Food Safety Alerts, Check Times and the Till Banner

Café QR can tell a manager straight away when a fridge reading is out of range and nobody has fixed it, when food has been cooling for too long, or when the opening checks haven't been done. Staff see the most urgent task on the till, and log it there with their own PIN. You need the Food safety add-on. Managers and owners set it up. For now this is for cafés in the UK only.

Set your check times

1. Open Safety, then Set up, then Check times.
2. If you have more than one site, pick the site at the top.
3. For Opening checks, Closing checks and Temperature round, type the times they're due, for example 09:00 or 09:00, 15:00 for two rounds a day.
4. Untick any day the site is closed.
5. Set the Grace in minutes. This is how long after the time a check can still be done before it counts as missed. It's 30 minutes unless you change it.
6. Press Save.

A check shows as due soon 15 minutes before its time, due from its time, and overdue once the grace has passed. Opening and closing checks are done when the checklist is completed. A temperature round is done once every fridge, freezer and hot hold at the site has a reading since the round before. Due and overdue checks show on Today, on the Safety page and on the till.

Choose who gets alerts

1. Open Safety, then Set up, then Alerts.
2. Under Who gets alerts, add a member of staff, or a mobile number and email address. Phone numbers must be UK mobiles (starting 07 or +447). Landlines and numbers from other countries are refused.
3. For each type of alert, choose Text, Email, Text and email or Off.
4. Set Quiet hours if you don't want missed-check alerts at night.
5. Press Send test alert to check it arrives.

Someone who manages one site only sees and changes that site.

Your own alerts (owners)

Owners, and managers who work at every site, can turn on Your own alerts to hear about every site. You choose the channel for each type, the same way. If you're also listed as a recipient at a site, you only get one copy.

What each alert means

• Out of range with no fix: a reading was out of range and was saved without a corrective action. This alert can't be turned off. If it still hasn't been fixed 2 hours later, the same people get one Still not fixed email.
• Cooling overdue: food started cooling and wasn't finished in time (90 minutes). This alert can't be turned off.
• Opening checks missed, Closing checks missed, Temperature round missed: the check wasn't done by the end of its grace. These are off until you turn them on, and they wait during quiet hours. Out-of-range and cooling alerts are sent even in quiet hours.

Ten out-of-range readings on the same fridge within an hour send one alert, not ten.

"Can't fix now, tell the manager"

When a reading is out of range, staff normally say what they did about it before saving. If they can't fix it there and then, they can press Can't fix now, tell the manager. The reading is saved, the alert goes out straight away, and the record waits on the Safety page for someone to add the fix.

Texts and your message balance

Texts come from Cafe QR and use your message balance. The Alerts screen shows what each text costs and your balance. Emails are free. If the balance runs out, alerts go by email only, the owner is told by email, and Food safety Today shows "Texts paused: message balance empty" until texts can go again. To top up, contact Café QR support.

On the till: the banner

Paired tills and waiter tablets show the most urgent food safety task at the top of the screen, for example Opening checks due, with +2 more if there are others. In order, the most urgent is:

1. A reading out of range with no fix
2. Food cooling past its limit
3. Food within 10 minutes of its cooling limit
4. A check that is overdue
5. A check that is due
6. A check due in the next 15 minutes

Tap the banner to open the page to log it. The till checks again every 5 minutes, and straight after a record is saved. Hide for 30 minutes hides it, but it comes back at once if a new out-of-range reading or a new overdue batch appears. With nothing urgent, there's no banner. It never covers the order or payment buttons.

On the till: logging with your PIN

On a paired till or waiter tablet, staff can open Today, the temperature round, Log something and the forms it opens (checks, temperatures, food records, pest sightings and faults). Training, documents, set up and the inspection report only open on a manager's own sign-in; the till shows Not available on this device.

Every record is signed by the person who took it, using their own PIN:

• If nobody has used the till in the last 2 minutes, it asks for a PIN before saving. A record is never signed with the PIN of whoever used the till before.
• PINs are 4 to 6 digits, and each person's must be different. Easy PINs like 0000, 1111 or 1234 are refused.
• 5 wrong tries lock that name for 5 minutes. A manager can unlock it sooner on the Staff page.
• Staff change their own PIN from their profile. A manager can set a new one, but never sees it.
• Pausing someone on the Staff page stops their PIN at once. Their past records keep their name.

If two people at your café still share a PIN from before, Set up shows a warning, for example "2 staff share a PIN. Give each person their own." Their PIN keeps working, but records signed with it show shared PIN on the inspection report, because they can't show who took the reading. Give each person a new PIN on the Staff page.