Restaurant software in Australia: POS, delivery apps, rosters and AI that actually reconcile

Why don’t restaurant systems talk to each other?

Because each one was bought to solve a single problem, and each keeps its own version of the sale, the guest and the shift. A typical Australian restaurant group with two to six venues runs something like this:

Job	Common Australian tools	Where it falls short
Point of sale	Lightspeed Restaurant, Square for Restaurants, H&L, SwiftPOS, Impos, Abacus	Reporting is per venue; group comparisons end up in spreadsheets
QR and table ordering	me&u, POS native ordering	Guest data may sit in a separate platform from your POS
Reservations	ResDiary, Now Book It, OpenTable, SevenRooms	Spend per guest needs a POS link that isn’t always set up
Delivery	Uber Eats, DoorDash	Payout statements net off commission, refunds and promotions
Rostering and timesheets	Deputy, Tanda	Labour cost is rarely set against live sales by venue
Accounting	Xero, MYOB	Gets summary totals, often keyed in weekly

None of these products is bad. The cost is in the gaps: someone matching delivery payouts on Monday, a manager guessing prep from last week’s memory, and no single view of a regular who books at one venue and orders delivery from another. Fixing that is integration and reporting work, not a new POS. If you’re weighing whether to build anything at all, our build or buy guide sets out the test.

What changed when card surcharges ended on 1 October 2026?

The card networks now ban surcharges for paying by card, so the cost of accepting cards has to sit in your menu prices. The RBA removed its prohibition on no surcharge rules, and eftpos, Mastercard and Visa each introduced them from 1 October 2026. The RBA says American Express, UnionPay and PayPal also decided to remove surcharging, even though they aren’t formally regulated by it.

What has not changed matters as much for hospitality. The RBA says the change does not apply to weekend surcharges, public holiday surcharges, booking fees or service fees. The ACCC’s price display rules still apply to those: a restaurant or cafe charging a day based surcharge must show the words “A surcharge of [percentage] applies on [day or days]” on the menu, at least as prominently as the most prominent price.

For your systems, that means:

1. Card surcharge settings removed from every terminal and from online checkout (most payment providers did this around 1 October).
2. Day based surcharges applied by the POS and online ordering on the right days, including state public holidays, which differ between states.
3. Menu wording generated from the same setting, so the printed menu, QR menu and website can’t drift apart.
4. Menu prices reviewed with real card costs per venue, which is a reporting job if your payment provider’s statements are detailed enough.

What do the 2027 drip pricing rules change for online orders?

From 1 July 2027 any extra charge payable per transaction must be shown with the base price, not revealed at checkout. The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026 inserts a new section 48A into the Australian Consumer Law. Where you display a base price for consumer goods or services, you must also display the amount (or method of calculating it) of any transaction based charge, that it is a per transaction charge, whether it is payable, and whether the base price includes it, in close proximity to the price.

Optional charges and payment surcharges are carved out. A mandatory online ordering fee or booking fee is the kind of charge to look at. If your ordering site or app adds a fee in the cart, plan the change to your product pages and menu components now, while it’s a design task rather than a compliance scramble.

How do you reconcile delivery payouts against the POS and Xero?

Pull each platform’s payout data, match it to orders, split out the deductions and post one clean journal per venue per payout. With Menulog now closed in Australia, most groups reconcile Uber Eats and DoorDash, sometimes plus their own ordering channel. A reconciliation service usually works like this:

1. Import payout statements and order level reports from each platform, by venue.
2. Match platform orders to POS orders where delivery orders are injected into the POS, and flag any order on one side only.
3. Separate gross sales, commission, promotions you funded, refunds and adjustments, and GST on each.
4. Post a summarised journal to Xero or MYOB with the bank deposit it should match.
5. Report delivery margin after commission by venue and by dish, which is the number that decides whether a dish should be on the delivery menu at all.

This is one of the cheapest builds on this page and usually pays back fastest, because it replaces a recurring manual job.

Can you keep one guest record across bookings, ordering and loyalty?

Yes, but the privacy work has to come first, and some platforms now do much of it for you. me&u, for example, markets a single guest profile across calls, bookings, orders and payments. Check what your existing platforms already join before building a customer data layer of your own.

