Type II (or ISO 27001) attestation and will provide the report under NDA via a trust center or on request.
commercial-soc2-attestation
Not scored by this record.
Product provides in-app tooling for CCPA/CPRA and GDPR data-subject requests — locating, exporting, and deleting an individual guest's records — plus a published DPA the operator can execute.
commercial-privacy-dsar-tooling
Not scored by this record.
Vendor publishes an accessibility conformance report (VPAT/ACR) claiming WCAG 2.1 AA (or later) for its self-order kiosk and consumer web-ordering surfaces, including a documented tactile/audio non-visual access mode on kiosks. differentiator
commercial-wcag-kiosk-accessibility
Not scored by this record.
POS supports card-network-compliant dual pricing / cash discount or surcharging with automatic exclusion of debit and prepaid cards from any surcharge, and required receipt and menu-board disclosure of the fee. differentiator
commercial-dual-pricing-compliant
Not scored by this record.
Adversarial verification
An independent pass was instructed to refute this record, defaulting to downgrade when uncertain. It challenged 17 values — 13 upheld, 0 downgraded, 4 upgraded. It separately resolved 20 previously unknown values. This is published in full because a reader who can see which values were contested, on what evidence, and which way they moved has something no affiliate-funded comparison offers.
Capability claims
| Claim | As first scored | Verdict | What the verifier found |
|---|---|---|---|
| menu-pricing-modifier-price-by-parent-size | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Read Aztec Product Modelling Instructions & Choices and Base Data Portion Types. Per-parent modifier pricing is achieved by attaching a different portion of the choice item to each parent recipe, and a per-product Price Matrix exists across portions. Resolved to partial because the mechanism exists but is not the parent x size matrix the claim describes and must be maintained per parent recipe. source |
| menu-pricing-topping-quantity-tiers | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-yes | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Portion Types documents a configurable Price Factor per portion (Double 2, Half 0.5) inside a Price Matrix; Instructions & Choices confirms portions apply to choice items including a zero-charge 'Inclusive' portion, and Enterprise Recipes confirms choice dispense sizes are the choice's portions. Grade B documentation, so yes. source |
| kitchen-expo-consolidation | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-yes | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Kitchen iQ Channels documents an excluded-stations view that shows the account only once every line has been bumped to the serving station, Routing Rules documents a Recombine Station with per-station bumping, and Stations documents an Assembly/pass stage. Grade B. source |
| kitchen-bump-bar-hardware | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. A physical bump bar with a fully documented button map exists, but the claim also requires documented supported models and the customer-portal Hardware Catalogue's Kitchen Systems section lists only the KIQ screen controller (ZKMS-CONTRLR-IOT), with no bump-bar SKU anywhere in the catalogue. source |
| delivery-zone-pricing | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-no | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Resolved to no on positive absence rather than on failure to find: the Zonal Delivery user manual states it covers everything the platform does, enumerates the full feature set, and contains no zone, fee, minimum or address-based promise time - delivery is executed by Deliveroo and Uber Eats, who own those settings. source |
| digital-account-saved-payment | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. The Order & Pay product page claims repeat-previous-order and wallet payment, and the Loyalty knowledge base documents an iOrder sign-up journey, but saved addresses and stored tokenised cards are undocumented. Partial at grade C because the reorder evidence is a product page, not documentation. source |
| guest-loyalty-accrual-models | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-yes | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Loyalty Program Basics documents currency, points, stamp-card and tiered programs as configuration and Actions & Rewards adds item-for-visits, clearing the two-of-three bar at grade B with no bolt-on loyalty vendor. source |
| guest-loyalty-lifecycle-automation | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Birthday, registration and recurring rewards are documented as always-on triggers; no lapsed or win-back trigger exists in the Loyalty or Voucher Manager documentation, and outbound campaign messaging sits in the separately branded Airship CRM product with no knowledge base section. source |
| labor-granular-rbac | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Enterprise separates permission groups from per-restaurant access groups and Zonal Delivery lets operators compose custom roles from a named action list, but the Aztec till permission list is never enumerated publicly - Staff and Security covers only Job Role assignment and its permissions material is a text-free video. source |
| labor-manager-override-audit | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Approvals are taken by individual Dallas key or PIN and user-attributed audit reports exist (Wastage Details, Price Change Tracker), but Zonal documents a shared bypass code (1901) for the same approval and describes no immutable audit store. source |
