Point of sale

Open in the demo

Sell over a counter: pick products into a basket, take payment on the spot and print a receipt. Cashiers work in shifts on a cash drawer.

Point of sale is an app. An Owner or Admin installs it from the App Center; it needs Invoices, Cash and Products. Once installed, find it under Sales Point of sale.

Every sale is an invoice that is raised and paid on the spot. That means a sale uses your invoice numbers, charges tax the same way, takes products out of stock, and appears in every report with nothing extra to set up. You'll find each sale in Invoices, with POS and the shift number as its reference.

Who can sell

Level in Point of sale	Can do
Staff	Open the app and look. Selling isn't available.
Manager	Open and close their own shift, sell and take payment, print receipts. This is the level for a cashier.
Admin	Everything a Manager can, see everyone's shifts, close someone else's shift, and change the setup.

Selling makes work final, so it needs the Manager level. A person's level here is separate from their system role: give a cashier the Manager level in Point of sale and nothing else. See App access.

Set it up

The first time you open Point of sale it asks for a cash drawer and a walk-in customer. Set up with the usual choices fills them in for you; Choose myself opens the setup page, which is also under Settings My apps Point of sale Settings.

The setup page has two parts: the Company card, with the choices every place you sell from shares, and a card for each selling point. Settings that only one kind of business needs, such as a restaurant's tables or a supermarket's scale barcodes, are on that selling point's own page.

Company setting	What it is	The usual choice
Main cash drawer	The cash account of your first register. Asked only until the first register is saved; after that, each register has its own drawer. If you have no cash account, add one in Cash first.	Your first cash account
Card payments go to	The bank account your card machine pays into. Entirova records the payment; it doesn't talk to the machine. A register can have its own.	Your main bank account
Counter sales are for	The customer that a sale with no named customer is recorded against.	A new customer called "Walk-in customer"
Largest cashier discount (%)	The most that can be taken off a sale by someone at Manager level.	Empty: no limit
Offline, the till takes	For registers set to sell offline: cash only, cash and card, or on account as well.	Cash and card

The setup is per company. Choose another company at the top of the page to set up its point of sale. Changing the setup needs the Admin level in the app.

Selling points

A selling point is one place you sell from: a shop, a supermarket, a bakery, a cafe, a bar, a restaurant. A hotel might have four: its restaurant, its pool bar, its lobby cafe and its gift shop. Each selling point has:

A name, such as Main restaurant or Kandy branch.

A business type, which decides how its registers sell and what its page shows:

Business type	How it sells	Its page has
Shop, Supermarket	Scan and pay: barcodes, weighed items, hold and recall, returns.	Registers, scale barcodes
Pharmacy	Scan and pay, from the batch that expires first. Prescriptions are recorded at the till.	Registers, today's prescriptions
Bakery	Order, then pay, as a cafe does, with weighed and counted items.	Registers, scale barcodes, options
Cafe	Order, then pay: an order number for each sale, have in or take away, order tickets.	Registers, options
Bar	Pay at the counter, or run a tab under a name. No order numbers and no service charge.	Registers, tables (if you have them), options
Restaurant	Sells to tables: open orders, split bills, a service charge.	Registers, tables, service charge, options

Sells from (with the Warehouses app): the warehouse its registers take stock from first, usually its own shop or store room. When that runs short, the rest comes from the other warehouses in the company's picking order.
Its registers, listed on its page.

On the setup page, select Add selling point, or Open on a selling point's card to see its page. Its page shows its registers in use, the shifts open there, today's sales, and only the settings its business type uses; Edit selling point changes its name, type, warehouse, service charge or scale barcodes. A selling point with a shift open can't change its business type. One with no registers can be removed; one that is no longer used can be set to not in use instead.

A company set up before selling points existed has them made for it from its registers: one for each business type and outlet, called after the outlet, or "Main shop", "Main cafe" and so on. Rename them as you like.

Age-restricted products

Products such as alcohol or tobacco can only be sold to customers of a certain age. Mark them, and the till asks the cashier to check.

