Changelog

Moving an existing menu online just got much faster. Under AI Tools → Add items with AI, the new From a printed menu or price list option lets you photograph a whole printed page — a menu, a price sheet, a services list — and AI reads every item on it at once, with the prices, then turns the page into draft items for you to review. Printed sizes like S / M / L come in as selectable variants, no-price and "market price" lines are handled gracefully, and anything AI wasn't sure it read is flagged so you can glance at the page and confirm. As always, AI drafts and you approve: every item stays hidden until you enable it on your storefront. Requires the AI Kit app.

Added a second menu language after building your catalog? You no longer have to open every item. On your Catalog page, choose AI Tools → AI-translate catalog: it shows how many items are missing translations and a credit estimate, then works through your catalog item by item with a live progress counter — variant and add-on names included.

It only fills empty language slots, so translations you wrote or edited yourself are never touched, and items that are already translated cost nothing to skip past. That makes it safe to run any time — after adding a language, after a CSV import, or after a batch of new products. Stop whenever you like and run it again later; it continues right where it left off. Also in this update: translations now handle Traditional Chinese panels correctly across all AI translate buttons.

Turn a folder of product photos into a ready-to-review catalog. On your Catalog page, choose AI Tools → Add items from photos, drag in your pictures (up to 60 at a time), and each photo becomes a draft item. Click Analyze with AI and every draft gets a suggested name, summary, and description written from what's visible in the photo — with an option to enhance the photos first so the AI works from a clean image. It even suggests the right category from the ones you already have, and proposes a new one when nothing fits — at no extra credit cost.

Nothing is published on its own. You review everything in one grid: edit the suggested text, confirm or change the category (proposed new categories are only created when you save), set the price and stock, then Save all drafts. Items stay hidden from your storefront until you click Enable all on storefront, so customers never see half-finished work. Have several shots of the same product? Merge them and the extra photos become that item's gallery. Sell in more than one language? A toggle translates each saved item into your other menu languages right after saving — only the text you approved, never your hand-edited translations. You can close the tab mid-way and pick up the same batch later — your progress is saved, and drafts you never come back to are tidied away automatically after about a week.

Ring up sales straight from your phone. The WhatsMenu Vendor app now includes a full POS: browse your catalog in a grid, list, or compact layout, take dine-in, pickup, and delivery orders, and settle with cash, card, pay later, or a scan-to-pay QR code the customer pays on their own phone. Pay-later orders wait on an Open orders screen until you settle or cancel them, and receipts print on supported handheld printers. Find it in the POS tab after updating the app.

Categories can now have their own image. Open Edit category, then upload a photo or generate one with AI from the category's name and description — review it and keep it in a click. Some storefront designs show these as visual tiles customers tap to jump straight to a section, like "Desserts" or "Coloring"; designs that don't use them simply ignore the image, so it's always safe to add one. Don't want it anymore? Tick Remove image and save.

Putting QR codes on your tables just got a lot easier. Open Tables and click Print QR codes to get a print-ready PDF — a sheet of cards on a regular printer (A4 or Letter, 6 or 9 per page, with shared cut lines so one straight cut separates each), or a thermal-roll version (80mm or 58mm) with each code on its own page so a receipt printer set to cut per page separates them for you. You can customize what shows on every card too: a header and footer that can each span multiple lines (your business name and phone, or Wi-Fi name and password), the table name, and your logo — in any language, including Chinese. Print all your tables at once or just one area, and reprint a single area any time you rearrange your space.

Your storefront's cookie banner now does real consent management, not just a notice. When you turn on Cookie Consent, analytics and marketing trackers — Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and any tracking scripts you add in your template's custom head markup — stay switched off until the visitor chooses. The banner offers Accept all, Reject all, and Customize (so visitors can allow analytics but not marketing, or vice versa), and a small Cookie settings button stays on the page so anyone can change their mind later — exactly what GDPR expects. You can also add your Privacy policy URL so a "Learn more" link shows in the banner. Turn it on in Settings → Apps → Cookie Consent; to gate your own custom scripts, tick the new "contains tracking scripts" option in your template's appearance settings.

