Point of sale

The Point of Sale feature lets your staff sell at the counter of each of your stores, from a phone, tablet or till computer running a till app. The till app talks to your site through the commerce API, so a sale at the counter uses the same products, prices, coupons, gift cards, stock and orders as your online store.

At each store you set up one or more registers. A member of staff opens a shift at a register with the cash in its drawer, rings up sales, takes cash, a card or both, prints or emails the receipt, and at the end of the day counts the drawer and closes the shift. You see every shift, what it sold and whether its drawer came out right.

Menu	Commerce > Point of sale > Registers; Commerce > Point of sale > Shifts
Permission	Sell at a register for staff at the till; Manage registers and shifts to set up registers and read every shift
Feature	Point of Sale (it needs Orders, Inventory and the Checkout API). Receipts, to print and email receipts. Stripe, to take cards on Stripe Terminal readers.

Can't find it?

What you see depends on your role. If the menu, a button or a setting on this page is missing, ask your administrator to give you the permission listed above or to turn on the feature. Only administrators can turn features on and change site settings.

Before you start

1. Turn on Point of Sale, and Receipts if you'll print or email receipts.
2. Add a location for each store under Settings > Commerce > Inventory: a register sells from one of them. See Inventory.
3. Give staff who sell at the counter a role with Sell at a register. Give whoever manages the stores Manage registers and shifts, which includes selling.
4. Set up sign-in for the till app, as an app people sign in to with the authorization code flow, and include the roles scope so registers can check staff roles. See Set up sign-in.

Staff sign in to the till app with their own accounts, so every shift, sale and cash movement says who made it.

Set up registers

1. Open Commerce > Point of sale > Registers and click Add register.
2. Fill in the fields (below), and click Save.

The register was added. Staff who may sell at registers can open a shift at it from the till app. confirms it.

Field	What it does
Name	What staff see when they pick a register, such as Downtown till 1. Required.
Store location	The inventory location its sales take stock from. Required.
Store address	The store's street address, city and two-letter country code, such as US. Sales at the register are taxed by this address, and its receipts show it. Required.
Currency	The currency its drawer holds, such as USD. Leave it blank to sell in the products' own currency.
Who may sell here	Tick roles to let only their staff sell at this register. None ticked lets anyone with Sell at a register. Staff with Manage registers and shifts may sell at every register.
On	A register that's off can't open a shift or ring up a sale.

Card payments

A sale can be paid by card in two ways:

• Card on the counter terminal. The store's own card terminal, from your bank or another provider, charges the card. Staff then record the card payment in the till app, with the terminal's approval code. The site doesn't talk to the terminal: it records that the card paid.
• Card on a Stripe reader. With the Stripe feature connected, a Stripe Terminal reader at the register takes the card. The till app tells the site which reader to use, and the site sends the payment to it; the buyer taps, inserts or swipes their card. The app needs no Stripe software of its own.

Pair a Stripe reader

A reader is paired once, by the registration code it shows when you set it up. A manager (Manage registers and shifts) pairs it from the till app: they enter the code, a label such as Downtown till 1, and the store's address. Stripe keeps each reader at a location: the site makes one for the store's address, or uses a location you made in the Stripe Dashboard. Once paired, the reader appears in the till app's list of readers, so staff can pick the one at their register.

Try it without a reader

With Stripe in test mode, pair a simulated reader with the registration code simulated-wpe. When a sale is waiting on it, the till app can present a test card on it, as if a buyer tapped one.

Your developers find the requests the till app sends in Point of Sale, in the Technical Manual.

A day at the till

Here is a shift as staff work it in the till app. Each step is a call the till app makes to your site; the Technical Manual walks through the same day call by call. A till app built as the Technical Manual describes never rings a sale up, or takes a payment, twice, even when its connection drops.

1. Pick a register and open a shift

The staff member signs in and picks their register. The list shows only the registers they may sell at. If the register already has an open shift, they carry on with it. Otherwise they open one, entering the cash put in the drawer, the float.

A register has one open shift at a time: opening a second one is refused.

2. Ring up a sale

The staff member adds the products the buyer is taking, with their variant, price and add-ons as on the product page. They can name the buyer:

• Look up a customer, so the sale is on their account and earns them points. A customer who can't be found is refused, so the sale is never put on the wrong account.
• Enter a walk-in buyer's name and email, for their receipt.
• Or name nobody.

The sale is an order, with its stock held at the register's store while it's paid. A sale can't be rung up without an open shift, and a product that can't be sold, or has run out, is refused with what's wrong.

A discount code or a gift card goes on the sale before it's paid. Store credit and loyalty points aren't spent at a register. To give up on a sale before it's paid, cancel it: the order is canceled and its stock let go.