Mark a product or a service: in its form, under Selling, turn on Age-restricted. Its page then says so.
The age is set once for the company, in the Company card of Point of sale setup: Age for restricted products, 18 unless you change it.
At the till: when a restricted product goes into a sale, the till shows the latest date of birth that is old enough. The cashier selects They are 18 or over (or the age you set), or Not old enough to leave it out. It is asked once a sale, and again before paying for a sale that was put on hold.
On the record: a sale or a tab with a restricted product can't be made without the check, and a sale made with it is marked as checked.

Prescription-only products

Mark a product or a service: in its form, under Selling, turn on Prescription only.
At the till: when one goes into a sale, the till asks for the prescription number, the doctor and the patient, once for the sale. A sale with such a product can't be made without them, and it can't go on a tab.
On the receipt: the prescription, and for products kept in batches, each line's batch number and expiry.
Prescriptions on the shift's page lists the prescription sales of that shift: receipt, prescription number, doctor, patient and the items.

Registers

A register is one till. A company starts with one, called Main register, and can have up to 30: a second counter, an express lane, a kiosk, a till in another branch. Each register has:

A name, shown when a shift is opened and on the shifts list.
A selling point: the one it stands in. It sells as its selling point's business type does, from its warehouse. Moving a register to another selling point changes how it sells from the next shift.
A cash drawer of its own: a cash account. Two registers cannot share a drawer; add another cash account in Cash for each further register.
Where its card payments go: the company's card account, or a bank account of its own if that till has a separate card machine.
Sell when offline: see Selling without a connection.

Add and change registers on their selling point's page, under Registers: select a register's name to change it. A register that is no longer used can be set to not in use; removing one that has shifts behind it does the same, so its history still reads. A register with a shift open cannot be changed to another drawer or selling point, taken out of use or removed until the shift is closed. Adding and changing registers needs the Admin level in the app.

Open a shift

Open Point of sale. With no shift open, it shows Open a shift.
If the company has more than one register, choose the one you are selling at. Enter the cash in its drawer now. This is the opening float.
Select Open shift. The sell screen appears.

You can have one shift open at a time, and a register can have one open shift at a time. Several cashiers can sell at once, each on their own register; each drawer is counted on its own when its shift is closed.

Sell

The sell screen fills the window: your products and services as tiles on the left, and the Current sale on the right with one large Charge button under it. Each product group has its own colour.

Find a product: select its tile, pick a group above the tiles, or type in Search or scan a product. Each tile shows the product's initials on its group's colour, its name and the price with tax. A stock product that is running low also says how many are left, and one with none says Out of stock.
Scan a barcode: with the cursor in the search box, scan. A scanner types the product's code and presses Enter, which puts the product straight in the basket. Typing a code and pressing Enter does the same.
Change a line: select the line in the sale. It opens to show minus and plus (or type the number), Discount and Remove. Clear empties the sale.
Name the customer: leave the customer box at the top of the sale on the walk-in customer, or choose a named one. You need a named customer to sell on account.
Take payment: select Charge, which shows the total to pay.

Scanning and quantities

Scan a barcode into the search box (a scanner types the code and presses Enter) and the product goes straight into the sale. The code can be the product's barcode or its SKU. Set a product's barcode on the product itself, in Products.
A quantity first: type 3* before the code (3*4791234567890) to add three.
Price check at the top shows a product's price and stock without adding it to the sale.

Products sold by weight

On a product, Sold by can be Each, Weight (kg or g), Volume (litre) or Length (metre). Its sale price is then the price of one kg, g, litre or metre, and it shows on the till as, for example, "Rs 472.00 /kg".

At the till: selecting or scanning such a product asks how much. Type the weight from the scale; the screen shows what it comes to before you add it. Weights are kept to three decimals (grams of a kilogram).
Scale labels: if your scale prints a barcode label, scan the label and the product and its weight go in together. Entirova reads the common in-store format: 13 digits starting with 2, five digits for the product (matching its barcode or SKU) and five for the weight in grams. On a shop's or a supermarket's selling point, Scale barcodes carry (under Edit selling point) says whether those five digits are the weight or the price, or turns this off.
Stock: a product sold by a measure is counted in fractions everywhere: sales, purchase orders, stock counts and moves between warehouses. Products sold each are still counted in whole units.

