Making a device a till
A browser is not a till until a manager says so. Under Retail › Stores and tills, Register a till gives an activation code. On the device, open the Retail POS app, sign in, and type the code under Register this device. From then on that device is that till, and its registration works on no other device. A manager can Disable it at any time.
Selling
- Sign in. If the register has no session open, enter the cash in the drawer and press Open the register.
- Scan each product, or type a code or part of a name and pick it from the list. Products marked as quick picks appear as buttons.
- Change a line with the pencil: how many, a discount, or a price. The plus and minus buttons change how many.
- Press Pay. For cash, enter the Cash handed over; the till shows the Change to give. For a card, key the amount on your card machine and tick The card machine approved it only once it has printed that it was. Card and cash takes part on each.
- Press Complete the sale. The receipt opens to print; Next sale starts again.
The total on the till is worked out by Accmerio from the products as they are at that moment, so it is the total on the receipt. A company registered for VAT prints a Tax Invoice; add the customer's name and tax registration number with Customer when they ask for one in their name.
A product that has a picture shows it beside its name in the list, so something with no barcode is picked by eye. For a product sold by weight that has a tare, tick Weighed with its container when you key the weight: the till takes off what the tray or bag weighs and charges for what is left.
Where your company has switched it on under Retail setup, the receipt has Email it. Type the address the customer gives and press Send. The address is used once, to send that receipt, and the till does not keep it. It needs a connection, and a receipt is emailed three times at most.
A customer on a sale, and points
On an edition with customers, a sale can name a customer on record. Nobody has to be one: a sale with no customer is rung up as before.
- Press Find a customer beside the sale. Type the customer number, the last digits of the phone or the name, three characters at least, and press Find. Up to five matches are listed.
- Choose the customer. If they are not on record and have asked to be, press Add a new customer, enter the name and a phone number if they give one, and press Add and put on the sale.
- Their name, number, tier, points and store credit show beside the sale. Take off removes them from it.
- To use points, press Use points, enter how many under Points to use and press Use them. The sale shows what they take off.
Where points cannot be used, the till says why in words: fewer than the fewest that can be used at once, more than the customer has, or more than the sale comes to. Use no points takes them off again. The sale also says how many points it would earn, and the receipt says the points used and earned.
A cashier is shown what is needed to serve somebody and no more: the name, the customer number, the last four digits of the phone, the tier, the points and the store credit. The whole list of customers, and what each bought, is in the dashboard under Retail › Customers.
Store credit and gift cards as payment
A card, store credit and a gift card each pay an exact amount. Cash pays what is left, rounded as your company rounds cash, and the payment screen shows what is Still to pay as each is added.
| Paying with | How |
|---|---|
| Store credit | For a customer on the sale who has some. Enter the amount under Store credit to use, or press the button beside it that uses as much as fits. It is one payment on a sale, up to what the customer has. |
| A gift card | Under Gift card, scan the card or type its Code on the card, and press Check the card. The till says what the card has left. Enter the amount to take from it and press Use it. The same card can pay twice on one sale. |
Check the card is also how a card's balance is read: it answers with what the card has left, and nothing is taken from it unless Use it is pressed. It is on the payment screen, so there has to be a sale to pay. A card that has been blocked, or has nothing left, says so. The till does not keep the code.
A refund goes back one way: all as cash, all to the card, or all to the store credit of the customer on the sale. Money is never put back onto a gift card.
Selling a gift card
On an edition with gift cards, a Sales till sells them. A gift card is money taken now for goods later: no VAT is charged on it and no discount comes off it.
- Press Sell a gift card.
- Say where the card's code comes from: A printed card, whose code you scan or type under Code on the card, or Make a code here, where the till makes one.
- Enter What the card is sold for and press Add to the sale.
- Take payment as for any sale. After the receipt, the till shows and prints the gift card slip, with the code and the amount.