PromoCards just got more flexible. A card no longer needs an image — leave it out for a clean text card, with an optional custom background colour behind the text (pair a dark background with light text for a bold panel). And a new Join cards (no gap) group setting lets cards sit flush as a single block, with rounded corners only on the outer edges. Put a text-only card next to an image card in a 2-column group, switch it on, and you've built a landing-page-style banner — text on one side, picture on the other — right inside your storefront. Open any group or card and the new options are already there; nothing to set up.

Date Selection popups now offer a Next X Days layout — a clean horizontal strip of upcoming days, with today and tomorrow clearly labelled, that customers tap to pick a date. You decide how many days to show, and the strip scrolls if there are more. Every popup calendar — the week, bi-weekly, and month views included — now highlights the chosen day in your storefront's theme color, so the picker always matches your brand.

You can now add a Next X Days field to your items and to your checkout form — a clean horizontal strip of upcoming days the customer taps to choose, instead of a full calendar. Choose how many days to show, set an optional order cut-off hour, and it can automatically skip the days you're closed. Today and tomorrow are clearly labelled, and the selected day uses your storefront's theme color. It's the friendlier choice whenever you take orders or bookings only a short window ahead.

Your checkout date/time picker can now show a clean horizontal strip of tappable date cards instead of a full calendar — the same friendly style as the Next X Days field. Pick Date cards for a date-only chooser, or Date cards & predefined time slot to pair it with your fixed time windows shown as tappable cards too. Today and tomorrow are clearly labelled, the days you're closed are greyed out automatically, and the selected day uses your storefront's theme color. It's the mobile-friendly choice when customers order a short window ahead — and the full calendar is still there for longer booking horizons. Set it under Settings → Time Slot → Picker type.

Two upgrades shipped together for PromoCards this week.

1. Group heading and description. When you create or edit a group, two new optional fields sit just under the internal group name: Heading and Description. Whatever you type renders on the storefront right above that group's cards — bold heading, muted lead paragraph — the same way category titles and descriptions read on the menu. Use them when a group needs framing: a Today's specials row reads better with a "Available until 10pm tonight" lead; a category-bottom row of related services can introduce itself with "You may also like" before the cards. Leave both blank and the group renders exactly as it always has. The internal Group Name field is unchanged — that one is still for your own reference in the group list.

2. Every customer-facing field is now translatable. On multi-language storefronts, the group heading and description plus each card's Title, Subtitle, Description, and Button Text all support per-language values. Switch language with the top-bar selector, fill the fields in that language, save. Visitors automatically see whichever language they're browsing in, and any untranslated field falls back to your default language so cards always render. Images, button URLs, layouts, colours, and schedules stay shared across languages — change them once and they apply everywhere.

No migration steps for you — open any existing group or card, the new fields are right there.

If your storefront runs in more than one language, every text field on a Carousel slide now translates per language: Title, Subtitle, and Button Text. Switch language using the top-bar selector, fill in the text for that language on a slide, and save. Visitors automatically see whichever language they're browsing in, and any untranslated field falls back to your default language so slides always render.

What stays shared across languages. Images (desktop and mobile), the button URL, text position, colours, overlay, transition effect, schedules, and the slide order — change them once and they apply everywhere. Only customer-facing text is per-language.

No setup needed — open any existing slide and the fields are already wired up.

Length counters now show on the Title, Subtitle, and Button Text fields too, matching the rest of the admin.

If your storefront runs in more than one language, the announcement bar's Message and Link Text (used by Button Link and Text Link actions) now translate per language. Switch language using the top-bar selector, fill the fields for that language, save. Visitors automatically see whichever language they're browsing in, and any untranslated field falls back to your default language so the bar never breaks.

What stays shared across languages. The link URL, action type (Countdown / Coupon / Button / Text Link), schedule, colours, and coupon selection are shared — change them once and they apply everywhere. (The coupon's own name and discount text translate inside the Coupons module.)

Link Text now caps at 60 characters (was 100). 60 fits long-form German/French CTAs without letting merchants ship a wall of text on a button. Existing entries longer than 60 keep displaying fine on the storefront but will need trimming the next time you save them.

No setup needed — open any existing announcement and the fields are wired up.

