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User Manual

Nutritics User Guide

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menus

Meal Ordering (Clinical Setting)

21st Dec 2017

If you are interested in adding meal ordering to your Nutritics account, please contact sales@nutritics.com


This guide will show you:

  • How to set up your outlet in Nutritics 
  • How to set up your patients profiles for meal ordering 
  • How to publish your existing menus and enable ordering the customer facing side of the ordering system 
  • How to manage your orders in the orders dashboard 

If you have not already built up your menus in Nutritics, please see our guide on menu creation here.

If you have not already created a patient profile in Nutritics, please see our guide on this here.

Outlet set up

To enable ordering on your account you must first set up your outlet on Nutritics.

Click on the cog icon in the top right corner of the screen, click on ‘settings’ then ‘ordering’.
  • Search in the search bar and select your outlet from the list.
  • Add in your outlet details.
  • Set the width of your thermal paper rolls used for docket and receipt printing. Dockets and receipts can be printed from the orders dashboard.
  • Choose how your outlet is set up i.e. beds and wards or rooms and floors. 
  • If desired, share your outlet. Type a Nutritics username or email address to enable sharing with the user. If your licences are part of an organisation or group, you will see all users of the organisation when you click ‘add user’. You can also choose to share with all account holders within the organisation. You will have the option to share the outlet with read only or read & write privileges after adding a collaborator.
  • Next, set up the waiting staff, areas and tables. This information will be visible on ‘eat-in’ orders in the ordering dashboard.
  • Add a master password to password protect the main menus list. 
  • Set up the staff and beds/wards or rooms/floors. If desired, staff members can be assigned pin codes that they will need to enter to gain access to menus. If staff members log into a menu and then a patient orders from that menu, you will be able to see the staff member associated with the order in the orders dashboard.

    Specify the beds/wards or rooms/floors. 


Pro tip: A bed/room and ward/floor can be assigned to a patient in the patient profile.


When ordering a meal, the menu can be filtered by bed/room number and the patient’s dietary requirements including allergies* and texture grade requirements** will be taken into account and any unsuitable meal options will be removed from the menu.


*Allergies and other dietary preferences can be specified in the dietary preferences/allergies section of the patient profile. 

**If a patient is suffering from dysphagia, their texture grade requirements can be specified under the grouping section of the patient profile. 

Menu item texture grades can be tagged by opening a recipe, scrolling to the grouping section and clicking on the appropriate texture grade. 

Menu settings and publishing

Once the menus and the outlet have been set up, open the menu you would like to publish from the Nutritics content explorer and review the menu settings. If you haven’t already created your menus in Nutritics, please see our guide on menu creation here.

Menu settings are accessed by clicking on the grey slider icon in the top right corner of the menu workspace.

Within the settings menu, there are several tabs that allow for the customisation of the menu:

Display tab

Choose the information to be displayed on paper and digital menus 

  • e.g. Enable menu item prices, calories and allergen information, an ingredient list and front and back of pack nutrition information. 
  • Choose the look of the menu e.g. apply a light or dark theme and select how many menu items or ‘tiles’ are displayed in each line. 
  • Enter a disclaimer to be displayed on all menu items. 
Interactivity tab 
Choose how patients can interact with the menu. 
  • Interactive mode allows customers to scroll through the menu and click on menu items for more information/ordering purposes and is recommended where menus are being displayed on touchscreens. Untick this option is your menu will be displayed on a digital display or TV that is not a touchscreen. 
  • Tick ‘Allow users to go back to the list of menus’ to allow patients to exit the current menu they are viewing and browse all published menus. Tick ‘The screen resets to the list of menus’ and the menu will return to the list of published menus after a period of inactivity. 

  • Enable a ‘featured items’ screensaver and menu items will flash on screen when the menu is left idle.

Ordering tab

Enable ordering to allow patients to place orders from the digital menu. Orders will appear in the ‘Orders’ folder in the Nutritics content explorer.

  • Set the default order type (this will be the first option shown to patients when selecting how they wish to receive their order).  
  • Set the service operating hours for each order type e.g bed service is available from 8am to 4pm (or leave this blank to accept orders at all times) and select what information is required from the patients e.g. name, number. 
  • Tick ‘Define specific meal/ times slots’ to specify set meal times. This should be used where mealtimes are at a set times e.g. breakfast is served at 8am, lunch is at 12pm and dinner at 6pm.

    The ‘days offset’ field determines how many days in advance patients can order for. 0 days offset means they can order 0 days in advance (i.e. orders placed are for today), 1 day offset means patients can order one day in advance (i.e orders placed are for tomorrow) and so on.

    For example, if breakfast is served at 8am every day and you would like patients to be able to order their breakfast for today and tomorrow, create two meal slots called breakfast, set the time to 8am and add 0 and 1 respectively in the offset column. 
Tick ‘allow ASAP’ orders to accept orders requested for as soon as possible.