- Hand the customer the slip, or the card with its code written on it, and only then press The customer has it. Next sale.
A gift card is not kept on the till. If the sale is put on hold, or the page is reloaded, the card is taken off the sale and has to be added again. If the receipt does not show a card that was on the screen, the till says so and says not to hand that card over: tell a manager.
Putting a sale on hold
- With a sale on the screen, press Hold. Give it a name to find it by if you like, and press Hold again. The screen is ready for the next customer.
- When the first customer is back, finish or hold the sale on the screen, then press On hold.
- Press Resume on their sale. It goes back on the screen, priced as the products are now.
Discard in that list throws a sale on hold away for good. A sale on hold is kept on that till and nowhere else: it is resumed on the till that held it, and cannot be picked up on another one. The till does not count and close its register while a sale is on hold on it: resume and finish it, or discard it, first.
The sale on the screen is kept as it is rung up, so reloading the page or a power cut loses nothing. When the same cashier signs in again on that till it is back on the screen. If somebody else signs in first, it is put on hold under the first cashier's name.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| F2 | Puts the cursor in the scan box. |
| F4 | Pay, when the sale can be paid. |
| F8 | Hold: puts the sale on the screen on hold. |
| F9 | On hold: opens the list of sales on hold. |
Each key is shown on its button. They work while no dialog is open.
The customer display
Customer display, at the top of a Sales till, opens a second window that shows the customer what is being rung up and what it comes to, then what was paid and the change. Drag that window to the screen that faces the customer and make it full screen there. If nothing opens, allow pop-ups for the till and press it again.
When a manager is needed
A discount over your limit, a changed price, a return outside your policy, a void, cash paid out of the drawer and opening the drawer without a sale need a manager. The till says so before the customer pays. The cashier stays signed in: a manager who works in that store taps their own name and enters their own approval PIN. The approval is good for that one thing, for five minutes.
A refund outside the returns policy, a refund owed and goods back with no receipt can also be approved by a Refund Supervisor, who is asked about nothing else: not discounts, prices, voids or cash.
A manager sets their own PIN with My PIN on a till, or under Retail › People and access. It is four to eight digits; five wrong tries lock it for 15 minutes. Nobody approves their own request, and nobody sets a PIN for somebody else.
Returns and exchanges
- On the Sales till, press Take goods back and enter the receipt number.
- Enter how much of each line is Coming back and what happens to it: back on the shelf, damaged and kept aside, or thrown away.
- Press Add to the sale. To exchange, scan what the customer is taking instead. The till shows what is owed either way.
- Press Pay or Refund and finish as for a sale.
A returned item is refunded at what was actually paid for it, discount and VAT included; nobody types a refund amount. A return after your return period, over your refund limit, or refunded another way than it was paid, asks for a manager.
A refund that cannot be paid at the counter, because the card it was paid with is not there or the card terminal is down, can be recorded as owed, with a manager's approval. The customer on the sale is who it is owed to; with no customer on the sale, the till asks for a name and a phone or an email. The receipt shows it as Refund owed. It is paid later, from Retail › Sales › Refunds owed; see Refunds owed in the Sales chapter.
With several stores, a receipt is found by somebody who works in the store that sold it. Goods bought in one store are taken back in another by somebody who works in both, or who manages stores; to anybody else the receipt number is not found.
Where your company allows it under Retail setup › General, Take goods back has a second way in: under How it is coming back, choose No receipt. Scan or find the product, enter how many are coming back, what happens to it and why, and press Add to the sale. The goods are valued at what the product sells for today, and a manager always approves before anything is given back.
Where your company's rule is store credit, that is about money going back to the customer: the till will not refund until a customer is on the sale, and the refund can only go to their store credit. Where the customer owes money instead, because they are taking something dearer, it is paid as any sale is. A product with serial numbers comes back against its receipt only.
A whole sale made by mistake is taken back with Void, from Sales in this session, while its register session is still open. After the close it is in the books, and it is undone with a return.
