Bring your menu. Leave the retyping.
Aura imports your product list directly from a Lightspeed, Tebi or Pilot CSV export — names, prices, categories, barcodes and SKUs. Pick the source, preview the mapping, commit. Then it's a morning of setup, not a project.
Three sources, mapped for you
Back Office → Menu → Import CSV — choose the system you're leaving and Aura already knows that export's column layout. You preview what it parsed before anything is written.
Lightspeed
Product export with names, prices, categories and barcodes. Retailers get their SKUs mapped too, so the scanner works from the first shift.
Tebi
Menu export mapped to Aura's products and categories, ready to have prep stations and modifier groups added on top.
Pilot
Product and price list mapped the same way, with the same preview-then-commit step.
What imports, and what you'll set up fresh
No POS exports everything another POS needs. Here's the split, so nothing surprises you on the day.
| What | Imports? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Products & prices | ✓ | Names, prices and categories from the vendor CSV. |
| Barcodes & SKUs | ✓ | Mapped where the source export includes them — which is what makes retail scanning work on day one. |
| Categories | ✓ | Created from the export. You then add a colour, a course type and a prep station to each. |
| Modifier groups | Set up fresh | Modifier structures differ too much between systems to map safely. Built in Back Office → Menu, then attached to the products that use them. |
| Allergens | Set up fresh | Tag from the 14 major allergens per product. They then show on the QR menu, on kitchen tickets in red, and in the back office. |
| Prep stations | Set up fresh | Create the stations your kitchen actually runs, then point categories at them. Configure none and Aura auto-routes drinks to the bar and desserts to pastry. |
| Zones & tables | Set up fresh | Add zones then tables, or drag them into place in the terminal's arrange mode. Optionally upload a photo of the real room per zone. |
| Staff & PINs | Set up fresh | Name, role and a 4–8 digit PIN each. PINs are stored as salted hashes, so nothing could be migrated even in principle. |
| Customers & loyalty balances | Talk to us | Depends entirely on what your current system will export. Bring us the file and we'll tell you honestly what's possible. |
| Historical sales | — | Aura starts your ledger from go-live. Keep your old system's reports for prior periods — your bookkeeper will want them intact anyway, not re-derived. |
A morning, in order
This is the same order as the setup guide in the help centre. Steps 1–7 are in the back office; 8–11 are on a terminal.
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Set your tax rates
SA restaurant meals are standard-rated at 15% — make that the default. Add a zero-rated entry only for genuinely zero-rated items. Prices in Aura are always VAT-inclusive.
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Import the menu, then dress it
Import the CSV, then go back through and add colours and course types to categories, and costs, allergens and stock-tracking flags to the products that need them. Cost is what makes margin % and menu engineering work later.
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Build modifier groups
"Cooking temperature", min 1 / max 1, required. Options with price deltas. Attach each group to the products that use it.
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Create prep stations
The lines your kitchen actually runs — Hot, Bar, Pastry, Grill. Point categories at them. Give a station a printer IP only if you want paper tickets as well as the screen.
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Add zones and tables
Labels must be unique per location — if you run QR Ordering, guest orders are routed by table label. Mark tables bookable online with a min/max party band, and declare table groups for the tables that push together.
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Add staff and PINs
Name, role, 4–8 digit PIN. You can only create staff at or below your own role.
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Suppliers, if you raise POs
Contacts, payment terms and VAT numbers — so received purchase orders feed input VAT on your VAT201.
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Configure each terminal
Server URL, location id, printer host and port, course firing mode, whether to ask for covers, preferred payment method, card capture mode and tip percentages. Remember: printer changes need an app restart.
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Connect the printer, test the drawer
Ring a test cash sale and confirm the receipt prints and the drawer kicks. Do this before the first real service, not during it.
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Print your table QR codes, if you run QR Ordering
Back Office → Tables → Print QR codes. Per-table PNGs or one printable sheet on desktop; the browser version gives you the links to copy. Skip this step unless QR Ordering is on your licence — without it the codes tell guests ordering isn't available here.
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Ring a real sale and close the day
One test sale, then Register → close → Z-report. That proves the whole loop including the ledger. Now you're live.
The differences venues notice first
Service doesn't stop
Staff keep signing in and ringing, and walk-in sales complete properly, with no connection at all. For most venues switching, this is the reason.
The return is in the product
Not a sales report your bookkeeper reshapes — an actual SARS-ready VAT201 with output and input VAT, plus a balanced journal for Xero or Sage/Pastel.
No per-feature upsell
Inside a product, everything ships: the kitchen display, loyalty, layby, house accounts, stock counts and the API are not editions you unlock. Guest ordering is its own product — QR Ordering, bundled with a till or standalone — and inside it kiosk mode and online bookings come along too. See pricing.
Send us your export, we'll import it before the demo
Bring the CSV from whatever you're on now. We'll load it into a demo tenant so the walkthrough is your menu, on your prices, with your barcodes.