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sidebar_label: 'Overview'
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# Order integrations

Future Ordering supports several integration patterns around orders. Depending on your use case, your integration may place orders in an external Point of Sale (POS) system, report production progress back to Future Ordering, or register orders that originate outside Future Ordering so that they can be tracked alongside orders placed through the platform.

## Order placement

When a guest completes checkout, Future Ordering emits an event signalling that the order is ready to be placed in POS. An order placement integration receives this event and is responsible for forwarding the order to the POS system, then reporting the outcome — success or failure — back to Future Ordering.

See [Order placement](order-placement.md) for a walkthrough of the full flow.

## Registering external orders

Orders placed directly in POS through a channel outside Future Ordering can be registered with the platform using the register endpoint. Once registered, these orders are treated the same as orders placed through Future Ordering, making them visible on Order Status Boards and accessible to other integrations regardless of which channel originated them.

See [Registering external orders](registering-external-orders.md) for request examples and details on the registration flow.

## Production status reporting

Once an order has been registered in Future Ordering as a placed order, using either of the two above approaches, your integration can report how the order is progressing through preparation. Future Ordering exposes, by default, `production` workflow with pre-defined steps — `production-started`, `production-completed`, and `delivered` — that map to states visible on Order Status Boards and other downstream systems.

See [Reporting production status](production-status.md) for details on completing each workflow step.