Provider switch checklist for the hospitality industry: Moving QR codes without hassle

Where QR codes are attached in your business

Anyone who wants to switch the QR code provider for menus easily underestimates where codes are stuck everywhere. Go through your business with your mobile phone and photograph every code. Typical locations:

• Table tents and table stickers
• Menu, drink menu, wine list
• Entrance door, window, facade
• Flyers, business cards, vouchers, pizza boxes and delivery inserts
• Posters for events, lunch menu boards
• Website, social media profiles and review portals, if a code is attached there as an image

With "Read a QR image" in the Same-QR dashboard, you upload each photo and see which short link is inside. This way, you assign each printed code to the correct entry with the old provider.

Before the switch

• Create a list: Code name, current destination, location, number of prints, when the next reprint is due.
• Check in the old account when the subscription ends and what cancellation period applies.
• Find out what the old provider does with the codes after the subscription ends.
• Save scan statistics with the old provider, as far as an export is available.
• Check destinations: Is the menu available as a PDF with the old provider? Then download the file; it must move along.

The last point is particularly important in the hospitality sector. Often, the menu is not on your own website but as a file or page with the QR provider. With Same-QR, you create the menu as your own page, which we host for you, optionally imported from a photo or PDF of your menu. Or you have the code point to a PDF on your own website.

On moving day

• Create codes in Same-QR: individually for a few codes, from a few dozen via "Import a spreadsheet" (from Start plan).
• Test each new code once with a mobile phone.
• At the old provider, set the destination of each code to the new Same-QR short link.
• After that, scan each printed code in the business again: Does it land on the correct menu?
• Inform the team briefly if a guest reports that a code does not work.

It is best to do this on a day off or in the morning. The switch itself takes only a moment per code, but testing at the table takes some time.

After the move

• Only order new printed materials with Same-QR codes.
• Replace the table tents at the same time as the next print run of printed materials.
• Monitor in the Same-QR dashboard which codes are being scanned.
• Cancel the old subscription once all important printed materials have been replaced.

One advantage of dynamic codes becomes apparent in the hospitality sector: You can change the lunch menu, dinner menu, seasonal menu, or staff holiday schedule in the dashboard from now on without reprinting. From the Pro plan, time-based scheduling can even change the destination based on time of day or day of the week.

Common stumbling blocks

• Subscription cancelled too early: Then the old codes no longer redirect before they are replaced.
• Menu forgotten: The PDF file was with the old provider and is gone after cancellation.
• Overlooked inserts and vouchers: They are often in circulation at guests' homes for months.
• Codes stuck without testing: A typo in the destination only becomes apparent when a guest asks.

At Same-QR, the end of a subscription is handled as follows: Codes within the quota of your new plan continue to run unchanged – in the free plan, the two oldest. Codes beyond that are deactivated by us only after a 14-day grace period, and you will receive three emails beforehand (7, 3, and 1 day before). Deactivated does not mean deleted: The code shows a notice instead of the destination when scanned and works again as soon as your plan covers it.

Frequently asked questions