If you do build one, the Privacy Act is the boundary. The OAIC says businesses with an annual turnover above $3 million are covered, along with some smaller businesses. Covered businesses using guest data for marketing must give a simple way to opt out under APP 7, and under APP 11 must destroy data, or strip out what identifies people, once it is no longer needed. Practically, a guest record should hold consent per channel, the source of each data point, and a retention rule. Our guide on privacy for small business software covers who is caught.

What does Standard 3.2.2A mean for digital food safety records?

Since December 2023 most food service businesses need a certified food safety supervisor, trained food handlers and, for category one businesses, records proving they manage the riskiest activities. FSANZ explains that category one and two businesses must appoint a food safety supervisor whose certificate was obtained within the past 5 years and who is reasonably available to food handlers. Category one businesses must also keep records of prescribed activities, such as receiving, storing, cooling and displaying ready to eat potentially hazardous food, for at least 3 months.

FSANZ is clear that electronic records, data logger graphs, photos and notes on invoices all count. That makes a simple kitchen app worthwhile for groups: temperature probes or loggers feeding a daily log, receiving checks on a tablet, supervisor certificates with expiry dates, and an exportable report per venue for when the environmental health officer visits.

How should rostering handle Hospitality Award penalty rates?

Rostering tools calculate the award well; the gap is setting labour cost against live sales across venues. At the time of writing, the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 (consolidated to 1 July 2026) sets these penalty rates:

When	Full time and part time	Casual (incl. casual loading)
Monday to Friday, 7am to 7pm	100%	125%
Monday to Friday, 7pm to midnight	100% plus $2.95 per hour	125% plus $2.95 per hour
Saturday	125%	150%
Sunday	150%	175%
Public holiday	225%	250%

Full time and part time staff on split shifts also earn an allowance of $3.69 a day where the break is 2 to 3 hours, and $5.60 where it is longer. Deputy and Tanda handle these rules. A custom layer earns its place when you want labour as a percentage of sales by venue and hour, forecast against bookings, before the roster is published.

What about cafes: order ahead, stamp cards and prepaid coffee?

Cafes face the same integration problems at smaller scale, plus a few rules specific to loyalty and prepaid products. A small chain choosing between a marketplace, POS native ordering and its own app should know that:

• Digital stamp cards are discount vouchers in the ACCC’s terms, so the conditions on how rewards can be used must be clear.
• Gift cards sold since 1 November 2019 must last at least 3 years, but reloadable cards and cards that form part of a loyalty program are exempt. A prepaid coffee card design needs to know which it is.
• Coffee subscriptions will be subscription contracts under the 2027 rules if they renew automatically, so the offer must say so and cancelling must be easy, and online if people signed up online.
• Peak hour throughput is the real design problem. An order ahead app that promises a 7.45am pickup must know the make line’s capacity, or it creates a queue at the pass.

For most cafes, POS native ordering and a reputable loyalty platform are enough. Our app development cost guide explains what drives the price of a branded app if you outgrow them.

Where does AI earn its keep in a restaurant?

In forecasting, phone bookings, review replies and menu costing, where it saves staff time on repeatable work. Prep forecasting from POS history, bookings and weather is a sensible first model. Phone bookings are a natural fit for an AI voice agent connected to your reservations platform. Drafting review replies for a manager to approve, and recosting menus when supplier invoices change, are both small and low risk. Allergen questions are the exception: an AI should point guests to staff, not answer them.

What do restaurant software projects cost?

Most restaurant groups need one focused integration or reporting build, not a platform. These are indicative AUD market ranges, ex GST, not quotes, aligned with the bands Expeed publishes for Australian custom software ($15,000 to $40,000 for simple tools, $40,000 to $150,000 for mid complexity systems).

Build	Indicative range
Delivery payout and POS reconciliation into Xero	$15,000 to $40,000
Kitchen food safety log with sensors and supervisor records	$15,000 to $35,000
Group reporting dashboard: sales, labour, delivery margin by venue	$25,000 to $70,000
Cafe order ahead app on an existing POS API	$40,000 to $110,000
Branded ordering and loyalty app across venues	$60,000 to $180,000

Ranges move with the number of venues, the quality of each platform’s API and whether you need offline support.

How AWLabs approaches restaurant and cafe work

We haven’t delivered a hospitality project yet, and we’ll say plainly when your POS or bookings platform can already do the job. Work starts with a 15 minute Development Consult, then a paid Discovery Audit that maps your systems, APIs and reports, credited in full against any build. You then get a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build, and we work Sydney business hours. Most restaurant projects sit within our workflow automation and data analytics services. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice.