The retail till

Everything a cashier does at the counter: scan, search, fix a quantity, take money off, park a ticket for the customer who forgot their wallet, and take the payment. Written for someone standing at the till, not reading about it.

What is on the screen

Scanning an item

A barcode scanner is a keyboard. It types the number into whatever has the cursor and then presses Enter for you. That means typing the number by hand and pressing Enter is a scan — same lookup, same result. Use it when a label is torn or the scanner is sulking.

1. Make sure the cursor is in the search box. It puts itself back there after every add, so normally you do nothing.
2. Scan the item, or type its barcode and press Enter.
3. The line appears at the bottom of the ticket, flashes, and a small Added … message confirms it.

The barcode is not in the catalog

The line still appears, marked Unknown with the number you scanned and a Skip button. Nothing is added to the total. Either find the item by name instead, or tap Skip and set the product up properly later.

Finding an item by name

1. Type part of the name or the SKU. Suggestions appear after a moment.
2. Move the highlight with ↑ and ↓.
3. Press Enter or tap the row to add it.

Each suggestion shows the SKU and barcode, the price, and the stock on hand. An item with none left is badged Out of stock and cannot be picked — unless the store has been set to allow selling out of stock, in which case it is only badged, not blocked.

Changing a quantity

Three ways, all doing the same thing:

1. Tap the line, then use − and + under the ticket. + and − on the keyboard do the same.
2. Or tap the quantity number itself — on the line or in the actions row — to open the on-screen keypad.
3. Type the number and tap Apply.

The keypad dialog is headed Edit line and names the item under it. It has digits, C to clear and ⌫ to backspace, a −/+ pair, and three buttons: Remove, Cancel, Apply. Applying a quantity of zero removes the line — which is the sensible thing for a keypad to do rather than refusing and leaving you stuck.

Changing a price

The Price button only appears for people whose role carries price override. If it is there, tap it (or tap the line's price) and the same keypad opens on a Price tab. Price edits are per line and per sale — they never change the product.

Taking money off a line

1. Tap the ticket line you want to discount.
2. Tap Disc %.
3. Tap a preset — 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% — or type a percent and tap Apply.

Discounts here are per line, not per ticket, and must be between 0 and 100%. The discounted row shows how much came off. If no line is selected the till says Tap a ticket line first, then Disc % rather than guessing which item you meant.

Removing lines

The second tap exists because clearing a full basket by accident, at a queue, is not a mistake anyone recovers from gracefully.

Parking a ticket and getting it back

A customer goes back for the milk they forgot. Park the ticket, serve the next person, pick it up again.

1. Press F2 or tap Hold. The panel is titled Park sale (draft).
2. Type a note — it is required. A name, a table, a reason: whatever will let you spot it in the list later.
3. Tap Park draft. The till clears, ready for the next customer.
4. To get it back, press F3 or tap Recall and pick it from the list. Each entry shows its order number, your note and the total.

Attaching a customer

Tap Customer, search, and pick them. The ticket header then reads Customer · their name. You need at least one item on the ticket first — the till will say Add an item first, then attach a customer. Tap Customer again to change or clear it.

Price check without adding anything

Press F4 or tap Price check. Scan or search in the panel and it shows the price, SKU, barcode, tax class and — if your role can see stock — what is on hand and where. Nothing goes on the ticket unless you tap Add to sale. That is the whole point: a customer asking "how much is this?" should not end up buying it.

Taking the payment

Cash

1. Press F9, or tap Cash, or press End (which opens cash by default).
2. Type what the customer handed over, or tap Exact, 20, 50 or 100.
3. Read the line underneath: Change due, Still need …, or Exact amount — ready to pay.
4. Tap Pay, or press End again.
5. Take payment? appears. Press Enter to take it.

The Pay button stays dead while the tender is short, and the till says Short by … rather than letting a sale close for less than it is worth.

Card

1. Press F10 or tap Card.
2. Press End or tap Pay, then Enter to confirm. A card window opens — Present card, Collect on reader, Pay on Square Terminal or Take payment on bank terminal, depending on what the store has set up.
3. The customer taps or inserts. When the machine approves, the sale finishes and the receipt screen appears.

