Taking payment

Point of sale → Charge.

A payment is only ever recorded once the money is confirmed taken. Nothing is marked paid hopefully, and an order closes only when its balance is exactly zero — not a cent over, not a cent under.

#Cash

Tap Cash, enter what the customer handed over, and the change due is shown large enough to read at arm's length. The quick buttons cover the exact amount and the notes people actually hand over.

Cash works with the network disconnected. The sale is priced, the drawer kicks, and the receipt and kitchen ticket print from the till's own printer. The sale sits in the terminal's queue and syncs the moment you are back online, so an outage never stops you trading.

A receipt printed offline carries a provisional reference rather than an order number, and says the number is still pending. The real number arrives with the order and replaces the reference everywhere the terminal shows it — the customer is never handed a number that will change.

You need an open drawer to take cash. If the till has no cash session, the pay screen says so and offers to open one.

#Card

Tap Card and hand the terminal to the customer. The till holds the sale open while the reader works, and shows exactly one of:

• Approved — the money is taken and the order settles.
• Only part of it went through — the card covered less than the full amount. The rest stays on the bill; take it another way.
• Declined — nothing was taken. The order and the cart are untouched, so you can try another card or take cash.
• Cancelled at the terminal — the customer or the reader backed out. Nothing was taken.
• The terminal did not answer — we ask your payment provider what happened before telling you anything. If the provider says no money moved, the screen says so plainly.

That last one is the important one. When a reader goes quiet mid-tap we never guess and we never ask you to guess. We query the provider for the outcome of that exact payment and report what it says.

Card payments need a connection, because the money has to be authorised. If the terminal is offline the pay screen tells you and offers cash instead.

Readers are registered once under Settings → Devices. See Devices for pairing one.

#Splitting a bill

Tap Split the bill on the pay screen. Three ways to divide it:

• Evenly — choose how many ways. Each share is shown before you take it.
• By item — tap the lines this guest is paying for. Tax and tip come along in proportion, so nothing is left stranded on the last payer.
• Amount — type any figure up to the balance due.

You can mix methods on one bill. Part cash, part card, part store credit is fine.

The running balance at the top of the pay screen shows what has been settled and what is left. Every share you take appears underneath it. The order closes the moment the balance hits zero.

#The odd cent

Split £10.01 three ways and someone has to pay the extra penny. Restro decides that once, on the server, in exact decimal arithmetic — never in floating point on a till. Three shares of £3.34, £3.34 and £3.33 add back to exactly £10.01. It is always the earlier shares that carry the remainder, so the same bill split the same way always produces the same numbers.

#A half-paid bill

The moment a bill is part paid, it exists on the server with the payments already taken against it. Force-quit the app, drop the tablet, lose power — reopen the terminal and the order is in the orders list marked Partly paid with the amount still owing.

#Tips

Where tipping is switched on for the branch, the tip is offered on the pay screen before you take the money. The tip is attributed to the member signed in on the till, so it flows into tip reporting without anyone keying it in twice.

On a split bill the tip is divided in the same proportion as the shares, and the shares always add back to the full tip.

#When something goes wrong

Every payment carries a key from the moment you commit it, and that key is written down on the terminal before the request leaves. Tapping Take payment twice, a timeout, a retry, a crash mid-tap — none of them can charge a customer twice.

If the app is closed while a payment is in flight, the next launch shows Checking an unfinished payment and asks the server what became of that key before letting you do anything with the order. Do not charge it again; wait for the answer.

Where the money taken and the order disagree — a reader that took more than it was asked for, or an order flagged paid with nothing behind it — the order is marked with the mismatch and the amount, so it surfaces at reconciliation rather than months later.

#Refunds and voids

An order with any money taken against it cannot be voided; refund it instead. Voiding is for orders where nothing was ever collected.

#Discounts

Add a discount on the ticket lists everything the cart qualifies for right now, biggest saving first, and takes a code the customer has. Automatic discounts apply on their own; choosing one by hand replaces it.

Discounts work offline. A usage-limited one is confirmed when the order reaches the server: if it ran out while the terminal was disconnected the order is honoured at the price quoted and flagged, never repriced behind the customer.

See Discounts for setting them up, and Cash management for how cash payments land in the drawer and the end-of-shift count.