Hold a sale

Hold, beside Clear, puts the current sale aside and empties the screen for the next customer. On hold at the top lists the sales waiting, each with the time, the number of lines and its total; Recall brings one back (the current sale must be empty), and the bin drops it. Up to twenty sales can be on hold in a shift. A shift cannot be closed while a sale is on hold.

Returns

Select Return at the top and scan or type the receipt number, then press Enter.
Enter how many of each line are coming back. The screen shows what to give back, with tax and any discount on the original sale already worked out.
Choose Cash back, or Keep as credit for a named customer, add a reason, and select Make the return.

A return raises a credit note against the receipt and puts the goods back in stock. Cash back comes out of your drawer, so the count at closing expects that much less; credit stays on the customer's account to use later. Each line can only come back once in total. Returns need the Credit notes app; without it the Return button is not shown. A return large enough to need credit note approval has to be raised from Credit notes instead.

Selling without a connection

A register can be set to keep selling when the internet connection drops. It is off unless you turn it on: on the register's selling point page, change the register and set Sell when offline to Yes.

What keeps working: an open shift on that register keeps ringing up sales and printing receipts. A notice above the till says there is no connection and how many sales are waiting.
What waits for the connection: opening and closing a shift, and returns. Open your shift while you are online.
How it is paid: Offline, the till takes in the setup chooses cash only, cash and card (the usual), or on account as well. A card payment taken offline is recorded on trust: Entirova cannot see whether the card machine approved it.
When the connection is back: the waiting sales are sent by themselves. If the server cannot take them as they are (for example another till used the same invoice numbers meanwhile), each sale is recorded again on the latest data, with the receipt number it was given at the till. Stock is allowed to go below zero for these sales, since the goods have already left; correct the count afterwards.
Receipt numbers: every sale has a receipt number of its register's own (R1-000123 on the first register, R2-… on the second), printed on the receipt above the invoice number. Two tills can never give the same one, online or offline, and a return finds a sale by either number.
A sale that cannot be recorded: if a waiting sale is refused (its shift was closed by someone else, or a product was removed), it stays on the till and a red notice offers Look at it, with the reason. Put the cause right and select Try again. Someone who manages shifts can discard it with a reason, which is logged.

Keep the page open. Waiting sales are kept in the browser on that till, so they survive a refresh, but the till itself cannot be opened or reloaded without a connection: a reload while offline shows nothing until the internet is back, and then sends what was waiting. Sales wait on the device they were made on and are sent under the cashier who made them, so that cashier needs to sign in again on that till if the page was closed. Do not clear the browser's site data while sales are waiting.

Options on products (cafes)

Options are what a customer chooses on a product: a size, a milk, extras. Set them up on a cafe's or a restaurant's selling point page, under Options.

An option group has a name (Size, Milk, Extras), a rule for how many the customer picks (one and must choose; one or none; any number), and its choices. Each choice can add to the price; the extra is before tax, as a product's price is.
Products that use it: tick the products the group applies to. A group is set up once and shared, so changing a choice's price changes it on every product that uses the group.
At the till: selecting or scanning a product that has options opens them first. A group that must be chosen starts on its first choice, and the screen shows what the product comes to. The same product with different options is a separate line in the sale.
On the invoice and receipt the options are part of the line, for example "Latte (Large, Oat)", at the price with its extras.

Options belong to the product, so every cafe and restaurant of the company offers the same ones. A product with options asks for them on any register, a shop's too.

Orders and tickets (cafes and restaurants)

A register in a cafe or a restaurant selling point treats each sale as an order.

