Connect a thermal printer to your register — Wi-Fi, USB or serial.

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A network printer is the most reliable way to run a counter, because the register can genuinely tell whether it is reachable — it probes it every few seconds and shows you the answer.

• Port 9100 is the receipt-printer port. It is the raw ESC/POS channel every thermal printer listens on, and it is what the Port field is already filled with. Leave it alone unless your printer's own manual says otherwise.
• Let Detect find the IP. The scan walks your whole local network looking for anything answering on 9100, so you rarely need to type an address at all.
• Give the printer a fixed address. If your router hands out a new IP after a power cut, the register will show it offline until it finds the printer again. A static IP — or a DHCP reservation on the router — is a five-minute job that saves a bad evening.
• It finds itself after a router reshuffle, too. After the first good connect, EasyKOT remembers the printer by its hardware address, not just its IP — so a router that hands out a new address overnight is usually a non-event, not a support call. The reservation above is still the surer fix.
• It has to be your own network. Type a public address and EasyKOT refuses it: a printer has to be on the store's own network or on that computer. That is a safety rail, not a bug.

A USB printer is identified by two hex numbers — a vendor id and a product id. You do not have to hunt for them: run Detect printers with the cable plugged in and EasyKOT fills both in for you, because a USB printer says what it is.

Settings → Printers & KDS → Add manually, on USB.

Test print before service, not during it. A network printer can be probed live, so the register knows when it goes away. A USB, serial or Bluetooth printer that never answers status questions reads Can't verify — will still try to print, which is honest rather than a false green — the test print is the real check, so do it while the shop is empty.

Both live behind the same choice, Serial / Bluetooth, because a Bluetooth printer paired in your operating system's own Bluetooth settings appears to the laptop as a serial port. Pair it there first; then it shows up here.

Settings → Printers & KDS → Add manually, on Serial / Bluetooth.

• The port path. On Mac it looks like /dev/cu.something; on Windows it is a COM number, usually COM3.
• Baud rate is for wired serial only. 9600 suits most; some models want 19200, 38400 or 115200 — the printer's self-test slip tells you. For Bluetooth the field is ignored.
• Printing from a phone is a different job. If the printer is meant to live with an Android phone rather than a laptop, read pairing a Bluetooth printer with the Android phone register instead.

If the printer is already set up as a normal printer on your computer, EasyKOT can send bills through that queue instead of talking to it directly. On Windows the connection is labelled Windows printer (driver queue — no live status); on Mac and Linux it is System printer (OS driver). Both are the same idea — jobs go through CUPS on Mac/Linux or the Windows spooler on Windows, and both deliver the bytes without being able to read paper-out or cover-open back.

• Type the queue name exactly as your OS shows it. On Windows that is the name in Windows → Printers & scanners; on Mac it is the CUPS queue name in System Settings → Printers.
• Prefer Network or USB when you have the choice. Both of those give the register live status — paper out, cover open, the printer's own name — that a driver queue cannot. System printer is the right call when a printer is already wired into the OS and you would rather not touch its cabling.

• 80 mm gives you 42 characters a line. Long dish names, portion labels and the GST split all fit without wrapping. This is the counter default.
• 58 mm gives you 32. Cheaper rolls, available in every stationery shop, perfectly fine for a short menu or a takeaway counter — as long as the setting matches.
• Get it wrong and it shows immediately. Set 80 mm on a 58 mm roll and every line runs off the edge. That is exactly what the test slip's digit ruler is for: if the ruler fits the paper, your bills will too.
• Money prints as "Rs.", on purpose. The ₹ sign does not exist in the character sets thermal printers ship with, so a printed bill reads Rs. 480.00. On screen it is still ₹.

Every saved printer has a Role, and there are three: Both, Receipt, and Kitchen (KOT). One printer on the counter set to Both runs an entire small restaurant.

• Receipt takes the customer bill, the reprints and the cash-drawer kick.
• Kitchen (KOT) takes the kitchen tickets. If you have not set one up, KOTs go to the receipt printer instead — the kitchen never silently misses a ticket.
• Adding a second printer for the kitchen is the natural next step: set up the kitchen KOT printer and the cash drawer.
• Want drinks and food on separate paper, by category? A kitchen printer with stations set up can bind to one corner — see setting up kitchen stations once you have your first two printers running.
• The cash drawer is not a separate device. It plugs into the receipt printer's DK port, and the Cash drawer pin setting on the form picks which pin fires it.

Every saved printer's row has a Check printer button. It asks the same five questions a support call would — and answers them itself: can the register reach it, is the cover shut, does it speak ESC/POS, is it healthy, and does a test slip come out. Each step ends Pass, Needs attention, Unsupported (this printer just doesn't say), or Not tested.

Settings → Printers & KDS → Check printer — a healthy printer, five for five.

• The first thing that needs attention gets its fix. A guided-fix card names the likely cause and the first thing to try, plus a QR code that points a phone straight at the matching easykot.com guide.
• Share report copies plain text — the printer, its connection, the five results and the guide link, ready to paste into WhatsApp. It never includes what was on a ticket or a bill.
• Unsupported is not a failure. Plenty of inexpensive printers never answer status questions at all; they still print every ticket, and the test slip is the real check for them.

Start with the three that cause almost every case: paper loaded the wrong way up, the printer not actually powered, or the laptop on a different network from the printer. Then run Check printer — it will usually name the exact one of those three.

Nothing came out of the printer — the five checks, in order walks each symptom to its fix. The important part first, though: the sale is already saved. EasyKOT writes the bill to the laptop before it queues the print, and a failed ticket retries by itself — 1, 2, 5, 15, 30 and 60 seconds, then every minute, up to twelve tries — before it asks a person for help. You can also read how the register's print queue and reprints work.