RetailOS — Point of Sale (POS) Manual

A hands-on guide to running the till: setting up registers, opening and closing cash sessions, selling, taking payment, reprinting receipts, handling returns, and working offline.

Base URL: https://goretailos.com POS terminal: /admin/pos · Registers & cash: /admin/registers · Orders & returns: /admin/orders · Offline sync: /admin/sync This is the POS-focused companion to the full User Manual and the Usage Guide.

1. Who can use the POS, and what a register is

• Who — the POS is available to Owner, Admin, Manager and Cashier roles. Accountant / Inventory / Staff roles do not sell.
• Register — a register (or "till"/"drawer") is the point money is taken at. Every sale, cash movement and cash session belongs to a register. A shop can have several registers (e.g. one per counter), each optionally bound to a branch.
• Assignment — a cashier must be assigned to a register before they can open its session (managers can open any register). Manage registers and assignments in Registers & Cash.

Tip — install it as an app. The POS runs as a Progressive Web App: on the till device open /admin, then Install (Chrome/Edge address bar) or Add to Home Screen (iPad Safari). It launches full-screen like a native terminal and keeps working through Wi-Fi drops. See the Usage Guide → Installing the POS for the full setup.

2. Opening the register (start of shift)

You must open a cash session before you can complete a sale. The session tracks every cash movement from open to close so the drawer can be reconciled.

1. Open the terminal at /admin/pos.
2. In the session bar at the top, pick your register.
3. Enter the opening float — the cash you're starting the drawer with (count it first).
4. Select Open session.

Rules:

• Only one open session per register at a time. If the register already has an open session you'll be told to close it first.
• Non-managers can only open a register they're assigned to.
• The session bar then shows the register, the open-session state, and the online / offline and sync badges.

3. Selling — the terminal

The terminal is a full-screen workspace: catalog on the left, cart on the right (a slide-in sheet on phones).

Finding items

• Scan — keep the scan field focused and scan a barcode, or type a barcode/SKU and press Enter. The item drops straight into the cart.
• Search (F2) — fuzzy search by name / SKU / brand / category. Use ↑ ↓ ← → to move the highlight and Enter to add the highlighted item.
• Category chips — tap a category to filter the product grid. Live stock badges show what's available.

Only "Available for sale" items appear here. Products, categories and brands that aren't marked Available for sale (internal-only items such as raw materials or packing supplies) do not show up in the POS product grid, search or category chips. They stay in inventory and purchasing — they just can't be sold at the till.

Overselling into negative stock is limited to permitted roles. By default the till stops you adding more of a stock-tracked item than is on hand. Only roles your shop has permitted (Settings → Inventory → "Who can oversell (negative stock)", default Owner / Admin / Manager) may push a line past available stock; for everyone else the quantity is capped at what's in stock. The server enforces this too, so it can't be worked around. (The shop-wide Allow negative stock toggle governs the online store checkout, not the till.)

The cart

• Quantity — use the − / + steppers on each line.
• Line discount (F6) — a discount on a single line.
• Order discount — a discount across the whole sale (spread evenly across lines when the sale posts).
• Attach customer (F4) — link the sale to a customer (or leave it as a guest sale).
• Hold / resume (F8) — park a sale to serve someone else, then resume it. Held sales live on the device.

Keyboard shortcuts

The cart prices tax per line — each item uses its own tax rate, or the shop's default (inclusive or exclusive) — so the Total you collect matches exactly what the server posts. The server still re-validates every sale authoritatively when it's completed.

Customer-facing display (second screen)

Show the customer the bill as it's built. In the POS toolbar select Display — a full-screen customer display window opens; drag it onto a second monitor or customer-facing screen at the counter.

• Every item appears with its price and running total the moment it's scanned, with the newest line highlighted.
• The big Total updates live after each item.
• When you take payment, it switches to a Thank you screen showing the amount paid and the change due, and returns to a welcome screen once you close the receipt.

It's a read-only mirror — it never changes the sale. It runs on the same device/browser as the till (open it from the POS on that machine), works offline, and shows nothing to anyone who opens the page on a different device.

4. Taking payment

1. Press F9 (or Pay) to open the payment sheet. It shows the Total due.
2. Pick a payment method tile (Cash, Card, Bank, etc.).
3. For split payments, use Split payment to add more rows — the sheet shows Allocated, Remaining and Change due live.
4. Press Complete sale. The button shows Processing… while the sale posts, and can't be double-clicked.