If you run your storefront in more than one language, your Custom Item Fields — the merchant-defined extra fields per item (size, vehicle make, service type, special instructions) — now translate alongside everything else customers see.

In the Fields Editor. Open any item, click Open Fields Editor, and you'll see a row of language tabs above the field list — one per menu language you've enabled. Click a tab to switch which language slot every input reads from and writes into. Type the translated label, placeholder, and select-option values; switch back to confirm. Your previous-language values are preserved when you switch tabs.

Single-language stores see the editor exactly as before — no language tabs appear.

AI auto-translate covers them too. When you tick AI auto-translate to other menu languages on item save, the AI now fans the custom-field titles, placeholders, and select options out into every enabled menu language alongside the item's name, summary, description, variant group names, and add-on names. Same credit cost as the other translatable fields. Hand-edited translations are preserved unless you also tick Force translate all.

Existing fields keep working. Whatever language you'd typed your custom fields in before now lives in that language's slot — customers in other languages see your original text until you (or AI auto-translate) fill in their language. No customer-facing breakage; the storefront resolves to whichever language is configured.

What's not in scope (yet). Order-level custom fields configured under Settings > Checkout > Custom Fields stay single-language for now — that surface uses a separate editor and ships in its own slice. The per-item custom fields covered here are the ones on the Custom Fields card on each item's edit page.

Two new AI tools sit on every item's edit page next to the image upload field: Generate image with AI (creates a fresh image from your item's name and description) and Enhance photo with AI (cleans up the photo you already uploaded — background removal, lighting fix, sharper focus).

When to use which:

• You have a real photo → Use Enhance. Photoroom-grade cleanup of your own snap. The result still depicts your real product, so no customer-facing AI label is added.
• You don't have a photo yet → Use Generate. Fills the slot with an AI-rendered image based on the item name and description you've typed. The storefront shows a small "AI-generated" badge on the item card so customers know upfront.
• You want to try a different style on an AI image → Use Generate again. Each click opens the preview modal and lets you refine the prompt ("warmer lighting", "outdoor setting") and try again.

How it works:

Click the button → a preview modal opens with your current photo on the left (if any) and an empty slot on the right. Click Generate or Enhance → the AI processes for a few seconds → the result appears in the right slot. Like it? Click Use this image to save. Want a different angle? Click Try again — each attempt is a fresh AI run.

The preview-then-commit flow means an attempt you don't like never lands on your storefront. You see the result first, then decide.

What it costs:

5 credits per attempt. Each click on Generate or Enhance charges your credit balance, whether or not you save the result. The platform pays OpenAI / Photoroom for every generation; the credit covers that cost. The modal shows a running count: "Attempt 3 — 15 credits spent so far."

If you'd rather not spend platform credits, you can plug in your own OpenAI API key and (for enhancement) your own Photoroom API key in Settings → Apps → AI Kit. With either key on file, the calls route through your account, your provider bills you directly, and platform credits aren't deducted. See the BYOK update for details.

The customer-facing badge — and why it matters:

Items whose photo was created by Generate (not photographed) show a small "AI-generated" label in the corner of the item card on your storefront. This badge:

• Protects you from "not as described" customer disputes. Stripe and PayPal both accept this as a chargeback reason. A visible AI label on the storefront establishes that the photo is illustrative — Stripe's dispute reviewers see it and side with you.
• Sets customer expectations up front. Fewer surprises when the dish or product arrives = fewer disputes at the source.

Items enhanced from a real photo show NO badge. Enhancement just cleans up your phone snap — the product depicted is still your real item, so no disclosure is needed.

The badge appears on the catalog grid and on the item detail page. It's small, sits in the top-right corner of the image, and includes a tooltip on hover ("This image was generated by AI from the item description, not photographed.").

Tips for better results:

• Generate: write a clear, descriptive item name and a short description before clicking. The AI builds the image from what you've typed. "Beef burger with cheddar, lettuce, tomato on a brioche bun, side of fries" produces a sharper image than "Burger."
• Enhance: shoot from above on a plain surface for catalog-grid uses; a busy background is harder to clean up perfectly. The AI works best when your phone snap is already in focus and well-lit — Enhance polishes, it doesn't rescue.
• Try again is cheap. Each attempt costs 5 credits; if the first result misses the mark, refine the prompt and try once more. A soft cap of 10 attempts per modal session protects your balance from accidental click-spam.

