Arabic breaks more restaurant software than any other script, and it breaks it twice: once on the screen, where the text needs to run right to left and the letters need to join, and once on the printer, where the glyphs are simply not in the font table.
On screen
Arabic is one of the 23 languages the system ships with, with right-to-left layout rather than Arabic characters shoved into a left-to-right frame. It behaves like the other languages in every other respect: it is set per user account, so an Emirati or Egyptian server can work entirely in Arabic on the floor tablet while the office machine stays in Chinese. Menu, interface, QR self-ordering page and receipt can all carry both languages at once.
On the receipt
The printing side uses the same mechanism as Thai and Khmer: Arabic text and the dirham symbol are rendered as a bitmap on the computer before being sent to the thermal printer, so the printer only ever has to print a picture. That is why the receipt comes out readable instead of as a row of boxes. The full explanation is in why the receipt prints boxes.
The part that is not a language question
Two things in the Gulf are commercial rules rather than software features, and they catch people out more often than the script does.
First, displayed prices. In the UAE, prices shown to the consumer must be VAT-inclusive — that is a requirement on how you advertise, not a setting you get to choose. In the system, tax-inclusive display is a per-store switch, so it can be configured correctly for the country you are in; the general shape of this is covered in tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive menu prices.
Second, service charge. Whether you may add one to the bill depends on where the venue sits — the rules for an independent café are not the rules for a hotel outlet or a venue inside a designated zone. The system can add a service charge by area and show it as its own line; whether you are entitled to charge it is a question for your licence and your accountant, not for us.
Tell us the emirate and the type of venue before you sign anything, and we will tell you which of these we can configure and which you need local advice on. We would rather lose the sale than promise a fiscal integration we do not have.