| inventory-unit-conversion-yields | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Purchase pack size, dispense (recipe) size and stock count size are stored per item with explicit multiples, but no yield or waste percentage is applied to the raw-to-usable conversion - wastage is a separate transaction type, not a per-ingredient factor. source |
| inventory-count-modes | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Full stock audits and ad-hoc PoS spot checks are both documented with their own variance history, but no scheduled recurring cycle count of a subset is documented; the only scheduling primitive is a company-wide default stock period length. source |
| reporting-eod-closeout | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. The 7 Day Statement of Trade reconciles gross and post-discount sales, tips, service charge, tender-level declared payments, banking and cash on site per trading day, and Daily Sign Off gates the close, but VAT and refunds are not lines on it, so the claim's single-document requirement is not fully met. source |
| reporting-pmix-modifier-level | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. The Enterprise report catalogue documents item-level sales mix filterable by revenue centre, sales type and day part, but no report is documented at modifier level, and Zonal's Instructions are explicitly unpriced and excluded from sales. source |
| reliability-offline-kds-printing | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-no | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Resolved to no on the vendor's own explicit statement of the limitation: in Standalone Mode remote printing including kitchen printers does not work, and Zonal advises operators to run a manual process to get orders to the kitchen during outages. source |
| commercial-autorenew-terms-published | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-no | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Resolved to no on positive absence: the only terms document Zonal publishes governs website use and contains no term, renewal or notice clause, and no master service agreement is linked anywhere on the site. The claim is specifically about public availability, which is directly verifiable. source |
| order-capture-offline-order-entry | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Aztec PoS Standalone Mode is the vendor's published offline scope: orders, choices and cash tender work on a disconnected terminal and reconcile on rejoin. Partial, not yes, because Zonal states remote printing is excluded - 'Kitchen Printers will NOT work' - so orders cannot be sent to the kitchen; the mode is a manually pressed, PIN-authorised button rather than automatic failover after the terminal counts down and reboots; local transaction storage is 'limited' with no published figure; and Zonal recommends enabling it on only one terminal per trading area. Handheld offline behaviour is not documented anywhere public. source |
| menu-pricing-nested-modifiers | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-yes | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. The Aztec 3.7.3-3.8.4 release notes for multi-level conversational ordering state the prior one-menu-depth limit is removed and that nested choices carry min/max controls at multiple levels, a nested choice respecting its parent's min/max; min>=1 is the forced-selection mechanism. The Nested Choices help guide documents both a choice inside a recipe and a choice directly inside another choice, with no stated depth cap, and iOrder Managing Products independently confirms choice-within-choice modelling with a multi-select setting. Grade B vendor documentation on a table-stakes claim, so yes; the Base Data enablement being irreversible and defaults being un-nestable are recorded as caveats in the note rather than as a downgrade. source |
| delivery-dispatch-board | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-no | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Resolved to no on positive absence: Zonal's delivery product (Zonal Delivery) is scoped by its own user manual as managing Delivery Service Providers from one place, and the manual enumerates the entire feature set - menu schedules, publishing, per-DSP pricing, pause, prep time, availability, active orders, order history - with no dispatch/expo screen, driver availability, elapsed-time view or run batching among them; drivers and dispatch belong to the DSPs (Deliveroo, Uber Eats). The knowledge.zonal.co.uk Delivery help-guide navigation shows the same DSP-only sections, and the EPoS page describes delivery solely as receiving orders from delivery partners. This is the docs-enumerate-the-alternatives form of absence evidence, not a failed search. source |
| hardware-offline-mode | unknown (grade F placeholder: "No public documentation located during the 2026-08-01 research pass") | resolve-to-partial | Placeholder rationale meant the cell was never examined. Zonal does publish an explicit offline scope, satisfying the documents-what-degrades half of the claim: Aztec Standalone Mode keeps a disconnected till taking orders and recording cash sales with reconciliation on rejoin, and iServe offline mode lists exactly what a handheld loses. Partial, not yes, because Zonal states kitchen printers will NOT work in Standalone Mode - the print-to-kitchen leg of the claim - the mode is a manually authorised button rather than automatic failover, and the documented triggers are on-site server or Wi-Fi loss; behaviour during a pure internet outage with the site server up, including card auth and loyalty lookup, is undocumented. Consistent with the resolve-to-partial already recorded for order-capture-offline-order-entry on the same evidence. source |