Order number: each sale gets the next number of the day on that register, starting from 1. It is shown large when the sale is confirmed, and printed on the receipt, so it can be called out.
Have in or take away, and an optional name for the order, are chosen above the customer on the sell screen.
Order ticket: a slip for whoever makes the order, with the order number, have in or take away, the name, and each item with its options and quantity; no prices. Print ticket is offered when the sale is confirmed. If the till has its own receipt printer, tick Print an order ticket under This till's devices and it prints by itself after the receipt.

The ticket prints on the till's own printer, or through the browser's print window when the till has none. Sending it to a separate printer in the kitchen is not possible yet.

Bars

A bar's register opens on the till, as a shop's does: drinks are rung up and paid at the counter. A customer can also run a tab.

Put it on a tab: with a sale on the screen, select To tab. Choose an open tab, or give a new one a name. The sale moves onto the tab; select Send to keep it.
Tabs at the top shows the bar's open tabs (and its tables, if it has any), with what each owes. Open one to add to it, print its bill, split it or take payment, as on a restaurant's register. Till goes back to the counter.
A bar's sales have no order number and no have in or take away, and its tabs have no service charge.

Tables and tabs (restaurants)

A register in a restaurant selling point sells to tables. An order stays open while the guests eat, and is paid at the end.

Set up. On the restaurant's selling point page, under Tables, select Add tables. Give a name, how many, an area and the seats: the name T1 with 8 adds T1 to T8. Select a table to rename it, move it to another area or remove it. Each restaurant has its own tables, so two restaurants can each have a T1. The Service charge (%) is under Edit selling point, one for each restaurant; leave it empty for none.

The tables screen. When a shift is open on a restaurant register, Point of sale shows that restaurant's tables as tiles, grouped by area; another restaurant's tables and orders aren't shown. A free table shows its seats. A table with an order is highlighted and shows what is owed and how long it has been open. Tabs under a name (a bar tab, a takeaway that is paid later) come after the tables; New tab opens one.

Open a table by selecting it, and add products as on any register. Options and weights are asked for in the same way.
Select Send. The order is saved, so every till can open it, and a ticket is given for the kitchen. Items not sent yet are marked New.
When the guests order more, open the table, add it and select Send again. The ticket lists only what is new. Anything taken off the order is listed under CANCELLED.
Bill prints the bill for the table without closing it.
Pay takes payment and closes the table.

Tickets: Send prints a ticket when Print an order ticket is ticked under This till's devices. It works without a receipt printer too, through the browser's print window.
Service charge: added to every bill by itself, on the goods after discounts and before tax, and taxed at the company's usual rate. Select the Service charge line on an order to leave it off that bill.
Split by items: select Split, and say how many of each item go onto a bill of their own. The table then has two bills (the second is called "bill 2"), each paid separately. Selecting the table lists its bills; New bill there starts another.
Split by amount: in Pay, change Paying now to what one person is paying. The rest stays on the bill for the next person. Each part can be cash or card.
On account: choose a named customer on the order, then pay On account. The bill closes as an unpaid invoice for that customer.
Move: moves the order to another table.
Cancel: takes away an order nobody will pay for, with a reason that is written to the activity log. It needs the Remove permission, and works only before any payment is taken.

Good to know.

An open order is kept as a draft invoice. Nothing is posted to the accounts and nothing leaves stock until the first payment is taken. Do not edit or send these drafts from Invoices; use the table.
Once a payment is taken on a bill, what is on it cannot be changed. For more items, start a new bill at the table.
A bill that is part paid must be finished on the shift that took the first part, and that shift cannot close until it is finished or put on a customer's account.
Orders that are not paid at all stay open when a shift closes, and the next shift can take them.
Tables need a connection. Selling offline does not cover open orders.
Another till sees a change after its next refresh, usually within about 20 seconds.

Receipt printer, cash drawer and scale

A till can use its own receipt printer, the cash drawer wired to it, and a scale, straight from the browser. Nothing is installed. It needs Chrome or Edge on the till; in other browsers receipts print through the browser's normal print window, as before.

Set them up once on each till, in Point of sale setup under This till's devices. The choices are kept in that computer's browser, because the devices belong to the till, not to the company.

