Operational - Kitchen Speed

See how long your kitchen takes to make every order. For each kitchen display screen (KDS) in your workflow the report lists every order with when it arrived, when the kitchen started it and when it was done, then shows how long orders take from the sale to being ready and how busy hours and days compare.

Updated Thu 05 Nov 2026

Running the report

Open Reports and choose Kitchen Speed under Operational.

Pick the Select your start date and the end date of the days you want to look at.

Run the report. You get a list of orders for each kitchen screen, then charts and tables that show your average times by hour and day of the week.

Your store needs kitchen display screensThe report only has something to show if your store uses the Aura Kitchen Display System (KDS). Sales that never went to a kitchen screen are not listed.

Look into one orderClick an invoice number in the list to open that sale in the Invoice Audit report.

Report options

Select your start date

The first trading day to include. It starts as today.

end date

The last trading day to include. It starts as today. To look at a single day, leave both dates the same.

Orders are placed in a day by the time the sale was created, in your store's local time, using your store's trading day (see Trading day in the glossary).

Remove headings and formatting for exporting

Unticked by default. Tick it when you want the kitchen times in Excel: the report then prints only one plain list with a row of column headings and one line per order, with no page headings, charts, averages or legend. See Exporting to Excel below.

The report at a glance

BOB'S BURGERS | BOB'S BURGERS TIMES SQUARE

Kitchen speed report

Mon 26 Oct 2026 00:00 to Fri 30 Oct 2026 23:59

The dates run from the start of the first trading day to the end of the last one. If your trading day does not end at midnight, the times change to your end of day time and an asterisk (*) appears after the dates, with a note at the bottom of the page.

Order times by screen: every order, one block per kitchen screen.
Total make time: how long orders take from the sale to ready, by time band and by day and hour, and how many items the kitchen made each hour.
Backlog time by hour: how long orders wait before the kitchen starts them.
Total minutes by hour: how long each screen takes in total.

With Remove headings and formatting for exporting ticked, all of this is replaced by one plain list for Excel (see Exporting to Excel below).

Order times by screen

Each of your kitchen screens gets its own block, headed with the screen's name and KDS. Screens that pass orders on come first. The screen that marks an order as ready comes last. Inside a block the orders are split by order type (for example eat in or delivery), with the average for that type shown above its orders and the average for the whole screen at the end of the block.

Grill KDS
Date	Invoice number 1	Order number	Arrival time 2	Minutes until started (Backlog time) 3	Started time 4	Minutes until done 5	Done time 6	Total Grill minutes 7
Average minutes for Eat in orders				1.8		5.0		6.8
Fri 23 Oct 26	100412	12	12:03:10	1.5	12:04:40	4.5	12:09:10	6.0
Fri 23 Oct 26	100413	13	12:05:20	1.0	12:06:20	6.0	12:12:20	7.0
Fri 23 Oct 26	100414	14	12:08:00	3.0	12:11:00	4.5	12:15:30	7.5
Average minutes for Grill KDS:				1.8		5.0		6.8

1 Invoice number

The sale. Click it to open the sale in Invoice Audit. When a sale that is not yet paid is changed and more items are added, the extra items come back to the screen as their own line with a suffix, for example 100413.1. Their times are recorded separately from the original, and the total make time of that line is counted from when the change was sent to the kitchen, not from the original sale.

2 Arrival time

The moment the order first appeared on this kitchen screen.

3 Minutes until started (Backlog time)

How long the order waited on the screen before the kitchen flagged it as started. Empty if your kitchen does not flag orders as started.

4 Started time

The time the kitchen flagged the order as started. This is an optional feature you switch on in the Aura Portal. When it is on, Aura also watches the kitchen backlog and uses it to decide when to start making a sale that was placed for a later time.

5 Minutes until done

The time from started to done. Click the heading to sort the block by this column.

6 Done time

The time the order was removed (bumped) from the screen by pressing Done.

7 Total minutes

The time from arriving on the screen to being done. When your kitchen flags orders as started, this is the backlog time plus the time until done. The heading carries the screen's name, for example Total Grill minutes. Click the heading to sort.

n/a: The screen recorded a time that cannot be right (before the start, or more than 24 hours). The time is shown as n/a, its minutes are left blank, and it is not counted in any average or chart.
Average minutes for ... orders: The average of the three minute columns for one order type on this screen. Click the line to collapse or open that order type.

Voided salesThe report includes voided sales, because the kitchen still made them.

Out of order arrival timesOrders are listed by the time the sale was started. If an arrival time looks out of order, the sale was sent back on the kitchen screen, which moves its arrival to later in the day.

Total make time

After the lists, a new page shows how long whole orders take from the moment the sale was created until the order was marked ready. Only orders that reached the ready step are counted. For a sale that was changed after it was sent, the extra items are timed from the moment the change was sent.

Orders by time band

A column chart and a table count your orders in two minute bands. A time that falls exactly on a line counts in the lower band, so 4.0 minutes is in from 2 to 4 minutes. Anything above 30 minutes is in over 30 minutes. Orders with a time that cannot be right (shown as n/a in the list) are not counted.

Band	# orders
from 4 to 6 minutes	12
from 6 to 8 minutes	25
from 8 to 10 minutes	19
from 10 to 12 minutes	8
over 30 minutes	1

Average make time by day and hour

A table of the average minutes from sale to ready. Each row is a day of the week and each column is an hour of the day, in the hour the sale was created (for example 12-13 is 12:00 to 12:59).

