📖 Why the Home Screen Matters

The Home screen is the first thing you see when you open Unavakam and the screen you return to between tasks. It is designed to answer the three questions every restaurant staff member and manager asks throughout their shift: How are we doing so far today? What needs attention right now? Where do I need to go next?

A well-designed home screen eliminates the need to open multiple screens to get a quick read on operations. Instead of navigating to Reports for revenue, then Tables for floor status, then Orders for pending items — a single glance at the Home screen surfaces all three pieces of information in one place. For floor managers and owners especially, this saves significant time during a busy service.

Home Screen — KPI Cards and Quick Actions
screenshots/mobile/home.png

📊 Today's KPI Cards

At the top of the Home screen, three summary cards show today's key performance indicators in real time. These numbers update automatically as orders are placed, completed, and billed — no refresh needed.

  • Today's Revenue (₹): The total billed amount from all completed orders since midnight. This is your gross revenue for the day so far — including GST. Compare this mentally to your daily target or to the same day last week. If today is Saturday and you typically do ₹35,000 on Saturdays, and the card shows ₹12,000 by 2pm, you're on pace. If it shows ₹4,000, something unusual is happening — investigate.
  • Active Orders: The count of orders currently in flight — placed but not yet billed and completed. This number tells you how busy your kitchen and floor team is right now. A high number during non-peak hours (e.g. 18 active orders at 3pm on a Tuesday) might indicate a large group or an event. An unexpectedly low number during peak hours might indicate a KDS issue or that orders aren't being entered.
  • Tables Occupied: How many tables currently have active orders. Read this alongside Active Orders — if 8 tables are occupied and there are 24 active orders, that's roughly 3 orders per table, suggesting multiple ordering rounds on the same table. This is useful for the manager walking the floor — they know which tables to check in on.
✅
Check the Home screen when you start your shift. The KPI cards show you the day's status up to this point. If the previous shift was busy, you can see how much revenue was already generated and how many orders are still open. This helps you prioritize the first few minutes of your shift.

⚡ Quick Action Buttons

Below the KPI cards, large tap-friendly buttons provide one-tap access to the most commonly used screens. The buttons shown depend on your role:

ButtonNavigates ToShown For
đŸĒ‘ TablesFloor map with all table statusesWaiters, Managers, Owners
⚡ Quick OrderOrder builder without table assignmentCounter staff, Managers, Owners
📋 OrdersAll active and recent ordersAll roles
📊 ReportsRevenue and performance analyticsManagers, Owners
đŸ“Ļ StockInventory and stock takeManagers, Owners
💰 ExpensesLog and review expensesManagers, Owners

For Kitchen Staff (Chef role), the Home screen shows only an Orders shortcut — because their primary task is the KDS view, not floor management or revenue monitoring.

🔔 Notifications Panel

If you have notifications enabled (configured in Settings), the Home screen displays a notifications bell icon at the top right. Tapping it opens the recent notifications list — events like "New order on Table 5", "Order #42 is Ready — collect from kitchen", or "Chicken stock below reorder level". These notifications are also sent as push notifications to your phone when the app is in the background.

The bell icon shows an unread count badge when there are new notifications since you last checked. Clearing this by tapping the bell gives your manager confidence that you've seen and acknowledged priority alerts.

â„šī¸
Push notifications must be allowed in your phone's system settings (Settings → Unavakam → Notifications) for alerts to appear when the app is backgrounded. If you are missing notifications, check your phone's notification permissions first.

🏠 Using Home as a Monitoring Screen

During a busy service, managers often keep the Home screen open on a shared tablet mounted somewhere central — such as at the host station near the entrance, or at the manager's station. Because the KPI cards update in real time, this becomes a passive monitoring display — anyone walking past can see at a glance: How many tables are occupied? How is today's revenue tracking?

This passive use of the Home screen reduces interruptions to the manager. Instead of staff asking "How busy are we?" or "What's the total revenue so far?", they can glance at the screen and self-answer. This keeps the manager free to manage rather than answer questions.

✅
Set screen timeout to "Never" on the Home screen tablet. If you're using a dedicated tablet as a monitoring display, go to your tablet's display settings and disable screen sleep. The Home screen should always be visible during service hours. After service ends, you can manually lock it.