AR4HO Restaurant

November 6, 2026

Overview

This update gives the website a food-photo header with Place order and Book a table buttons and a home-page section of food package offers, and adds a full restaurant back office with cheque printing as a separate plugin.

Guests only ever see the theme. Staff log in to WordPress and land on their own Back Office dashboard, which shows only the menus their role allows. Each back-office module can be switched off in Back Office → Settings → Modules.

Website header: food hero and order buttons

The home page now opens on a full-width slider of plates and dishes, with the two main actions – order and book – always one tap away.

Hero slider

• Five bundled food illustrations: grilled Red Sea bass, mixed grill, Cairo-style koshari, mezze to share, Om Ali and Turkish coffee. Each has an English and Arabic title and caption.

• Changes slide every 6 seconds (adjustable 3–20) with a soft fade and slow zoom. Arrows, dots, a pause button and swipe on phones.

• Pauses on mouse hover, keyboard focus and when the tab is hidden; no motion for visitors who ask their device for reduced motion.

• In Arabic the picture and its shading are mirrored so the text side is always dark and readable.

• The first slide is preloaded for speed and is used as the share image on social media.

Place order and Book a table buttons

“Place order” opens the menu page (the page holding the

Page banners: inner pages show a food photo behind the title – the page’s featured image if it has one, otherwise the banner photo you choose, otherwise a bundled dish (mezze on the menu page, mixed grill on the booking page).

Managing it – Appearance → Hero slider (or Customize → AR4HO Dine → Hero slider & buttons):

1. Per slide: show/hide, your own photo (landscape, at least 1920 × 1080 px, dish on the right), title and caption in English and Arabic.

2. Autoplay on/off and seconds per slide.

3. Button labels for both buttons in English and Arabic (empty = default text).

4. Inner page banner photo.

Food package offers on the home page

The home page shows the four newest food packages as offer cards, right after the seating figures; each one can be ordered on WhatsApp in one tap.

Each card shows a dish picture, a badge (for example “Save 17%”), how many people it serves, the end date if there is one, up to four included items, the old price crossed out and the offer price, and an Order button. Prices follow the currency the guest picked; four across on a computer, two on a tablet, one under the other on a phone.

The four sample packages (example prices – change them to yours):

Ordering – the Order button opens WhatsApp with the message “I would like to order the … package (price)” already written, using the WhatsApp number in the Customizer; without a number it opens the menu page. Each offer also has its own page with a price box, the full list of what you get, Order on WhatsApp and Book a table, and price information that search engines can show.

Managing offers

1. Posts → Food offers lists every offer with its price and end date, and creates the four sample packages (with pictures and Arabic versions) in one click.

2. To add an offer: write a normal post in the Offers category, set a featured image, and fill in the Food package offer box – price, price before the offer, serves, badge in English and Arabic, end date, and included items in English and Arabic (one per line). Use the Arabic version box for the Arabic title and text.

3. An offer disappears from the home page by itself after its end date.

4. Customize → AR4HO Dine → Food package offers: show or hide the section, number of offers (1–12), which category, and the small heading, title and intro in English and Arabic.

Check printing and cheque register

Cheques are prepared by the cashier, approved by Finance (and the GM from EGP 20,000), printed straight onto the bank’s cheque leaf by Finance, and tracked until the bank clears them.

cheque life cycle · 7 statuses

Bank accounts & cheque books – one record per account: name, bank (CIB, NBE, Banque Misr, QNB Alahli, AAIB, HSBC or other), account number, branch, currency, next cheque number and last number in the book, authorised signatories, and the print settings:

• Amount in words in Arabic (“فقط خمسة آلاف ومائتان وخمسون جنيه مصري لا غير”) or English (“Five Thousand Two Hundred Fifty Egyptian Pounds Only”), with piastres.

• Date format (d/m/Y, Y/m/d or one digit per box), paper (cheque leaf fed directly, or taped on A4), printer offsets across and down in mm, and optional custom positions for each field.

• Test print on plain paper: draws the cheque outline, a 10 mm grid and sample values. Hold it over a real leaf against the light and adjust until every field sits on its line.

• The account screen shows cheques issued, leaves left and the amount issued but not yet cleared; the dashboard warns when fewer than 5 leaves remain.

The cheque – bank account, cheque number (taken automatically from the book, never used twice on the same account), pay to, amount, cheque date (a future date = post-dated), purpose (supplier, salaries, employee, rent and utilities, taxes and insurance, other), links to supplier, purchase order, employee or payroll run, memo, and “A/C payee only” crossing.

What gets printed: date, payee (Arabic names are right-aligned and joined correctly), amount in words over two lines if needed, the figure protected as **12,380.75**, memo, and the crossing lines. The PDF tells the print dialog not to scale the page.

Payment voucher (PDF) – an A4 bilingual voucher for the file: voucher number, payee, amount in figures and in English and Arabic words, bank and cheque number, purpose and reference, then Prepared by / Approved by / Received by with signature and ID lines. Void cheques are stamped VOID with the reason.

Register – the cheque list filters by status, date and search (payee, number, memo), exports to Excel-ready CSV, and shows three totals on top: approved waiting to print, issued but not cleared, and due at the bank in the next 7 days.

Shortcuts: an approved purchase order shows what has been paid by cheque and a Pay by cheque button for the rest; an approved payroll run has Create salary cheque; every employee file has Issue cheque to this employee.

Store inventory and requisitions

Every kilo that enters or leaves a store goes through a document, so stock levels and food cost are always explained.

