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Nivala
Switching to Nivala

Switching from paper or Petpooja.

You do not have to switch in the middle of a busy week. Nivala starts as a practice copy of your café, and your old system keeps running while you set up. Menu, staff and PINs are the part you do in one sitting. The habit takes longer, so go at your own pace.

Nothing you practise touches your real café

Nothing you do in practice touches your real bills, bill numbers, stock, cash drawer or reports. Run the old system and Nivala side by side for a few days if you want. Nothing forces you to move in one day.

What comes across, and what does not

Comes across
  • Your dishes
  • Categories
  • Prices
  • Tax rates
Stays behind
  • Old sales and payments
  • Recipes
  • Add-ons (modifiers)

Keep your old records for your CA. A menu import adds new dishes only; it does not overwrite the menu you already set up.

The steps, in order

  1. 1

    Create your café and confirm your email

    Setup and practice are free and start straight away. Confirming your email is needed before you pay, not before you set up.

  2. 2

    Tell us about your café

    Name, type of café, and GST: “Yes, we add GST”, “Composition scheme”, “No GST”, or “Not sure yet”. Not sure is fine; you can practise now and decide before going live. If you add GST, enter your GSTIN and we read your state from it.

  3. 3

    Bring your menu

    Four ways: take a photo of the menu, paste or type it, upload a spreadsheet, or email it to us and we add it for you, usually within two working days. You see every dish and price before anything is saved. Photo reading is a first draft: check every price.

  4. 4

    Importing a spreadsheet from your old software

    Download your menu as a CSV from your old billing software. In Back office, Menu, choose Import menu, upload the file and press Preview. Fix any row the preview flags. Nothing is added until you tick that you checked prices, categories and tax. Importing the same file twice does not make copies, and your earlier dishes are untouched. The limit is 1 MB and 2,000 dishes, and a sample template is there to download.

  5. 5

    Set your PIN and add staff

    You choose your owner PIN (4 to 6 numbers, not 1234 or 0000). Add your staff and their PINs. Each person signs in with their own PIN.

  6. 6

    Practise

    Connect the tablet or laptop in Chrome or Edge, send a practice order to the kitchen screen, split cash and UPI, take payment, view the bill and close the shift. Practice bills say PRACTICE, NOT A REAL BILL. Then run the six checks in the practice-day guide.

  7. 7

    Go live when you are ready

    Choose Starter or Plus and authorise the monthly payment. Live orders unlock after the payment is verified.

If your menu is in Petpooja

We have not yet checked a real Petpooja export. Nivala has one spreadsheet importer for any software: it matches column names it knows (name, category, price, tax rate) and shows what it could not read. Read every row in the preview.

Check the tax rate on every row. Tax columns named like “GST %”, “GST” or “Tax rate” are read; a column Nivala does not recognise is skipped, and then the default rate you chose on screen is used. Choose the price column yourself if the preview says it cannot find one.

Your staff

The counter, the kitchen screen and the owner view are separate. Each person signs in with their own PIN. Let your cashier practise a full rush before you go live.

Printers

A printer is optional. Bills can be shown on the screen, downloaded or sent on WhatsApp. From Chrome, Nivala prints bills and kitchen tickets on a USB or Bluetooth (BLE) thermal printer. We have not yet proven one specific model, so we do not list one: print a test slip in practice before you go live.

Set up and practise free. Pay when you go live.

Starter is ₹999 a month per café. Plus is ₹1,299 a month per café. This is the final amount. GST is not charged. There is no free trial.

Create your café