Receipt printer: select USB printer, or Serial or Bluetooth for a printer on a serial port or a Bluetooth printer already paired with the computer, and pick it from the list the browser shows. Test print prints a short page. The printer must understand ESC/POS, the standard receipt printer language (Epson, Star in ESC/POS mode, Xprinter, Bixolon and most others).
Paper: 80 mm or 58 mm.
After a sale: tick Print the receipt to print by itself when a sale is confirmed, and Open the drawer for cash to open the drawer when cash was taken. With the drawer ticked, a Drawer button on the sell screen opens it without a sale; each time is written to the activity log.
Scale: select Choose scale and pick its port; set its speed if it is not 9600. When a product sold by weight is added, Read the scale fills in the weight. It waits for the scale to settle and refuses a zero.

Receipts are sent to the printer as a picture, so any language prints correctly whatever character sets the printer has.

What this cannot do. A printer on the network (LAN or Wi-Fi) cannot be reached from a browser: leave the receipt printer empty on that till and print through the browser's print window, with the printer installed on the computer as usual. On Windows, a USB printer that already has the maker's driver installed may refuse the browser; use its serial or virtual COM port instead, or the print window. Bluetooth printers that are not paired as a serial port are not supported.

Discounts

On one line: select the line, then Discount, and enter a percentage, or pick one of the quick ones (5%, 10% and so on). The line shows how much is off.
On the whole sale: select the Discount row above the subtotal. Choose Percentage, or Amount to take a sum off what the customer pays, tax included.
Take one off again: open it and select No discount.

The sale shows the discount, the subtotal before tax and the tax; the total to pay is on the Charge button. The receipt shows a line's discount on the line and the sale's discount above the subtotal.

A limit for cashiers. In the setup, Largest cashier discount (%) caps what can be taken off a sale, counting line discounts and the sale discount together. Leave it empty for no limit. People with the Admin level in Point of sale aren't limited. The shift's page shows the discounts given in that shift.

If you have an approval rule for discounted invoices, a sale that falls under it can't be made at the counter.

Take payment

Way of paying	What you do	What Entirova records
Cash	Enter the cash handed over, or select one of the quick amounts. Entirova shows the change.	The amount due, into the cash drawer. The change isn't income.
Card	Take the amount on your card machine, then confirm.	The amount due, into the bank account chosen for cards.
Split	Enter the part paid in cash; the rest is by card.	Two payments on the one sale.
On account	Choose a named customer in the basket first.	An unpaid invoice, due on that customer's usual terms.

Select Confirm sale. Entirova shows the receipt number and the change to give. Print receipt prints a narrow slip for a till printer; New sale clears the basket for the next customer.

A sale that is over one of your invoice approval limits can't be made at the counter. Raise it from Invoices so it can be approved.

Close a shift

Select Close shift on the sell screen, then Close shift on the shift's page.
Count the cash in the drawer and enter it. Entirova tells you what should be there: the opening float plus the cash you took.
Add a note if the drawer is over or short, and select Close shift.

If the count differs from what should be there, the difference is posted to Cash Over & Short, the same as a cash count in the Cash app, and the shift's page shows it. A correct drawer posts nothing.

Shifts

Shifts, at the top right of the sell screen, lists shifts with the cashier, the drawer, the number of sales, the amount taken and whether the drawer was correct. Open one to see its sales and how each was paid. Select a sale's receipt number to open it in a side panel, with its items, a link to the invoice and Print receipt. You see your own shifts; the Admin level in the app shows everyone's.

Undo a sale

Open the sale's receipt number, which takes you to its invoice. Cancel its payment there, then void the invoice (a paid invoice can't be voided until its payment is cancelled, and voiding may need approval if you have a rule for it). A voided sale, or a cancelled cash payment, drops out of the shift's figures. Both need the Manager level in Invoices.

If you uninstall it

Point of sale leaves the menu. Every sale stays in Invoices and every shift is kept, so installing it again brings everything back.