A gift receipt
Gift receipt, on the receipt of a sale that has just been completed and under Sales in this session, prints the same sale with no prices, no totals and no payments. It carries the receipt number and the date, so the goods can be brought back with it, and it names no customer. It is offered for a sale that stands and sold something.
Collecting an order
On an edition with online orders, an order that is paid when it is handed over is rung up here, and an order already paid online can be handed over here too.
- Finish or hold any sale on the screen, then press Collect an order. The orders waiting to be handed over at this store are listed.
- Type an order number, a name or a phone under Order number, customer name or phone to narrow the list, and choose the order.
- The order opens priced as its sale will be. Press Take payment and take it as for any sale. For an order that says Paid online, press Hand it over: nothing is taken at the till.
A cashier is shown the customer's name and the last four digits of their phone, to tell two people of one name apart, and nothing more: not the whole number and not the address. A name or a phone typed to find an order is matched on the till and sent nowhere. Where a store has more orders waiting than the list holds, type the order's number and press Find by number.
The order is sold at the prices it promised, for what was found; the till says when less was found than was ordered. It is rung up once, even when an answer was lost and it is tried again. A refund on an order paid online is made where the customer paid, not at the till.
Cash, and closing the register
Cash in or out records cash that is not a sale: taken to the safe, paid out or paid in. Each asks what it is for.
Open the drawer opens it with nothing sold, to give change for a note for example. Say why it is being opened; a manager approves it unless you approve such things yourself. The opening is recorded first, with your reason, and only then is the drawer told to open through the receipt printer it is wired to. A till with no such printer says so, and the drawer is opened with its key. It needs a connection.
- Press Count and close.
- Count all the cash in the drawer, the float included, and enter the total.
- Press Close the register. If the count agrees with the records, the session closes. If not, the till says so: press Count again and count it again, or press Close with the difference, say what happened and close.
A difference over your company's limit, closed by a cashier, does not keep the till open. The session closes and the difference is booked as always; the till says that a manager will look at the difference, and it waits under Retail › Register sessions until somebody who manages cash accepts it. Somebody who manages cash, or approves exceptions, accepts their own when they close. The limit is set under Retail setup › General; until it is changed, every difference waits.
Sales taken offline have to reach Accmerio before the drawer is counted. While the till still holds sales of this session taken offline, it does not start the close: send them first, or set aside the ones Accmerio refused.
Closing sends the session's sales and cash to the books. Signing out does not close a register: a session stays open until its drawer is counted.
The close report names every way the session took money: store credit, gift cards and payments made online beside cash and card, each only when it took something. Only cash is counted.
The Registration terminal
| Tab | What it does |
|---|---|
| Receive goods | Scan what arrived, enter how many and what one cost before VAT, choose the supplier, and press Record what arrived. Tick Damaged for what cannot be sold and Free for what cost nothing. |
| New product | Name, price, how it is sold, VAT code and its barcode, or an in-store barcode made for it. A code nobody knows, scanned while receiving, opens this with the code filled in. |
| Stock changes | Opening stock, a count that found something different, or a write-off, each with its reason. |
| Labels | Print a product's name, price and barcode through the print dialog, on a label printer or a sheet. For a product sold by weight it also has Weigh and label, for goods weighed in the shop. |
Somebody who manages products can also give a product its picture here, with Add a picture: Take a photo with the device's camera, or Choose a file. The tills show it after their next product list update.
Labelling goods weighed in the shop
- On Labels, find a product that is sold by weight.
- Under Weigh and label, type the Weight on the scale and what the Container weighs. The product's own tare is offered; leave it empty for none.
- Press Weigh and label. Accmerio answers with the label: the name, the weight after the container, the price of a unit, what it comes to, the day it was packed and the barcode.
- Enter How many labels and print them.