Publishing tab
Publish your menus to make them ‘live’ i.e. staff and patients can view and interactive with your menus on a digital display. 
  • Staff login can be enabled from this tab. Staff members can be assigned pin codes that grant them access to menus. Pin codes can be assigned by clicking on the 'add users’ shortcut or from the outlet settings accessed by clicking on the cog icon in the top right corner of the screen .
  • Menus are made live from the publishing tab tab using the drop-down. Choose if the menu is published immediately or schedule a date and time for the menus to go live.

Live menus have an orange circle beside the menu title in the Nutritics explorer and on the the digital button in the menu workspace.

Click on the digital button to preview your digital menu.


Sharing tab
Choose how the menu will be accessed by patients in the ‘sharing’ tab. 

  • Libro is an app designed to track diet, exercise and lifestyle goals. Libro users log their diet and exercise on the app and receive analysis reports and feedback from their nutrition professional directly to their phone. Publish menus to Libro to allow Libro users to browse the menu on their smartphone 
  • Copy and paste the menu URL to display the menu on a website, on a tablet or other displays; embed the menu on a website using the code provided or display the QR code online or at an outlet for patients to scan.
  • To see your full menu list, click ‘get main menu url’. This will provide you with a link to a list of all active and inactive digital menus in your Nutritics account. 
Menu templates
Menu settings can be saved as a template and applied to other menus. Click ‘save as’, name your template and the template will be saved for reuse.

To apply a template, click on the template name and select apply. Right-click on the template name to set it as the default menu layout, to update the template or to rename or delete the template. 

Patient view

If a menu is password protected, a staff member will be required to log in to see the menu.

Enter the pin assigned to the staff member in your outlet settings. 


Menu items are shown in a tile format. Patients can scroll through and filter the menu by clicking on the tabs along the top.

Patients can also filter by their dietary preferences and allergies by clicking on the drop-down menu at the top of the screen. Clicking on the ‘choose’ button allows for the selection of a specific ward/floor and bed/room. 


The patient’s dietary requirements including allergies and texture grade requirements will be taken into account and any unsuitable meal options will be removed from the menu.

Clicking on a menu item will open it (the information on display e.g. calories, pricing etc. can be controlled from the menu settings).

Specify the desired number of servings and any notes for the kitchen.

Items are added to a basket at the bottom of the screen. 

Depending on the menu set up, patients can choose bed service, pick up or delivery by following the prompts on screen.

Order Dashboard

The order dashboard is accessed via the Nutritics Content Explorer. Click ‘Orders’ then ‘Live Orders’.

A summary of all orders is shown in the first panel. Items are organised into the food and recipe groups set up in the Nutritics account. 
The number of servings is written beside the menu item name.

Individual orders are shown to the right of the summary panel. 
Order information includes an icon displaying if the order is for bed service, pick up or delivery; the order number; the time the order is due; patient details including allergies, bed number; and the order items organised into groups.
Click on the paperclip icon beside a patient name to see more information on the patient. 

Toggle a condensed view of the orders or enable fullscreen mode using the icons in the top right corner of the screen. 

In the condensed view, click on an order to see more information on it.

Click on an item in the order summary panel to view all orders containing that item. In the panel that expands, you will see if any orders require a modified version of that item, for example if the patient has added any notes to their order.

Right-click on an item to view the cooking instructions and ingredient list. You can adjust the number of servings required and the ingredient list will update automatically. 

Keep track of order progress by clicking on order items to tick them off. 

Change the status of an order using the drop-up menu on individual orders, or set order status in bulk from the order summary panel. 

Print a receipt or docket for an order by clicking on the printer icon on individual orders. Note that the width of the thermal rolls used for printing must be specified in your outlet settings accessed by going to the menu in the top right corner of the screen > settings > ordering. 
Print dockets in bulk based on their status by clicking on the printer icon in the order summary panel.

New orders can be placed directly from the order dashboard by clicking on ‘new order’. This will open a list of menus. 
Select the relevant menu and order as normal.


Filtering orders 


Filter orders using the search bar at the top of the screen. Orders can be filtered by: 
  • Due time 
  • Date the order was placed or days offset e.g. days in advance, setting this to 0 will show today’s orders, setting this to 1 will show orders for tomorrow, setting it to 2 will show orders for 2 days time and so on
  • Ward/floor and room/bed number 
  • The menu the customer ordered from e.g. bar menu, main restaurant menu 
  • Fluid and solid texture grades 
  • Menu Staff member (if staff login is enabled on menus) 
  • Order status e.g. pending, ready for collection 
  • Meal groups e.g. breakfast, soups, salads 
Save commonly used searches by setting your search criteria and clicking ‘save’. Give the search a title. Saved searches appear to the left when the search dropdown is open.