| commercial-pricing-published | no, grade B - Pricing is explicitly tailored to estate size and complexity | upheld | Grade only, value untouched. Corpus-wide mechanical pass (workflows/regrade-marketing-pages.mjs): the cited page is a first-party pricing/feature/product page, which atlas-evidence-rules grades C ("vendor pricing page or feature page - first-party, but written to sell"), not B ("vendor product documentation - the manual, the help centre, the admin guide"). No claim was re-researched in this pass and no evidence was re-read; only the grade was brought into line with the source type. source |
| digital-account-saved-payment | partial, grade C - "The Order & Pay product page claims reorder - 'Guests can see and repeat previous orde" | upheld | The cited URL was a dead citation wearing a 200 - it 301s to /products/online-ordering-systems/order-and-pay/. I fetched the destination and matched all three quoted strings character for character, so nothing was conflated. Saved addresses and stored tokenised cards are still absent from the feature list; the Loyalty Data Flows guide additionally shows app account and loyalty card are separately created. Partial stands on the destination page. source |
| order-capture-scheduled-orders | partial, grade D - "Click & Collect and advance-booking deposit traceability through the POS are docume" | upheld | The cited /solutions/epos/ URL redirects to /products/epos/. Rather than re-point to another marketing page I walked the Aztec knowledge base and found the mechanism the researcher said was undocumented: Kitchen iQ Delayed Orders and Cook Times. That withdraws the original shortfall but does not carry the cell to yes, because the same doc shows the delayed order is displayed on receipt with its due time rather than withheld, and no per-channel lead time is configurable for Order & Pay or Click & Collect. Partial retained, re-evidenced at grade B. source |
| payments-emv-nfc | partial, grade D - "Zonal Pay unifies in-person and digital payments and handhelds ship with integrated " | upgrade-to-yes | The cited /solutions/epos/ URL is a redirect. Chasing the capability instead of the page: the Aztec knowledge base PoS Payments guide names the Chip & PIN device driven by integrated EFT, and https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/epos/integrated-payment-system/ states plainly that Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported in addition to card payments. Both legs the researcher called unenumerated are now enumerated, one of them in product documentation, so the partial no longer holds. source |
| payments-gift-cards | partial, grade D - "Gift cards and vouchers are listed within the loyalty and CRM ecosystem (alongside A" | upheld | The cited URL redirects. I replaced it with the iZone gift-card production guide in the Aztec/Loyalty knowledge base, which establishes a first-party gift platform issuing its own numbered cards, plus the Loyalty product page for balance checking and redemption at any point of sale. That kills the researcher's 'listed alongside Airship' framing and the estate-wide half of their shortfall. Partial still stands because no source shows a gift card being redeemed inside Order & Pay or Click & Collect, whose enumerated redemption journeys name only vouchers, offers and loyalty rewards. source |
| delivery-driver-roster | no, grade D - "Delivery is offered as an online-ordering channel; no in-house driver module with cl" | upheld | This is a conclusion-flipping cell held at `no` on a citation that now 301s, with a note that was pure absence-of-mention. I re-retrieved the dedicated Zonal Delivery product page, which positively frames the product as a delivery-service-provider management platform integrating Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats, and cross-checked the Zonal Delivery help guide's section inventory in this record's own sources - neither contains a driver, dispatch board or run history. That is positive evidence of a DaaS handoff rather than a native roster, so `no` now meets the bar it previously did not. source |
| digital-first-party-web | yes, grade D - "First-party Order & Pay, Click & Collect and Delivery ordering channels sold as part o" | upheld | The sole citation redirected, so the yes was standing on nothing. I retrieved the Click & Collect and Order & Pay product pages, which independently document white-labelled, operator-branded web ordering writing straight into the EPoS with no third-party branding. I also checked whether Zonal claims commission-free ordering and it does not - it applies that phrase to Bookings only - so I have recorded that limit in the note rather than borrowing it. The yes carries on first-party white-label ordering. source |
| digital-menu-single-source | partial, grade D - "Marketed as one connected platform where products and pricing are managed centrally ac" | upgrade-to-yes | The cell was held at partial only because the redirected overview page spoke of central management without naming propagation. The dedicated menu management page does name it, and the Order & Pay page confirms it from the receiving end; the iOrder Product Manager documentation shows digital products are the Aztec product records themselves rather than a parallel build. Three independent first-party sources, one of them documentation, so the named shortfall no longer exists. source |
