A till that sells from the same stock as the website

A physical till that does not share stock with your online channels is not an integration problem, it is a second business. Every hour between a counter sale and the manual adjustment is an hour your website, Amazon and eBay are all advertising something that is now in a carrier bag.

Weekends are the worst of it, which is also when most physical selling happens.

One catalogue, one figure

A sale at the till creates a stock movement against the same product record as everything else, immediately. There is no overnight job and no end-of-day reconciliation, because there is nothing separate to reconcile.

That is the entire argument for the till living here rather than being a good standalone product you sync to. Syncing two systems is a schedule; sharing one record is a fact.

What a real counter actually needs

Selling is the easy part. The unglamorous machinery is what decides whether staff can work the till without asking for help:

• Sessions and cash reconciliation — opening float, movements during the day, a Z report at close, and the difference between what should be in the drawer and what is.
• Parked transactions — someone goes back for a second item, the next customer is served, nothing is lost.
• Split payments — part card, part cash, part gift card, on one sale.
• Staff on the transaction — who sold it, who took the discount, who was on when the drawer was short.
• Stocktakes at the till — counting the shelf where the shelf is, not on a clipboard to be typed up later.

Multiple locations

More than one till, or more than one shop, works the same way. Each location’s takings and sessions are its own, while the catalogue and the stock record stay shared — so you can compare locations without running separate systems that need consolidating at month end.

Trade counters and market stalls

The two cases people forget. A trade counter is a POS sale against a wholesale account, which needs that account’s pricing rather than retail — otherwise a trade customer standing in front of you is charged more than the same customer ordering online, which is a conversation nobody enjoys.

A market stall is a till away from your shop, on a phone or tablet, on whatever connection the venue has. Both are ordinary rather than exotic.

Being clear about hardware

This is software. It works with the usual card readers, receipt printers and cash drawers, but you are buying a till system, not a countertop. If you need certified hardware from one supplier with a single support number, say so early — that is a reasonable thing to want and it is a different purchase.