Square Kitchen Printer Printing Duplicate Tickets? Audit Your Printer Profiles First

Square's documentation names possible causes: overlapping profiles, shared online profiles and items in several categories. Here's how to record your setup, change one thing at a time, test and roll back.

Ryan Speier

In mid-September a Square seller asked in the Square Community two questions. When a server rings an order on a handheld, why does the kitchen printer print it three times? And how do you stop bar drinks printing in the kitchen? The only reply was a sales pitch from an outside support company.

Square's own documentation points to printer profiles. Its printer-profile article says shared profile settings "can cause multiple copies to be printed." Copies can occur if more than one printer profile has order tickets enabled, or if several POS devices have the same profile, with online orders enabled, assigned to a printer. The same article says an item that belongs to multiple categories triggers the order ticket on each printer linked to a profile matching any of those categories. These are possible causes, not a diagnosis of anyone's setup. Here's a way to find which one applies to you without breaking routing that's working. It's based on Square's help articles, not a test on our own hardware.

How Square decides what prints where

  • Job types. A printer profile is a set of job types: receipts, in-person order tickets, online and kiosk order tickets, order ticket stubs and void tickets. Each order-ticket type has its own Categories to Print and Include future categories settings.
  • Where settings live. Profile settings are shared by every device assigned to the profile. The link between a specific printer and a profile is made locally on each device.
  • New categories. By default, a new item category routes to every existing profile that has order tickets enabled. That's the "Print all new categories automatically" option. "Don't print new categories" makes you assign new categories by hand.
  • Extra paper that isn't a duplicate. "Single item per ticket" prints each item on its own ticket. An order ticket stub prints an identifier with no order details. Either can look like extra tickets.
  • Intended copies. Some multiple printing is on purpose. In Square's own full-service examples, hot and cold prep profiles print only their categories, and an expo profile prints all item categories.

Step 1: Record the current setup before you change anything

Square has a view that shows every profile linked to a printer:

  • In the POS app: tap ≡ More > Settings > Hardware > Printers, then select a printer. Under Assigned profiles you'll see each linked profile and the devices sending orders through it.
  • In Square Dashboard: go to Settings > Device management > Devices, select the printer and find Assigned profiles.

Screenshot each screen and copy this record for each printer and profile. Include the location and all linked devices so a shared setting change is not mistaken for a change to one handheld. This is your rollback record.

Location:
Printer / station:
Profile name:
Ticket types enabled (in-person / online and kiosk / other):
Categories to print:
Include future categories setting:
Single item per ticket setting:
Devices sending through this profile:
Intended purpose:
Setting changed and time:
Test result:
Original setting for rollback:

Fill in the intended-purpose field with the kitchen and bar leads. If the expo station wants every item on its ticket, that copy is doing its job.

Step 2: Look for possible causes of in-person duplicates

  • Does the kitchen printer have more than one profile with in-person order tickets on and overlapping categories? For each one, ask whether someone meant it to print in the kitchen.
  • Do any items sit in more than one category that's routed to a printer?
  • Is Single item per ticket on, or are stubs printing where nobody expects them?
  • Do drink categories appear on a profile linked to the kitchen printer? Look for one set to print all categories, or one that picked up a new drink category through "Print all new categories automatically."
  • Check each handheld's own view. Printer links are made on each device, so two handhelds can behave differently.

Online and kiosk orders are a separate check

Square says every internet-connected POS device processes online order tickets at the same time. When a profile with online order tickets is active on multiple POS devices, each device can send a copy. Two profiles on one device that both have online order tickets and the same categories can also each produce a copy.

Square's documented fix is a profile dedicated to online order tickets. You assign it to a printer from one POS device that stays powered on with a reliable connection.

Keep this work separate from the in-person fix, and test each channel on its own.

Step 3: Change one thing, then test

  1. Pick a quiet window and tell the kitchen and bar that test tickets are coming.
  2. Make one change, such as unticking the drink categories on a kitchen profile. Editing a profile applies to every printer it's assigned to. Unassigning a profile from a printer affects every device that uses that profile.
  3. Ring a test ticket with one food item and one drink from one handheld. Use a test that doesn't take a real payment or message a real guest. Void it through your normal process.
  4. Count the tickets at each printer and write the result next to your record. Repeat from each handheld that's involved.
  5. For online orders, test only if you can do it without charging a real card or notifying a real customer. If you can't, ask Square support for a safe method.
  6. If a result is worse or unexpected, restore that one setting from your record before trying the next change.

Roll back safely

Don't start by deleting profiles or reassigning every item to a single category. Square notes that deleting a profile may affect printing on the devices it's assigned to. To pause a profile during testing, the POS app lets you turn its Status off on that device. Square says disabling isn't a long-term fix, but it can be undone. Keep your record until a full service has run cleanly.

A hypothetical setup to test

Suppose the Assigned profiles view for the kitchen printer showed three in-person profiles:

  • "Hot line," printing Entrées and Sides
  • "Expo," printing all categories
  • "Kitchen 2," printing all categories, with nobody sure where it came from

Going by Square's documentation, a setup like this could print more than one kitchen copy of a burger ticket. A beer could print there too. That's a hypothesis to test, not a predicted count. Here's the order to work through it:

  1. Ask whether Expo is meant to print at the kitchen printer. It might be, if expo works at the kitchen pass. If so, keep it.
  2. Check which devices send through "Kitchen 2." Turn its Status off on one handheld and run the test ticket.
  3. Then decide which kitchen-bound profile, if any, should still print drink categories.

After each step, the ticket count tells you what changed.

Who does what

  • The owner or general manager approves the test window and any change.
  • A manager with hardware permissions records the setup and makes one change at a time.
  • Kitchen, expo and bar leads confirm what each station actually needs to see.

When to call Square

Call Square support if the Assigned profiles view doesn't match the devices you have, or if a test result contradicts the settings. Their help articles also differ on one point. The printer-profile article shows a Dashboard option to edit assigned printers. The online-duplicates article says printers must be assigned from a POS device. If your Dashboard doesn't offer the option, use the device.

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