| guest-loyalty-unified-profile | partial, grade D - "Loyalty and CRM are delivered largely via Airship, a sibling/partner brand rather than" | upheld | Withdrawing the researcher's reasoning as well as their dead citation. Zonal Loyalty is a first-party product with its own knowledge base, and Airship is a Zonal-group CRM, so 'delivered via a partner brand' was not the reason to hold this at partial. The actual reason is in the Loyalty Data Flows and Guest Management guides, which state that a widget sign-up does not create an app account, that platform edits do not propagate to the app, and that card association and card swaps are manual head-office operations. That is documented absence of dedup/merge, which is a stronger basis for partial than the one it replaces. source |
| labor-clock-in-at-pos | partial, grade D - "Staff management with payroll, rotas, targets and scheduling is built into the EPoS; c" | upgrade-to-yes | Held at partial because a marketing page (now a redirect) did not spell out the clock-in method. The Aztec knowledge base does: Verifying Clock Times repeatedly describes employees clocking in and out on the PoS terminal, including break capture, and Adding Front of House Users shows each employee is issued a Dallas key and/or a 4-digit PIN read at that terminal. Both halves of the claim are in grade B documentation, so partial is not defensible. source |
| inventory-recipe-bom-costing | partial, grade D - "Inventory covers purchase-to-pay and menu management with stock control across multipl" | upheld | The redirected citation gave no view of recipe structure at all. In Aztec Product Modelling I found the sub-recipe layer the researcher said was undocumented: prepared items are batch sub-recipes built from purchase lines and priced pro-rata into the parent dish, and a recipe may contain another recipe. That withdraws the stated shortfall, but the claim also requires automatic recalculation when a component cost moves, and no guide in Product Modelling or Stocks says so. Partial retained on the remaining leg, at grade B instead of D. source |
| reporting-realtime-dashboard | partial, grade D - "140+ reports per site or across the estate, with real-time transaction visibility clai" | upheld | The citation redirected, so I retrieved the dedicated reporting product page. It does name a mobile off-premise route, refuting the researcher's stated gap, but it also shows that route is Dimensions+, a Power BI-based add-on gated behind a Microsoft Power BI Pro licence and explicitly positioned as beyond standard EPoS reporting. That is a paid add-on dependency, which is exactly what partial is for; the value is unchanged but the shortfall recorded against it is now the right one. source |
| multi-location-org-hierarchy | partial, grade D - "Reporting works per site or across the estate and pricing is controllable at enterprise" | upgrade-to-yes | The researcher inferred 'at least two levels' from a marketing page that now redirects. The Base Data Estate Structure guide documents five named levels created and editable as objects - company, area, site, sales area, POS - which is well past the three the claim asks for, and Site Tags documents reporting and search scoped to groupings over that structure. Grade B documentation, so the partial does not survive. source |
| multi-location-central-menu-publish | partial, grade D - "Products can be managed centrally across the entire business; publish/version history s" | upheld | The citation redirected. I found the actual publish mechanism in Theme Modelling > Sending to PoS, which supplies the single-action push with preview and per-terminal success indicators that the marketing page only gestured at. It does not supply an audit history: nothing in Theme Modelling records the content or author of a past send, and the selection unit is terminals. Partial stands for the same stated reason, but now on documentation that shows what does exist. source |
| multi-location-price-zones | partial, grade D - "Claims complete control over pricing at enterprise or individual site level; per-chann" | upheld | The redirected page said only 'enterprise or individual site level'. Base Data Site Tags shows the actual object - a Price Band bound to a virtual group of sites - and Zonal Delivery documents per-provider item pricing, so two of the three legs the researcher called unstated are in fact documented. The daypart leg is not: I checked Base Data, Product Modelling, Portion Types and Promotions and found time-based promotions but no time-based price tier on the item. Partial retained, evidence replaced and grade raised to B. source |
| hardware-kds | yes, grade D - "Kitchen iQ is a first-party kitchen management/display product within the Zonal platfo" | upheld | A yes standing on a dead marketing citation is worth re-testing, so I went looking for the mechanism rather than the brand. The Aztec Kitchen iQ knowledge base carries a bump-bar guide with a full button/shortcut table, a routing-rules guide describing multi-step station routing with recombine, and a cook-times guide describing computed staggered firing with per-modifier percentage adjustment. First-party, documented, and covering bump bar, routing and course timing - the yes is better supported than the record claimed. source |
| commercial-pricing-published | no, grade C - "Pricing is explicitly tailored to estate size and complexity; no dollar or sterling fig" | upheld | The 2026-08-06 regrade left this cell pointing at /solutions/epos/, which now 301s to /products/epos/. I fetched the destination and the tailored-pricing sentence is present verbatim in the FAQ, so the positive statement supporting `no` carries over intact. I also tested the two Rental Packages URLs linked from the navigation, in case a published price list had appeared for the independents range; both 404. Value and grade unchanged, citation re-pointed. source |
Sources
Every URL this record cites. 65 in total.
