Manual: Retail till & billing

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This is the day-to-day manual for anyone who works the till: cashiers, shift supervisors, and store owners. It walks the exact same flow you'll use on a real shift, with real screens from the app.

If you're looking for admin setup (products, suppliers, purchase orders, reports), see Manual: Retail admin & back office instead. This page is the till, front-to-back.

Signing in

The Commerce POS hub

Once signed in, use the Commerce POS button pinned at the top of the sidebar (or Settings → Open Commerce POS) - both only appear if your workspace has Retail POS enabled. This opens a separate till-focused app with one screen per task - no hunting through menus mid-sale.

The hub is grouped by what the work is:

The bar that follows you

You don't have to come back to this hub to move around. Every screen in the POS carries the same bar along the top:

• Till, Customers, Business day, Shift settlement - one tap from anywhere.
• Day open / Day closed and a connection indicator, always visible.
• The menu on the right holds "Open the full admin app" and sign out.

Opening the business day

Billing needs an open business day for the location - this is the accounting unit every till session and Z-report rolls up to. An owner, admin, or manager opens it once, at the start of trading; nobody else needs to think about it again until close.

Choosing your terminal

Each physical till device is registered once by an admin (see the admin manual). Every time you sit down at a till, tell the app which one you're on:

Starting your shift

Shift logon declares your opening float (the cash you're starting with) so the shift's own figures reconcile correctly at settlement.

A terminal is locked to you for the shift, and you're locked to that one terminal - so two cashiers can never accidentally share a till mid-shift.

Building a bill

This is the Till - the screen you'll live in all day. It's laid out like a dedicated till terminal rather than a web page: the POS bar across the very top, then a thin status strip, the function keys down the left, the product tiles in the middle, the running bill on the right, and a tender bar along the bottom.

Nothing on it scrolls as a page. Only the tile grid and the bill list scroll, inside their own columns - so the total and the Tender button are always on screen, even on a small 1024x768 till display.

Each bill line shows the quantity, the price actually charged and the GST% for that item; the Subtotal/GST/Total underneath always reconciles to the sum of the lines.

The function keys on the left

Retail rings up by scanning or searching, so the left column earns its width better as actions than as categories. Everything is on show there, grouped by the job you're doing:

The bottom bar keeps only what ends a bill: quantity mode, PreBill and Tender. Those three can never be pushed off screen, however small the display.

Many of these have a keyboard shortcut (F2 Customer, F4 Tender, F6 Hold/Recall, F8 Discount, F9 Bill view). They keep working while the cursor is parked in the scan box, so you never have to click out of it first.

With no physical keyboard

Plenty of till terminals are just a touchscreen and a scanner. Tap Keyboard in the top right and an on-screen keyboard docks along the bottom, typing into whichever field you tap. It picks the right kind on its own - a number pad for money and quantities, letters for search and names.

It's docked rather than floating, so it can never cover the field you're typing into; the panes above shrink to make room. The choice is remembered, so a terminal with no keyboard stays in this mode across restarts.

Attaching a customer

Optional, but worth doing - it's what makes loyalty points, purchase history, and a khata/credit account possible.

Registering a new customer

No match on search? Click Register customer right there in the same dialog.

Mobile is the real identity - it's what search matches on every time after this. Name is optional but worth asking for. Customer lets you mark someone Walk-in (the default), Staff, or Credit (a khata account that can carry a running balance - set up its limit later from Customers). GSTIN is a collapsed section for a business (B2B) customer.

Applying a discount

Click Discount on the till toolbar. You can discount by a flat amount, a percent, or set a target total directly - whichever's easiest for the situation.

Holding and recalling a bill

A customer steps away, or you need to serve the next person in line before finishing the current bill - Hold parks it so any till (not just this one) can pick it back up later.

Name and Phone are both optional - useful for a takeaway order so whoever recalls it knows whose it is. The till immediately clears to a fresh, empty bill.

Taking payment

Click Tender. This freezes the bill total and opens the payment screen - you can split a single bill across cash, card, UPI, or any other pay mode your admin has configured.

Completing the sale

The reference number (e.g. RET-2026-JL4SDW) is the bill's permanent id - write it down for any refund/return/exchange conversation later. Print receipt sends to whatever printer is configured; Close starts a fresh, empty bill on the till, ready for the next customer.

Looking up a completed bill

Click Bill view from the till toolbar at any time, then search by reference number or customer.

Cancelling a completed bill

Pick a Reason (required - it's what shows up later in reporting), then have a supervisor type their own PIN - not yours - right there at the till. Click Cancel bill.

Other things you'll find on the till toolbar

A few more toolbar buttons worth knowing, even if you won't use all of them every shift:

• Trade-in - credit a customer for something they're handing back (e.g. an old device) against this bill.
• Pick salesman - attribute this sale to a specific salesperson for commission reporting, distinct from the cashier who's actually billing.
• Sales order / Recall order - save the current lines as an order to fulfil later (e.g. a customer paying an advance for a delivery), then bring it back and convert it into a real bill when it's ready.
• Quote / Recall quote - save a negotiated price list for a customer without committing to a sale yet; prices stay editable right up until you convert it.
• Voucher creation - issue a gift card or exchange voucher with its own QR code, redeemable at any till later.
• Payment (in the toolbar, distinct from Tender) - records cash moving into or out of the drawer that ISN'T a sale, e.g. petty-cash float top-ups or supplier cash payments:

Pick a Reason, optionally log it as a petty-cash expense too, and Save - this shows up in your shift settlement's cash reconciliation, same as every sale.

Closing the day

At the end of trading, an owner/admin/manager goes to Shift & day → Day-end on the POS hub. The checklist has to be fully green before you can close - it's a guardrail, not a formality:

• Shift settlements confirmed - every cashier has counted their drawer and signed off (Shift settlement, on the bar and under Shift & day).
• No held bills - nothing left parked mid-sale.
• No unpaid (draft) bills - every bill that was started got tendered or voided.
• No offline bills pending sync - only relevant if you use offline billing.

Once every line is green, Close day freezes a Z-report (total sales, tax, and a breakdown by pay mode) that can never be edited again. If something was closed by mistake, an owner can request a reopen, which needs a second owner's approval before it takes effect.

Who can do what

Related: Manual: Retail admin & back office · Manual: Food production