• Stores – e.g. main dry store, cold room, bar store – each with a location and a storekeeper.

• Items – code, name, category, unit (kg, g, litre, piece, box, pack, bottle, can, crate, tray, roll, set), minimum stock, reorder quantity, barcode. Average cost is recalculated on every receipt (weighted average).

• Stock levels – one screen with the quantity and value per item and store, items at or below minimum highlighted.

• Stock counts & adjustments – opening balances, physical counts, waste and breakage. Posting updates stock and locks the document.

• Requisitions – a kitchen, bar or floor asks a store for items. The department manager (for example the head chef for the kitchen) approves; the storekeeper then issues it in one click. Issuing is refused if a store does not have enough stock.

• Every movement is in a stock ledger with type (receipt, issue, adjustment), document and user.

Purchase requests and procurement

Purchasing runs request → approval → order → approval → receiving → payment, with each step done by a different person.

1. Purchase request – any department raises it with items, quantities, estimated prices, reason and “needed by” date. Approved by the department manager, plus the GM from EGP 25,000. A one-click button turns all low-stock items into a draft request.

2. Purchase order – the purchasing officer turns an approved request into an order to a supplier, with delivery store, expected date and payment terms. Approved by Finance, plus the GM from EGP 50,000. Printable as a branded PDF to send to the supplier.

3. Receiving – the storekeeper enters what actually arrived; partial deliveries are allowed. Stock and average cost update automatically, and the order shows Partly received or Received.

4. Payment – from the order, Pay by cheque pre-fills a cheque for the amount still unpaid (see Check printing).

Suppliers keep contact person, phone, e-mail, tax registration number, address and payment terms (cash, 15, 30 or 60 days, advance).

HR and employee management

Each staff member has one employee file that attendance, leave and payroll all read from.

• Departments – English and Arabic name, manager (who approves that department’s requests) and cost centre. The demo uses Kitchen, Service – Ground floor, Service – First floor, Service – Roof terrace, Bar & beverages, Stewarding, and Management & finance.

• Employee file – code, name in English and Arabic, job title, department, national ID and its expiry, phone, e-mail, linked WordPress user, hire date, contract type and end date, leave balance, basic salary, housing, transport and other allowances, insured salary, insurance number, bank and account, clock-in PIN (stored hashed), status (active, suspended, left).

• Leave requests – annual, sick, casual or unpaid; approved by the department manager then HR; approved annual leave is taken off the balance.

• Alerts – the HR dashboard counts IDs and contracts expiring in the next 30 days.

• Employee portal – the [abo_portal] shortcode on a page gives each employee their own payslips (PDF), attendance, leave balance, a leave request form and, if allowed, clock in/out.

Attendance and shift management

Shifts are planned on a weekly roster, staff clock in with a PIN, and late, early and overtime minutes are worked out automatically for payroll.

• Shifts – name, start and end (overnight shifts such as 16:00–00:00 work), grace minutes and break minutes. Demo: Morning (prep & lunch), Evening (dinner), Split (lunch + dinner).

• Roster planner – a week grid of employees × days; pick a shift or day off per cell and save the week.

• Clock-in kiosk – the [abo_clock] shortcode turns a tablet at the staff entrance into a clock: employee code + PIN, first tap = in, second = out. Clocking can be limited to the restaurant’s internet IP.

• Attendance records – per employee and day: in, out, worked minutes, late, left early, overtime, status (present, absent, on leave, day off), source (kiosk, portal, manual) and note. Managers can correct a record; the minutes are recalculated.

• Today panel – rostered, clocked in, late, and not in yet.

Payroll processing and PDF payslips

A payroll run builds one payslip per active employee for a month, goes through Finance and GM approval, and is then locked as paid.

• Earnings – basic salary, allowances, overtime (hours × hourly rate × multiplier) and one-off bonuses, commissions or allowances.

• Deductions – late minutes (with a factor), unpaid leave and absence days, salary advances, loan instalments, penalties, employee social insurance on the insured salary (between the minimum and maximum), and monthly income tax from annual brackets after the personal exemption.

• Bonuses & deductions screen – one-off items per employee and month, picked up by the next run.

• Payslips – bilingual A4 PDF (English and Arabic) per employee, or all payslips of a run in one PDF; employees download their own from the portal.

• Bank file – a CSV of names, accounts and net pay for the bank’s salary upload, and Create salary cheque for paying by cheque.

• Settings – working days and hours, overtime multiplier, late factor, social-insurance shares and limits, tax exemption and brackets. These are example values: have your accountant confirm the current Egyptian rules before the first real run.

Role-based dashboards and approval workflows

Each person sees only their own work: the menu, dashboard panels and buttons follow their role, and every request moves through an approval chain where nobody approves their own document.

Default approval chains (editable in Back Office → Settings → Approvals, as approver|minimum amount per line):

How approvals work

• Approvers get an e-mail and a red counter on Back Office → My approvals; they approve or reject with a note.

• A rejected document goes back to its author to fix and resend; approved documents can no longer be edited.

• Administrators can unblock any step; every step, print, void and change is written to the audit log with user, time and IP.

Dashboards – panels appear only for roles that can act on them: Restaurant today (reservations and guests, orders and sales today, new orders, month sales – read from AR4HO Restaurant Manager), Stores, Purchasing, Cheques, People, Attendance today, Payroll, and “Me” (leave left, days present, late minutes). Back-office staff land on this dashboard when they log in.

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