Payment rules:

• The payment total must cover the order total (you can't under-pay).
• Cash over-tender is fine — hand over more cash than the total and the sheet shows the change due; the drawer records the net (cash in − change out). Example: a 600 sale, customer gives 1100 → 500 change, drawer nets +600.
• Non-cash tenders can't exceed the total — you can only give change from cash, so a card/bank amount must not be more than what's owed.

On success you get the receipt screen (and, if offline, a "Saved offline" confirmation).

Credit / udhaar (pay later)

If your shop allows it, a permitted user can complete a sale without full payment and let the customer pay later ("udhaar"). In the payment sheet, tick Credit sale (udhaar / pay later), then press Complete credit sale — you can take part of the money now or none at all, and the unpaid balance is booked to the customer's account.

• A customer is required. You can't put a guest sale on credit — attach a customer (F4) first, or the sale won't complete.
• The credit limit is enforced. The customer's existing unpaid balance plus this sale can't exceed their credit limit (set on the customer record; 0 = unlimited). A manager can tick Override the customer's credit limit to go past it.
• Online only. Credit sales are confirmed on the server, so they can't be taken while offline.
• Settling up later. When the customer pays, record it from Sales (/admin/sales) → open the sale → Record payment (see the User Manual).

Whether credit is available at all, and which roles may use it, is set in Settings → Customers & credit.

5. Receipts

• Print a 58 mm or 80 mm thermal receipt (plain-text, ESC/POS-style), with a browser print fallback if no thermal printer is configured.
• Reprints are available from the order later (see §8).
• Configure the printer per device in Settings → Receipts (printer type, paper width, bridge URL, auto-cut, cash-drawer kick). Printer settings are stored on the device, not the shop.

6. Cash in / cash out during the shift

Money sometimes moves in or out of the drawer outside of sales — a float top-up, a payout, or a cash expense. Record these so the drawer still reconciles at close.

From Registers & Cash → the open session panel:

Each movement takes an amount and an optional note. Only the session's opener or a manager can record movements.

7. Closing the register (end of shift)

1. Go to the session (POS session bar Close session, or Registers & Cash).
2. Count the drawer and enter the Counted cash — this is required; you can't close with a blank amount (type 0 if the drawer is genuinely empty).
3. Close. The system computes the variance.

Expected cash is calculated as:

opening float
  + cash sales
  − cash refunds
  + cash in
  − cash out
  − cash expenses

The close screen shows the full reconciliation — Opening, Cash sales, Refunds, Cash in, Cash out, Expenses, Expected, Counted, and the Difference. Only the opener or a manager can close. A discrepancy raises an alert for a manager to review (flagged critical if it's more than ~5% of expected).

8. Recent sales, the order ledger & reprints

• On the till — recently completed and held sales are reachable from the POS (recent-sales / held-sales panel) so you can resume or reprint quickly.
• Full ledger — every sale (POS, online and AI) lives in Orders, returns & payments. Search by order number or customer contact, filter by status / payment / channel / date, and page through them. Open an order to see its lines, payment status and to reprint the receipt.

9. Returns & refunds

Returns are processed from the order, not the till screen.

1. Open the order in Orders, returns & payments.
2. Choose Full return & refund.

What happens: the returned items are restocked, a refund is issued (cash refunds re-enter the open drawer), and the sale's revenue/tax/COGS are reversed in the ledger — all in one step.

You can't refund an order that was never paid. For an unpaid order (e.g. a Cash-on-Delivery online order that wasn't collected) the refund option is hidden and the server blocks it — there's no money to give back. Cancel such an order instead.

10. Offline mode & sync

The POS is offline-first: if Wi-Fi drops (or a checkout call fails), it keeps selling.

• Prime first, on Wi-Fi. Open the POS online once at the start of a shift so it caches the catalog, prices and barcode index for the shop.
• Selling offline — sales are computed on the device and queued (each carries a unique local_uuid so syncing can't create duplicates). The session bar shows the offline badge and the queued count.
• Reconnecting — queued sales sync automatically and duplicate-safe when you're back online. The server re-prices authoritatively; if a price or tax changed while you were offline, the customer keeps the amount actually charged and the difference is recorded as a variance rather than silently rewritten.
• Conflicts — a manager resolves any price/tax variances or rejected sales in the Offline Sync console (Accept / Reject / Retry).

11. Troubleshooting

This page renders POS_MANUAL.md. See also the full User Manual and the Usage Guide.