SkyTab KDS (Shift4 Dine): price, setup, routing and offline limits

SkyTab's kitchen display, now sold as the Shift4 Dine Kitchen Display System, is a 22-inch touchscreen that joins your Workstation over the restaurant's local network. Shift4's help center prints no price for it, so the screen price comes from your quote. It routes tickets by item and modifier, staggers items by prep time, and keeps showing tickets offline as long as the local network stays up.

Our kitchen display guide compares the KDS options from Toast, Square, Clover, Lightspeed, Shift4 and Fresh KDS, with each one's printed price and a mock-rush test. This page covers the Shift4 screen alone: what to ask for on the quote, how to connect it, the routing and timing settings, and what Shift4 says happens in an outage. For the rest of the system, see our SkyTab review and SkyTab pricing guide. Shift4 renamed SkyTab POS to Shift4 Dine on May 12, 2026, according to its rename notice, so help articles and quotes may use either name.

What does the SkyTab KDS cost?

Shift4 prints no price for the kitchen display, its software or a bump bar. Its hardware ordering guide lets US merchants add a handheld, tablet, kitchen printer, bump bar or customer display in the Customer Hub and says the order is charged to the monthly statement. The kitchen display itself is not in that list, so expect it on your sales quote. Ask Shift4 to write each of these lines, or "none":

1. Price of each screen, and whether you buy it, lease it or pay for it inside the monthly plan.
2. Any monthly software fee per screen.
3. Bump bars, mounts and any extra network gear the kitchen needs.
4. Installation, and what a missed install date costs. Shift4's onboarding wizard warns of a $250 rescheduling fee if your site is not ready.

Compare the answer with the printed per-screen prices in our KDS guide and Square KDS guide.

What hardware do you get, and how does it connect?

The packing list names one 22-inch monitor, a power supply, mounting hardware and an Ethernet cable. Shift4's hardware guide describes a bezel-free touchscreen that mounts on a stand, a wall or a clamp, with Ethernet, Wi-Fi and an HDMI out port.

1. Plug the Ethernet cable into the back of the screen and into a LAN port on the Shift4 router, as the network guide shows.
2. Turn the screen on and note the IP address in its lower right corner.
3. On the Workstation, go to Manager, Settings, Hardware, Printers/Kitchen Display and add a new device with that IP and the Kitchen Display System model, following the setup article.
4. Tap Send Config, assign items and modifiers, then send a test ticket.

The bump bar needs KDS version 1.29 or later and connects by USB-C. It can also run on AA batteries over Bluetooth or a dongle. Shift4 says to use the cable wherever you can, because a weak battery can disrupt service.

How do you route tickets to each station?

Each screen is a station on the Workstation's printer list. You pick the items and modifiers it shows, then set how tickets move and clear.

Setting	What it does	Watch for
Assigned items and modifiers	Sends each item to the stations you choose; Shift4 suggests only a station's own items on prep screens and everything on expo	Tap Send Config after each change so the screen receives it
Order type filters and colors	Filters a screen to Dine In, Delivery, Pickup or Bar, and colors each order type	Refresh data on the screen after you change a color in the Customer Hub
Split views	Shows two sets of order types side by side on one screen	The horizontal split supports the column view only
Bump Station	Lets prep screens report finished items to expo	Shift4 recommends it for prep stations only
Multi-stage fulfillment	Sends a finished ticket on to Expo, Runner or another station	Turn it on at the receiving screen first, or the sending screen returns an Error 400
Clear by item or by order	Clears a ticket when every item is marked, or with one Complete tap or bump	Shift4's troubleshooting page says items that will not clear usually mean Clear by Order is set
Void slips	Shows an item voided after sending in red with a strikethrough	Needs Print Void Slips checked for that station on the Workstation

These rules come from Shift4's articles on assigning items, order type colors, split views, multi-stage fulfillment, clearing tickets and void alerts. A fulfillment printer can print an item slip when expo completes a ticket. It must be a network printer, since USB-only printers will not work.

How does SkyTab time and fire items?

Prep times do the timing. In the Customer Hub you give each item a base time and let modifiers add minutes. Shift4's prep time guide uses an 8-minute item with "Extra Crispy" at 2 minutes and "Well Done" at 3: with both, the screen plans for 13 minutes and holds the quicker items so the ticket finishes together.

Each screen then runs in one of two prep time modes. Standard, the default, runs the timers on its own and alerts the cook when a held item is due. Advanced pauses until a cook taps the item to mark it fired. Ticket timers turn the status bar to a warning color, then an alert color, at times you set per screen.

For table service, coursing decides when a course reaches the kitchen:

• Menu coursing: assign items or departments to courses and choose whether they go on hold automatically. The server unholds a course to send it.
• Quick Coursing: servers tap Next Course while ordering and Fire Next Course later. On the screen, each course shows as its own ticket and held courses appear marked as held. Shift4 says this is for pilot users only.
• Schedule Send: a timer fires held items after a set delay. It is also pilot only, does not work with Quick Coursing, and Shift4 says offline terminals are not supported in this release.

The details are in Shift4's articles on menu coursing, Quick Coursing and Schedule Send.

What else does the screen do during service?

• Recall: Recall Last brings back tickets in reverse order of clearing. With Bump Station off, you can set recall to bring a ticket back on every station it was on, per Shift4's recall settings.
• All Day counts: a panel totals items across open tickets. The prep view needs preparable items set up in the Customer Hub first, per the All Day guide.
• Kitchen Box Score: shows average ticket time, the average for the last 30 minutes, open tickets, and tickets past the warning or alert time, refreshed each minute.
• Guest texts: an expo screen can send the guest a notification when an order is completed, if the order type is set up for it and the guest's phone number is on the ticket.
• Spanish: each screen can run its buttons and settings in Spanish. Menu items show in the language you entered them.

What keeps working when the internet drops?

Shift4's offline payments FAQ says your local network, printers and Kitchen Display System work as long as the local network is connected. Card payments switch to offline mode after a failed authorization, and pre-authorizations and refunds stop until the connection returns. Shift4 advises against editing the menu offline, because other stations will not get the change.

So the router and switches carry the kitchen in an outage. Two error screens point at the local network: "Check your device's network connection" and "Configuration not loaded. Send Config from POS." For the second, Shift4's troubleshooting article says to test print from another printer, confirm the screen and Workstation share a subnet, then resend the configuration. Our suggestion is to put the router and switch on a battery backup and keep one kitchen printer routed for the same items. For what the rest of the system does offline, see our POS offline mode guide.

What should you test before the first service?

1. Ring one item from every station's list and one item you forgot to assign. Check where each lands.
2. Send a Dine In, Pickup and Delivery ticket and check the filters and colors.
3. Order the slowest item with a quick one and a modifier that adds time. Check the quick item appears later.
4. Send a three-course table, hold the second course, then fire it. Check what the line sees at each step.
5. Void an item after sending and check the red strikethrough.
6. Complete a ticket by mistake and time the recall.
7. Unplug the internet line at the modem, leave the router on, and send a ticket. Then turn the router off and see what staff must do.
8. Send an online order, a kiosk order and, if you use one, a phone order from your ordering service. Check each shows on the right screen.

Maple Pro lists SkyTab (now Shift4 Dine) among the POS systems it writes phone orders into. If you use it, see the SkyTab integration page and include a Maple phone order in step 8.

Published by Maple. This AI-assisted guide combines Shift4's rename notice and Shift4 Dine help-center articles on the Kitchen Display System, coursing and offline payments with an original quote list, settings table and test plan. It does not include a quote from Shift4, report hands-on testing of the screen, or claim a price Shift4 has not printed.