A till reads the barcode on such a label exactly as it reads one a scale printed, so the customer is charged what the label says. The barcode is an in-store code for this shop's tills: it is not the product's own barcode, and it means nothing anywhere else. It needs the scale label layout set under Retail setup › General, an item number (PLU) on the product, and the connection. A weighed label has more on it than a shelf label, and reads best at 40 mm tall or more.
Without a connection
A Sales till that loses its connection says Offline and keeps selling for cash only, from the product list it holds. It gives the customer a slip, which says it is not a tax invoice. When the connection is back the sales are sent and each gets its receipt number. The slip carries a reference: type it into the search on Retail › Sales to find the sale it became. Its receipt prints from Sales in this session on the till while that session is open.
Cards, returns and voids wait for the connection, and so does everything on a Registration terminal. So does anything that needs a manager: a changed price or a discount over the limit is not taken offline, because a manager's PIN is checked by Accmerio. Opening the drawer without a sale and emailing a receipt wait for it too, and pictures are not shown. A product whose units have serial numbers is not sold while the till is offline, and a coupon is not taken, because Accmerio checks both.
Nothing Accmerio keeps is taken offline: no customer on the sale, no points, no store credit, no gift card sold or paying, no goods back with or without a receipt, and no order collected. The till refuses each in a plain sentence. Take the customer or the card off the sale, or wait for the connection. An offer that is for customers is not worked out offline either, and a weighed label is not printed.
Holding a sale and resuming it work without a connection, because a sale on hold is kept on the till.
A sale taken offline is sent by whoever rang it up, or by somebody who manages cash, signed in on that till. If a product's price changed in Accmerio while the till was offline, the sale waits on the till, in the list of sales taken offline, until a manager approves it there with their PIN.
A kept sale the server will not record
A sale taken offline that Accmerio will not record stays on its till, under Sales taken offline, with the reason beside it. One that needs a manager is recorded once a manager approves it there with their PIN. For any other, the money was taken and no sale stands for it, so it has to be rung up again as a new sale or accounted for. It is never deleted.
- Once the money has been accounted for, open Sales taken offline on that till and press Set it aside on the sale.
- Enter Why it is being set aside and press Set it aside. Somebody who approves exceptions needs nobody else; anybody else needs a manager's PIN.
The office is sent an alert of its own kind, A sale kept at a till was set aside, with the sale's reference, its total, the reason, who rang it up and why the server refused it. It appears under Retail › Alerts. The sale stays on that till as a record, marked as set aside: it is not sent again, and it no longer counts as waiting. Setting a sale aside needs the connection.
Scanners and printers
A barcode scanner that types like a keyboard works as it is. Receipts print through the browser's print dialog on any printer the computer has. In Chrome or Edge on a computer, Printing on the till can instead send receipts straight to a receipt printer on a serial port and open a cash drawer wired to it.
Printing on a till also chooses the paper width, whether a receipt prints as soon as a sale completes, and two things about what a customer is handed.
Where your company has switched Print the company's logo on receipts on under Retail setup › General, a Sales till prints the logo above a receipt, a gift receipt and the slip of a sale taken offline, when they go to the print dialog. A receipt sent straight to a receipt printer on a serial port is text and carries no logo, and Printing says so. The close report, a gift card slip and labels carry none. A logo that was changed can take a few minutes to reach a till.
Language the customer reads is English or Arabic. It words the customer display, which then reads right to left, and the headings of receipts and other slips handed to a customer. Product names, and the header and footer your company wrote, are printed as they are. Everything a shop worker reads stays in English, and a receipt printer on a serial port prints English whatever is chosen.
Inside the Windows till app, Printing has a Windows app section: the app's version, the Receipt printer, chosen from that computer's printers, and Print without asking. Switched on, what is printed goes straight to that printer with no dialog. Switched off, Windows shows its print dialog each time, with that printer chosen. In a browser the section is not there. The app is downloaded from the dashboard: see The Windows till app in the Stores and tills chapter.