The staff member who rang up the sale is the one who takes its payment.

3. Take the payment

The buyer can pay:

• In cash. Enter all the cash the buyer hands over: when it's more than is due, the site works out the change to hand back.
• By card on the counter terminal. Charge the card on the terminal first, then record it in the till app with the terminal's approval code.
• By card on a Stripe reader. The till app sends what's due to the reader, and waits while the buyer taps, inserts or swipes their card. If the card is declined, the payment is refused: send the payment to the reader again, or take another way to pay.
• With a mix: some cash, and a card for the rest.

When nothing is left to pay, the sale is complete and the order is placed. If there's still something to pay, the till app is told what's due, so staff can take more cash or a card.

A sale is paid in the shift it was rung up in. Once that shift has closed, the sale can't be paid any more: ring it up again on the open shift.

4. The receipt

When the sale is complete, the till app has the receipt, to print in its own layout on a receipt printer. With the Receipts feature on, it can also print the receipt as a page branded from your Receipts settings, or email it to the buyer. Without Receipts, those two aren't available.

5. Cash in and out

Cash put in the drawer or taken out outside a sale, such as more change from the safe or a banking run, is recorded on the shift with its amount and a reason, such as Banked at noon.

6. Returns at the till

The staff member finds the sale, enters a reason such as Wrong size, and refunds all of it or part of it.

• The items go back on the shelf at the register's store, unless staff choose not to restock them.
• A return needs an open shift: what the sale paid in cash is handed back from the drawer and recorded as cash taken out of the register's open shift. The site works out how much cash to hand back.
• The card is refunded before the cash. When a sale was paid partly in cash and partly by card, the card is refunded first, and only what it doesn't cover comes out of the drawer.
• The rest goes back to how it was paid: a Stripe reader's card is refunded through Stripe, and a gift card gets its money back. A card taken on the counter terminal is refunded on that terminal: the site records the refund, and staff make it on the terminal.
• A till returns register sales only. An online order can be returned at a till only by staff with Manage orders.

7. Close the shift

At the end of the shift, the staff member counts the cash in the drawer, enters it with a note if it's off, such as Short 1.48, a coin dropped behind the till, and closes the shift. Closing it gives the shift's sales, how they were paid, the cash the drawer should hold, the cash counted, and the difference.

While a shift is open, the till app can show the same at any time, so staff can see how the day is going.

The cash drawer

The drawer should hold:

• the opening float,
• plus the cash kept for sales: what buyers handed over, less the change given back,
• plus cash put in, less cash taken out, which includes cash handed back for returns.

That's the expected cash. At the close, the counted cash less the expected cash is the difference: negative when the drawer is short, positive when it's over.

Shifts

Commerce > Point of sale > Shifts lists every shift, newest first, each Open or Closed, with when it opened and who opened it, and for a closed one its difference. The Filter by register list in the header shows one register's shifts. Shifts, on a register in the registers list, opens the same.

Click View to open a shift:

Shown	What it means
Sales	How many sales the shift took.
Total	What they came to.
Cash kept	The cash kept for them: handed over, less the change.
Card	What cards paid, on the counter terminal or a Stripe reader.
Gift cards and balances	What gift cards paid.
Refunded	What has been refunded of the shift's sales, wherever it was refunded.
Opening float	The cash put in the drawer at the start.
Put in, less taken out	The cash movements, returns at the till included. Each one is listed with its reason and who made it.
Expected	What the drawer should hold.
Counted and Difference	For a closed shift: the cash counted, and how far off it was. Negative is shown in red.

The note given at the close is shown with it.

What a register sale does differently

A register sale is an order, like an online one, so it's under Commerce > Orders, in your reports, and in the buyer's account when you named a customer with an account. It differs in these ways:

• Its channel is Point of sale. The orders list filters by channel (Every channel, Online, Point of sale, Drafts sent by staff), and its CSV export follows the filter. A register sale shows a badge with its register.
• Its location is the register's store: its stock is held and sold there. When that store has none of an item, the stock comes off your main location.
• It records the register, the shift and the staff member who rang it up.
• The buyer takes it with them: nothing is shipped, and its checkout skips the Contact and Shipping steps.
• It's taxed by the register's store address, and billed to it.
• It's paid in cash, by card on the counter terminal, by card on a Stripe reader, with a gift card, or a mix. Store credit and loyalty points aren't taken at a register.

For your developers

The till app is built on the commerce API. The Point of Sale page in the Technical Manual lists every request the till app sends, with a whole shift call by call.

Related pages

• Headless commerce API
• Carts and orders
• Inventory
• Gift cards
• Invoices and receipts
• Payment providers