What's NOT supported yet:

• Bulk Generate / Enhance for the whole catalog. Single-item only for now. Reach out via the Helpbot if this would unblock a catalog rebuild.
• Faces and people. OpenAI's image policy declines portrait-style outputs for safety reasons. Stick to product photography use cases (food, retail, services) — a salon merchant who wants "haircut model" images is better off using real photos with consent.

You can now plug in your own OpenAI API key so AI calls from your company route through your own OpenAI account directly. Your tokens get billed to OpenAI; platform credits aren't deducted for those calls.

Where to set it. Open Settings → Apps → AI Kit (or https://whatsmenu.page/getapp/aikit). A new Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) section sits at the top of the form. Paste your OpenAI key (the one that starts with sk-, created at platform.openai.com/api-keys), click Save Settings.

The key is encrypted at rest and the panel never displays it back to you — the field always renders blank after saving.

To replace your key. Paste the new value and save. It overwrites the previous one.

To remove your key. Tick Remove my stored OpenAI key on next save and click Save Settings. Platform credits resume on the next AI call. (Leaving the field blank without ticking the remove box keeps your current key — no accidental wipe.)

Cached results stay free. When another merchant on the platform has already run the same prompt, your call returns from cache instantly — same as before. Neither your OpenAI account nor platform credits are charged for cache hits. Only fresh generations bill your OpenAI account.

If your key gets rejected by OpenAI (wrong, expired, revoked) the AI feature you triggered surfaces a clear error pointing you back to AI Kit settings to update the key. There's no silent fallback to platform credits — your bill stays predictable.

Covered AI features. Every AI Kit surface that uses chat completions — AI Enhance, photo-to-description, Reply Assist, AI Insight advisors (Catalog, Timing, Restock), AI auto-translate. All of them honour your BYOK key automatically when one is on file.

A new Draft with AI button sits inside the WhatsApp Customer card on every order. Click it, and the AI writes a short, ready-to-send message right into the same textarea you'd use for a saved template — no copy/paste, no tab switching. You still pick when to send and what to send.

Reply Assist reads the order in front of you and picks the right tone:

• A heads-up that the order is being prepared, or that it's on the way
• An out-of-stock note asking the customer about a substitution
• A warm "thanks for ordering again" for returning customers
• A polite ETA-update for orders running long

You don't pick the scenario — the AI does it from the order data. Each draft costs 1 credit. Read the draft in the textarea, edit if you want, then click Send Whatsapp message as usual.

This is meaningfully different from the "AI" customer messaging you'll see on most other platforms. Most of them are mail-merge in disguise — pick a canned template, fill in {customer_name}, send. Reply Assist generates a new message every time, tuned to your specific order:

• The wording for a returning customer's substitution is different from a brand-new customer's first-order substitution.
• A 50-minute-old "preparing" order gets a more apologetic ETA tone than a 15-minute-old one.
• If you run your panel in Bahasa Malaysia or Chinese, your draft comes back in that language too — same quality of natural, polite copy.

The AI is strictly forbidden from inventing things it doesn't know: it won't claim an item is in stock when stock tracking says it isn't, won't quote prices the system didn't give it, won't promise specific delivery times. If you spot it making any of those up, that's a bug — let us know.

Nothing leaves your account until you send it. Reply Assist is a writing helper, not a chatbot. No autonomous sends, no inbox watching, no bulk broadcasts.

The button shows up automatically inside the WhatsApp Customer card for Owners, Staff, and Managers. Drivers don't see it — dispatching is their concern, customer messaging isn't. The WhatsApp Customer card must be turned on (Settings → Apps → SendStatus) — without it, there's no send button to go with the draft.

If your credits run low, an inline Top Up button appears instead of a draft. If your platform isn't set up for AI yet, your administrator can enable it in settings.

With Reply Assist, all three of this season's AI advisors are now live: Catalog Advisor, Timing Advisor, Restock Forecast, and Reply Assist. They're independent — use whichever one matches the question you have.

