What is an offline POS?
An offline POS is a point of sale that keeps working when the internet does not. Wave POS runs in Chrome, but the till does not depend on the connection: it keeps a copy of your products, prices and customers on the computer, and saves every sale there first.
That means the cashier never has to stop, write sales in a book and type them in later. The queue keeps moving, and every sale ends up in your stock, reports and shift figures once the till is back online. For a longer explanation in plain words, read offline POS explained.
Why Kenyan shops need a till that works offline
Because the internet tends to fail when you are busiest. A blackout in Kisumu takes the router down with it. The data bundle on the shop’s Wi-Fi runs out at 7 pm on a Saturday. The network drops in the month-end rush in Nakuru, just as the queue reaches the door.
A till that stops with the connection costs you sales, and the sales written on paper during the outage are the ones most likely to go missing. A till that keeps selling means an outage is just a short wait before the figures catch up.
What works offline, and what needs internet
Everything at the counter keeps working offline. The things that need the connection are the ones that talk to another system, another till or the back office.
| Works offline | Needs internet |
|---|---|
| Scanning and selling, with your prices and discounts | M-Pesa prompts (STK push) to the customer’s phone |
| Cash, M-Pesa codes, card and customer account payments | The back office: products, stock, purchases and reports |
| Printing receipts, and reprinting this till’s recent ones | Setting up a new till for the first time |
| Returns and voids for sales made on this till | Returns for sales made on another till |
| Cash in and cash out, opening and closing a shift | Picking up changes made elsewhere, such as a new price |
When the till is offline, M-Pesa still works the old way: the customer pays to your Till Number or Paybill and the cashier types the M-Pesa code into the sale. See M-Pesa payments for both ways of taking M-Pesa.
How offline sales get back to your records
Each sale is saved on the till the moment it is completed, then sent to your records in the order it was made as soon as the connection returns. The till does this by itself. The cashier can also open the sync status, see what is waiting and send it straight away.
Receipt numbers without gaps
Each till numbers its own receipts, with the branch and till in the number. Receipt numbers run on without gaps or repeats, even offline, and two tills selling offline at the same time never hand out the same number. An auditor, or you, can see that no receipt is missing.
Sales flagged when something changed
Sometimes the back office changes while a till is offline. Say you raise 2 kg sugar from KSh 290 to KSh 300 at 10 am, but the till at your Thika branch is offline until noon and sells six packets at KSh 290. Those sales are still accepted, because the customers paid what their receipts say, and they are flagged so a manager can see what happened.
Sync issues
Anything a till could not send is not thrown away. It waits under Sync issues in the back office for someone to review, with the reason it was held back.
Keep offline sales safe: practical advice
Unsent sales live in the till’s browser until they are sent, so treat that browser as part of the till.
- Do not clear Chrome’s browsing data on a till that still has unsent sales. Clearing cookies and site data deletes what the till has not sent yet. Check the sync status first; if anything is waiting, connect and let it go.
- Keep one Chrome profile for the till, and use it only for the till. Do not sell from a guest or incognito window: what they save is thrown away when they close.
- Keep the power on. A laptop, or a desktop on a UPS, keeps selling through a blackout for as long as it has power. The receipt printer needs power too.
- Install the till as an app from Chrome. It then opens from the desktop and goes straight to the till, even with no connection.
- Let tills come online regularly. That is when they pick up new prices and products, and when your dashboard catches up.
Setting up the computer, printer and scanner is covered in the hardware setup guide. Busy counters such as supermarkets gain most from a till that never stops. You can try all of this on your own shop with a free trial.