Before you begin
Work through this checklist before you start building a menu in the portal. These steps are usually done once, during onboarding, with your Impos contact. This feature is available to existing and new customers on premises or cloud.
1. Confirm the POS is on a supported version
The venue's Impos Front Office must be on version 6.58 or above before connecting it to the cloud portal. Check the running version at each terminal and arrange an update first if any are behind.
2. Install the synchronisation service on the venue's server
A synchronisation service must be installed on the venue's on-site server. This helps with getting the menu getting published into the cloud so that you do not have to recreate their menu online.
Install and confirm the service is running and connected before publishing anything.
3. Take a backup of the venue database
Before connecting an existing venue or pushing the first menu, take a backup of the venue's database. This is your restore point if anything goes wrong during setup or the first sync. Don't begin until you have a verified backup you can roll back to.
4. Plan the menu and your data rules
Understand the business and decide what the menu should look like before you build or import it:
- How the menu is structured — departments, categories, items, sizes, and pricing.
- How to handle duplicate menu items — which record "wins" when the same item exists in more than one place, and how conflicting prices are resolved.
- What you'll import versus build by hand.
The portal can import and export menu data, so an existing menu can be loaded in bulk. When you import, you choose a conflict mode — Update existing, Skip, or Fail entire import — which is exactly where the "which one wins" decision gets applied. Agree these rules up front so the import behaves the way the customer expects.
5. Set up the first organisation, site, and user
Through the admin console at https://admin.impos.cloud, create the customer's first Organisation, its first Site, and the first User so they can sign in. This establishes the hierarchy everything else hangs off (see Organisations, sites, and the hierarchy below). Once the first user exists, additional people are added from the Team and Invites screens. This is currently handled by engineering.
Getting your account (the invite email)
Most people first meet the portal through an invitation email — "You've been invited to Impos Cloud!" — sent when someone adds them from the Invites screen. It names who invited you and the management group you're joining.
Getting started is a two-step process:
- Set up your account. Look for a separate email first — it lets you set your password and verify your email address.
- Accept the invitation. Once your account is ready, come back to the invitation email and click Accept Invitation to join the group.
Heads up: the invitation link expires in 24 hours, so keep the email handy and accept it promptly. If it lapses, ask whoever invited you to resend it from the Invites screen. If you didn't expect the invite, you can safely ignore the email.
Once you've accepted, sign in as below.
Signing in
- Go to the portal at
https://impos.cloud. - Enter your email and password on the Impos sign-in screen.
- You'll land on the Items page for your organisation — your starting point for building and managing the menu.
If you've forgotten your password, use Forgot password? on the sign-in screen to reset it by email.
The layout
Everything is reached from the left-hand sidebar, grouped into sections:
- Overview — the Dashboard (coming soon — not available at launch).
- Menu — everything you sell and how it's priced: Items, Categories, Departments, Modifiers, Modifier Groups, Sublists, Item Groups, Adjustments, Price Sets, Set Menus, Discounts, Surcharges.
- Team — Team members and Invites.
- Admin — Organisation settings, Publish Status, and the Audit Log.
At the bottom of the sidebar you'll find your account (name and role), Log out, and Collapse to narrow the sidebar and free up screen space.
At the top of the page, a breadcrumb shows where you are in the hierarchy, and — on menu pages — a row of site tabs (e.g. All, plus each site) lets you focus on one venue.
Organisations, sites, and the hierarchy
Impos organises your business in three levels:
- Management Group — the top level, used for permission inheritance and cross-organisation reporting (e.g. "The Harbour Restaurant Group").
- Organisation — a brand. This is where your menu, pricing, team, discounts and surcharges live. Each organisation is an independent set of data — menus are not shared between organisations, even under the same group.
- Site — a physical or online venue belonging to one organisation. A site owns its terminals, floor plans, staff, and any venue-specific override pricing.
Switching organisation or site
Use the organisation switcher at the top-left of the sidebar (it shows your current organisation, e.g. "Ivan Cafe and Bar"). Click it to choose a different organisation or site you have access to.
On menu pages, the site tabs along the top let you switch between All sites and an individual site, so you can review or override what a single venue sees.
Editing at organisation vs site level
When you create or edit a menu record, the portal tells you what your change will affect with a banner such as:
Editing at Organisation level — changes will apply to all sites.
- Organisation-level changes flow down (inherit) to every site under the organisation.
- Site-level changes (overrides) only affect that one venue. An override is preserved when the organisation updates the base record, unless the change is explicitly forced.
Always check the banner before saving so you know how wide your change reaches.
Searching
Use the Search… box at the top of the sidebar — or press ⌘K (Mac) / Ctrl+K (Windows) — to jump quickly to a record or page.
Most list pages also have their own Search… box and filters for narrowing the list in front of you.
How publishing works
Changes you make in the portal are not live on the POS until you publish them. This is deliberate — you can build and review a whole menu safely, then push it out when you're ready.
- You make and save changes in the portal (organisation or site level).
- Publishing sends those changes to the POS terminals at your venue(s).
- The Publish Status page shows which venues are online, what's been published, and what's still pending.
Records that support publishing show a Save button (saves the draft change) and a Save & Publish button (saves and pushes it live). Saving without publishing keeps the change as a pending update until you publish.
How the menu fits together
The Menu section has a few moving parts that are easy to confuse. Here's the quick mental model — think of running a coffee-and-beer shop:
- Item — a thing you sell. A latte. A beer.
- Modifier — a small change to that thing: "oat milk", "no sugar", "extra shot". Not sold on its own.
- Modifier Group — a question the till asks when you ring an item up: "Which milk?" → pick Soy / Oat / Almond. A bundle of modifiers with a rule like "pick exactly 1".
- Sublist — a back-office folder to keep things tidy. (A Modifier Group is a special kind of folder; a plain folder is just for organising.)
- Adjustment — the size/variant button you tap before the item: Pot / Pint / Schooner.
- Price Level — think of each item as having five price tags numbered 1–5. Tapping "Pint" tells the till "use price tag #2". No size = tag #1.
- Price Set — a whole menu of prices for different times. Normal prices are one set; Happy Hour prices are another.
- Product Group (a.k.a. Item Group) — a bag of items you point rules at ("all my beers"), so you can scope a size set or aim a discount without setting up each item one by one.
How a price actually gets decided — picture a little grid:
| Tag 1 (Pot) | Tag 2 (Pint) | |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | $6 | $11 |
| Happy Hour | $5 | $9 |
The Adjustment picks the column (you tapped "Pint" → Tag 2), the Price Set picks the row (it's 5pm → Happy Hour), and the price is wherever they cross → $9.
Tip: an Item is the thing; Modifiers tweak it (and Modifier Groups are the pop-up questions that offer those tweaks); Adjustments pick the size, which points at a numbered Price Level, and the active Price Set says what that level costs right now; Sublists are folders that keep it organised, and Product Groups are bags you aim discounts and size-sets at.
Ready to build? Start with Items.
Permissions
What you can see and do depends on your role. Some pages — such as the organisation-wide Admin area — are restricted; if you don't have permission, the portal shows "You do not have permission to view this page." Roles are managed on the Team screen.