Upload an item photo, click one button, get a draft name, summary, and description in your panel language. Useful when you have a folder of product shots but no copy yet — or when "good chair, $30" is all the spreadsheet import left you with.

Where to find it. Open any item edit page. Once a main image is uploaded, Generate from image sits in the top-right corner of the Basic Information card — right next to the name, summary, and description fields it fills in. Click it.

What you'll see. A modal opens with your photo on the left and three suggested fields on the right — Name, Summary, Description. Click Insert into all three fields to fill the form. Nothing saves until you press the item's own Save button, so you can edit any of the three suggestions first.

Re-roll if it's off. Click Generate again for a fresh draft from the same photo. Each generation is 3 credits; the first cached response on the same photo is free if you re-open the modal later.

It only describes what it can see. The AI looks at ingredients, materials, finish, colours, distinguishing features — and writes catalog copy from that. It doesn't invent prices, brand names, or specs that aren't visible. Clear product-on-clean-background photos give noticeably better results than dim or cluttered ones.

Industry-aware framing. The AI pays attention to the right visual cues for your business:

• Food & beverage photos — ingredients, plating, portion size, packaging
• Retail photos — material, finish, colour, dimensions, distinguishing features
• Specialty / handmade photos — materials, craftsmanship details, finish, scale

Hidden when it wouldn't help. The button doesn't appear on service-industry stores (haircuts, lessons, repairs, consulting), where a photo of a storefront or staff portrait wouldn't produce useful catalog copy. Set your Business industry under Settings → General to a product industry and the button shows up.

Works alongside auto-translate. Generate first in the language you're editing in, then turn on AI auto-translate to other menu languages when you save. The same content fans out to every other configured menu language for the price of one auto-translate run.

If you run your storefront in more than one language, you've probably spent more evenings than you want re-translating items. Auto-translate is the fix: tick a checkbox on an item, save, and AI Kit fills in the name, summary, and description in every other language you've enabled — automatically, in the background.

Per-save action, not a persistent setting. The checkbox always starts unticked when you open an item. Tick it for this save if you want translations to fan out — every subsequent save where you leave it unticked is just a normal save with zero AI calls and zero credit spend. No surprise translations, no accidental re-overwrites.

Translates the whole item, not just the description. When you tick it, the AI fans these fields out to every other menu language:

• Item name, summary, description
• The custom title you set for the add-ons group (e.g. "Choose your sides")
• Variant group names (e.g. "Size", "Colour")
• Add-on names (e.g. "Extra cheese", "Side salad")

So the storefront stays fully consistent in every language — not just the long-form description but every label the customer sees on the item modal.

Two modes, on the same form. Tick the main checkbox and a sub-option appears: Force translate all (overwrite manual edits).

• Default mode — empty target-language fields get filled, fields that haven't been hand-edited stay in sync with the source on every save, and hand-edited target fields are preserved. To force a re-translate of a single manual edit, clear it and save again.
• Force mode — every save replaces every target-language field with a fresh AI translation, including hand-edited ones. Useful when a merchant trusts the AI more than past manual edits, or wants a bulk re-translate run (tick force, save, untick force).

The contract is honest about cost. Each translated field is 1 credit. Three menu languages (e.g. English / Bahasa Malaysia / Chinese), one full item save with all three fields needing two non-source translations each — that's 6 credits. But here's where it earns its keep: re-saving the same item without changing the source content costs zero, because the same source text already gave us the same translation, cached. Edits that don't touch the translatable fields = free.

Nothing slows down your save. The translation work happens after your save response is sent back, so the editor still feels instant. Refresh the item page a few seconds later to see the newly-filled languages.

This is different from the AI Enhance button sitting on the same form. AI Enhance rewrites your draft in one language (the panel language). Auto-translate copies your exact content into every other language. Both can run on the same item — write English with AI Enhance, then save with Auto-translate ticked, and Bahasa Malaysia + Chinese fill in to match.

Heads up if your menu is single-language. The checkbox doesn't appear unless your store has more than one enabled menu language. Add another language under Settings → General → Menu Languages first, and the checkbox shows up on every item edit page.