Pay later

If the store allows deferred payment, a third tender appears: Pay later. It charges the sale to a customer account, so a customer must be attached first — the button shows Need cust. until one is.

Paying with a gift card

A gift card is money the shop already took once, and it belongs to whoever is holding the card — there is no customer to look it up against, so every gift-card tender has to name a card. The Gift card button only appears where the shop has the gift cards module switched on.

1. Tap Gift card. The cursor is already in the Gift card number box, so a scanner — which is just a keyboard that types the code and presses Enter — checks the card with nothing else touched. Keying the number by hand does the same thing.
2. Press Check balance. The till reads back Card ••••0001 holds $45.00 before anything is committed.
3. Type how much to Take off the card — the whole ticket, or less.
4. Press Put on the sale. The card appears in the list on the pay pane as Gift card ••••0001 −$20.00, with an × to take it off again.
5. If anything is still owed, the till has already moved you to Cash (or Card where cash is switched off) with the shortfall filled in. Pay that the usual way.

A card that cannot cover the whole basket is the ordinary case, not a failure: put on it what it holds and take the rest another way. More than one card can go on the same ticket.

Paying with points

Loyalty points are money the customer already spent once. Unlike a gift card, points belong to a named person, so a customer has to be on the ticket before they can be spent. The Use points button only appears where the shop runs a points programme; with nobody attached it is drawn but disabled, reading Need cust., and for somebody who was never signed up it reads Not enrolled.

1. Attach the customer — Customer on the ticket. The points button then shows what their balance is worth in money.
2. Tap Use points. The panel says both numbers: 640 points — worth $6.40, and, where the programme has a floor, · spendable from 500 pts.
3. Type how much to Take off in points — in money, not in points. The till converts at the shop's redeem rate.
4. Press Put on the sale. It appears as Points (500) −$5.00, with an × to take it off.
5. Pay whatever is left the usual way; the till has already filled the shortfall in for you.

Splitting is normal: a $30 basket settled with $5 of points and $25 in cash is exactly how points get used. The comparison is always the tender against the balance, never the ticket against the balance.

Points buy goods, not tax

Points pay for goods net of discount and nothing else. They do not pay the tax, and they do not pay a bottle deposit or an eco levy. Tax and statutory fees are not the shop's money — the shop collects them for somebody else and hands them over in full whatever the customer paid with, so covering them out of the rewards budget would mean the shop funding a levy out of its own pocket.

Ask for more than the goods are worth and the till says so with both numbers: Points pay for goods only, not tax or deposits. This sale has $30.00 of goods and the points tender is $32.40. Lower the points and take the rest another way.

A company whose jurisdiction treats points as a payment instrument can turn this off — Points may also pay tax and fees on the Loyalty page — and then points can settle the whole ticket. It is off by default. See Customers & loyalty.

The rate, and the floor

Both are set on the Loyalty page in the back office: Points to buy 1 {currency} (100 out of the box, so 100 points is worth 1.00) and Minimum balance before points can be spent (0 out of the box, meaning no floor). Under the floor the till refuses the whole balance — Rewards points can be spent from 1000 points. This customer has 400. Take another tender.

The programme belongs to the company, not to one shop, so the rate you set applies at every branch.

After the sale is paid

The till switches to Sale complete: the total, the change due if there is any, the Order # the sale has just been given, the receipt number, and the receipt itself laid out as it will print.

Two keys finish the job:

Both buttons stay pinned to the bottom of the panel, so a long receipt never pushes them off the screen. The keys are ignored while you are typing in a box or standing on a button, so an email address with an Enter in it does not fire the printer. Full detail on Receipts.

The keys the till actually binds

These are printed along the bottom of the screen, and F1 shows the same list in a panel.

When the connection drops

The pill in the top bar switches to Offline. You can still take a cash sale: the till queues the payment and sends it when the connection comes back. The receipt screen appears as normal. Card payments need the network, because the card machine does.