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/solutions/epos/
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Product%20Modelling/How%20To%27s/Instructions%20%26%20Choices.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Base%20Data/How%20To%27s/Portion%20Types.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Product%20Modelling/How%20To%27s/Full%20Recipe%20Costing%20%28with%20choices%29.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Order%20Inventory%20and%20Menu%20Management/Enterprise/How%20To/Stock%20Admin/Recipes.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Order%20Inventory%20and%20Menu%20Management/Enterprise/How%20To/Stock%20Admin/Stock%20Items.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Base%20Data/How%20To%27s/Units.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Stocks/How%20To/Adding%20a%20New%20Stock.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Stocks/How%20To/Completing%20a%20Spot%20Check%20How%20To.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Channels.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Routing%20Rules.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Stations%20%26%20Station%20Dish%20Allocation%20Groups.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Intro%20to%20Bump%20Bar.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Hardware/Kitchen%20Systems/Kitchen%20Systems%20Home.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Hardware/Hardware%20Catalogue.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Adding%20%26%20Configuring%20Printers.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Load%20Balancing.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Standalone%20Mode.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Theme%20Modelling/How%20To/Correction%20Methods.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Staff%20and%20Security/How%20To/Adding%20Front%20of%20House%20Users.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Order%20Inventory%20and%20Menu%20Management/Enterprise/How%20To/Enterprise%20Admin/User%20Management.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/iOrder/Zonal%20Delivery/How%20To%27s/Custom%20User%20Permissions.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/iOrder/Zonal%20Delivery/User%20Manuals/Zonal%20Delivery%20User%20Manual.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Reporting/How%20To/7%20Day%20Statement%20of%20Trade.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Finance/How%20To/Daily%20Sign%20Off.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/customer/Content/Order%20Inventory%20and%20Menu%20Management/Enterprise/How%20To/Reports/Report%20Names%20And%20Descriptions.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Loyalty%20Program%20Basics.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Actions%20%26%20Rewards.htm
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/integrations/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/order-and-pay/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/epos/hardware/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/order/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/rental-packages/all-in-one-pos/
- https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/archive/Content/Point%20of%20Sale/Aztec/Releases/Aztec%203.08.4.htm
- https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Product-Modelling/Choices/Nested-Choices.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/iOrder/Product%20Manager/How%20To%27s/Managing%20Products.htm
- https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/pos/Content/Aztec/Help-Guides/Product-Modelling/General-Information.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/iServe/How%20To/Using%20iServe%20in%20Offline%20Mode.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Using%20Aztec%20POS%20Terminals%20in%20Standalone%20Mode.htm
- https://knowledge.zonal.co.uk/ordering/Content/Zonal-Delivery/Help-Guides/Setup/Login.htm
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/epos/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/online-ordering-systems/order-and-pay/
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Delayed%20Orders.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Kitchen%20iQ/How%20To/Cook%20Times.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/PoS/How%20To%27s/Payments.htm
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/epos/integrated-payment-system/
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Loyalty%20%26%20Gift%20Card%20Production.htm
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/marketing/loyalty-programmes/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/marketing/toggle-ecommerce-and-gift-cards/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/online-ordering-systems/delivery/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/online-ordering-systems/click-and-collect/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/operations/menu-management-system/
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Data%20Flows.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Loyalty%20%26%20Voucher%20Manager/Loyalty/How%20Tos/Loyalty%20Guest%20Management%20(Head%20Office).htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Time%20and%20Attendance/How%20To/Verifying%20Clock%20Times.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Product%20Modelling/How%20To%27s/Food%20Recipe%20Costings.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Product%20Modelling/How%20To%27s/Full%20Recipe%20Costing%20(with%20prepared%20items).htm
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/operations/reporting/
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Base%20Data/How%20To%27s/Estate%20Structure.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Base%20Data/How%20To%27s/Product%20Structure.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Theme%20Modelling/How%20To/Sending%20to%20PoS.htm
- https://product.zonal.co.uk/knowledgebase/Content/Knowledge%20Base/Aztec/Back%20Office/Base%20Data/How%20To%27s/Site%20Tags.htm
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/operations/kitchen-management-system/
- https://www.zonal.co.uk/products/rental-packages/