Day	11-12	12-13	13-14
Fri	7.4	9.8	8.1
Sat	8.0	11.2	10.5

Heatmap colours

Every day and hour table in the report is coloured like a heatmap, so the slow and busy hours stand out at a glance. Each table is coloured on its own: its lowest number is green, its highest is red, and the numbers in between run through yellow and orange in five equal steps.

lowest in the tablemiddlehighest in the table

In the minutes tables green is the quickest and red the slowest. In Items per hour green is the quietest hour and red the busiest.

Items per hour

A table of how many items the kitchen made, by day of the week and hour of the day, in the hour the order was marked ready on the last screen. An item is a main item on the sale: the options and extras listed under it are part of the same item, so a Mega steak breakfast with a medium egg, an extra egg, a medium rare steak and a coke counts as one item. Orders that never reached ready are not counted.

Day	11-12	12-13	13-14
Mon	52	141	75
Tue	88	131	122

Backlog time by hour

One page per kitchen screen. A line chart and a table show the average minutes until started for each hour of the day, with one line per day of the week. Use it to see when orders wait longest before the kitchen picks them up. It needs your kitchen to flag orders as started. The table is coloured green (shortest wait) to red (longest wait) for each screen, see Heatmap colours under Total make time.

Day	12-13	13-14
Fri	2.1	1.6
Sat	3.4	2.9

Total minutes by hour

The same layout for the average total minutes a screen takes, from arrival to done. One page per kitchen screen, headed Average total minutes for and the screen's name. The table is coloured green (quickest) to red (slowest) for each screen.

Exporting to Excel

Tick Remove headings and formatting for exporting before you run the report. Instead of the screens, charts and tables you get a single list, ready to export to CSV or Excel. Each line is one order's total time in the kitchen, through every kitchen screen, from the moment it was sent to the kitchen until it was finally ready for the customer.

Invoice Number	Order Number	Invoice Date	Start Time	Ready Time	Total Minutes	# items
100412	12	Fri 23 Oct 2026	12:03	12:15	12:18	3
100413	13	Fri 23 Oct 2026	12:05	12:20	15:00	2
100413.1	13	Fri 23 Oct 2026	12:14	12:22	08:30	1

Invoice Number: The sale. Items added to a sale after it was sent have their own line with a suffix, for example 100413.1, because they go through the kitchen separately.
Order Number: The order number of the sale.
Invoice Date: The day the sale was created, in your store's local time, for example Thu 05 Nov 2026.
Start Time: The time the order was sent to the kitchen, in your store's local time, for example 07:45.
Ready Time: The time the order was bumped off the last kitchen screen and marked as ready, for example 08:15.
Total Minutes: The time from the start time to the ready time, in minutes and seconds, for example 15:15 is 15 minutes and 15 seconds. Past an hour the minutes keep counting, for example 75:00. It is worked out from the exact times, so it can differ slightly from the gap between the start and ready times shown. Blank when the order never reached ready, or the screen recorded a time that cannot be right.
# items: The number of main items on that line. Options and extras listed under an item are not counted separately, so a burger with cheese, bacon and a coke is one item. A line with a quantity of 2 is still one item. For a line like 100413.1 it counts only the items added in that round.

Different from Total make timeThe Total make time of an original sale counts from when the sale was created. The export counts only the time in the kitchen, from when the order was sent, so its minutes can be lower.

Total Minutes in ExcelExcel may read 15:15 as a time of day (15 hours 15 minutes). When you open the file, import the Total Minutes column as text to keep it as minutes and seconds.

Watch the video

A short walk through the Kitchen Speed report.

Can't see the video? Watch it on YouTube.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the report show nothing for my store?

The report is built from the times your kitchen display screens record. If your store does not use the Aura Kitchen Display System, or the sales in your dates never went to a screen, there is nothing to list.

Why do some times say n/a?

The screen recorded a time that cannot be right, for example a done time before the start time, or an order left on the screen for more than 24 hours. The report shows n/a instead of a misleading number, leaves the minutes blank, and does not count that order in any average or in the Total make time bands.

Why are the started time and backlog columns empty?

They only fill in when your kitchen flags orders as started on the screen. Ask your Aura support contact to switch the feature on in the Aura Portal if you want backlog time.

What does a suffix like .1 on an invoice number mean?

An unpaid sale was changed and more items were added. The new items return to the kitchen screen and are listed as their own line, for example 100413.1, with their own times. Their make time is counted from when the change was sent.

Why is an order in a different day than I expected?

Orders are placed in a day by the time the sale was created, using your store's trading day. If your trading day ends after midnight, sales made after midnight count towards the previous day.

Why is an order listed with no done time?

It is still on the kitchen screen, or it was never marked done. It is listed with its arrival time but with no minutes.

How do I get the kitchen times into Excel?

Tick Remove headings and formatting for exporting, run the report and export it. You get one line per order with its start time, ready time, total time in the kitchen (minutes:seconds) and number of items, ready to open in Excel.

Why are some hours red?

The day and hour tables are coloured like a heatmap. In each table the lowest number is green and the highest is red, so red only means slowest (or busiest) compared with the other hours in that table, not that it is bad on its own.

Are voided sales included?

Yes. The kitchen still made them, so their times are included in the lists and the averages.

Glossary

Arrival time: The moment a sale first appeared on a kitchen screen.
Backlog time: The time an order waits on a screen before the kitchen flags it as started.
Done time: The time the order was removed from the screen by pressing Done.
Item: A main item on a sale, together with the options and extras listed under it.
KDS: Kitchen display system: the screens in your kitchen that show orders to be made.
Ready step: The last screen in your kitchen workflow, where an order is marked as ready.
Started time: The time the kitchen flagged the order as started (optional feature).
Total make time: The time from the sale being created until the order was marked ready.
Trading day: Your store's business day, which runs from your end of day time to the next end of day time. Sales made between midnight and your end of day time count towards the previous trading day.