Tills and point of sale

Where you set up the till itself. Selling happens in the till app, which runs on the cashier's device — a tablet, a laptop, a phone. This page creates the till, connects the device to it, and cashes it up at the end of the day. The card reader is set up on Card payments, shared with trade shows.

1. Create a till

Type a name into New till name and press Add till. Name it after where it physically stands — "Front counter", "Events desk" — because that name appears on every cash-up and Z-report you'll ever read back. Add one till per place money is taken; two people serving from the same counter can share one.

2. Connect the device

Press Connect QR and scan the code on the device that will be the till. The code is only valid for 3 minutes — if it expires, just press the button again.

Scanning signs that device into a restricted till session. It can sell, take payment and open the drawer; it cannot reach your admin, your reports or your settings. That's deliberate: a tablet left on the counter is a till, not a way into your business.

3. Cashing up (the Z-report)

While a till has a session open, it appears under Open sessions. At the end of the day, count the cash drawer, type the total into Counted cash, and press Close (Z).

The count is blind — you tell it what's in the drawer before it tells you what it expected. That's the point: it's a check, and a check you can see the answer to isn't one. The Z-report that comes back shows sales, cash vs card, the opening float, expected versus counted, and the variance between them. Every past session is kept — see Reports ▸ Till sessions.

Closing a till needs the Close the till and take the Z report permission. Owners have it, and staff added from now on with a till-manager role get it ticked already. Anyone who was already on the books needs it ticked on their own account on the Staff page — a role only pre-ticks the boxes for new staff, so existing managers do not get it on their own. Until then the Close till button does not appear for them.

An X read shows the same figures without ending the session — useful at a handover, or when the drawer feels light and you want to look before committing to a count. It needs no permission, counts nothing and does not open the drawer.

On a SetupShop till with a receipt printer, the X read and the Z report print on paper as well as appearing on screen. In a browser they appear on screen only.

4. Card payments

The Card payments panel on this page says which provider the till uses and how many readers you own. Press Set up card payments to choose the provider, enter the SumUp or Square details and manage the readers. It is its own page because trade shows use the same account and the same readers.

5. Kiosks

A kiosk is a Raspberry Pi till: it carries a token of its own, so it keeps taking cash when the shop's connection drops and sends what it sold once it is back. One asks for this shop's address and an owner login the first time it boots, and then appears in the Kiosks table with the till it is attached to, who set it up and when it was last heard from. Revoke shuts one out for good — anything it took offline and has not sent yet goes with it, so cash it up first.

A sale a kiosk took offline is recorded at the time it was made. If it arrives after that VAT period has ended, the order says so in its notes and the VAT report for that period lists it under Sales added after this period ended, so you can correct a return you have already filed. It is never refused.

VAT — which case are you?

• If you are VAT registered (a VAT number and its Registered from date are saved in Settings ▸ Payment ▸ Tax): till prices are treated as VAT-inclusive exactly like online prices, and the VAT inside each sale is broken out on the VAT report alongside your web orders. One return covers both. Each item carries its own VAT rate, set on the product, the food menu item or the event, so a zero-rated rulebook and a standard-rated booster in one sale are each charged correctly. When a sale has food in it, an Eat in / Take away switch appears above the total. Eat in (the default) charges the standard rate on all the food, because food eaten on your premises always carries it; Take away uses the VAT rate set on each menu item.
• If you are not VAT registered: no VAT is charged or recorded at the till, and it shows as zero. That's correct, not a fault.

Receipts and full VAT invoices

When a sale is paid the till asks what to do with the receipt: Print, Email — type an address, or find the customer — or No receipt. Nothing prints and nothing is sent until you choose, and the till is ready for the next sale whichever you pick. On a computer the receipt opens in a new tab, ready to print.

If you run one of our counter tills — the small box with a receipt printer attached — Print goes straight to that printer instead, and nothing opens on screen. That till keeps selling when your internet drops: it can still print, and an email asked for while it is offline is held and sent as soon as the connection is back.

The receipt carries your shop's name, address and VAT number as they stood when the sale was paid, and for each VAT rate the total charged at that rate and the VAT inside it. Second-hand items carry a † and the words "Margin Scheme – second-hand goods", with no VAT shown on them. A receipt like this is a simplified VAT invoice, which HMRC allows up to £250.

When you are VAT registered and a sale comes to more than £250, the receipt also offers a Full VAT invoice: type in the customer's name and address, and their VAT number if they have one, and press Make full VAT invoice (PDF). The details are saved on the order and the invoice opens as a PDF; you can come back to it from the same receipt, or from the order in your admin. The sale is already finished by then, so a customer who does not want one is never held up.

Cards given out in a deal at the till get a receipt too, listing what went out.

Buying in and trading at the till

The till app has two modes at the top: Sell and Buy / trade. In Buy / trade, one search box finds cards in the catalogue to buy in and cards in your own stock to give out; both sit on one deal, so a customer can hand over a card and take one away in a single go. Tap a catalogue card to set its condition (or grader, grade and cert for a slab), how many and what you are paying — recent sold prices and the price guide are shown to help. The deal panel totals both sides and says who pays whom.

• Pay them cash / Take the difference in cash settles in cash: what you hand over is recorded as a pay-out from the drawer, what they hand over as a pay-in, so the cash-up still balances.
• Straight trade is cards for cards with no money either way. When the two sides are not worth the same, a Straight trade at box appears above the button, filled in with the value of what is going out. Change it if you agreed a different figure, or leave it. Both sides are recorded at that one figure: the cards coming in cost that much, and the cards going out sold for that much. A swap has one value for both sides, and the VAT on the cards you sell later is worked out from what you really paid. It never stops the trade.
• When you settle for a cash figure, one side is scaled to match it. The pennies always add up: three cards that share 10.00 are recorded at 3.33, 3.33 and 3.34, not 3 × 3.33.
• Cards you take in become stock at once, at the price you paid, marked second-hand; cards you give out are a sale on this till session (paid by trade), with VAT worked out exactly as a counter sale.
• The settle screen asks who you bought from: the kind of seller (a private individual unless you change it), and an optional name and address. It never stops the deal. Each settled deal gets one numbered purchase invoice covering every card taken in, under Reports ▸ Stock book. Cards from a seller who gave you a VAT invoice go in as standard stock, not margin scheme. Under the margin scheme HMRC expects the seller's name and address on the purchase invoice at any price; a deal settled without them is marked as having no purchase record.

Good to know

• The box above the tills table filters it as you type.
• Remove takes a till off the list. A till that has never been opened is deleted outright. One that has been opened, taken sales or had a kiosk paired is retired instead: it disappears from this page and from card reader choices, can no longer be connected or opened, and any kiosk paired to it is revoked, but its past sessions, Z-reports and sales are kept and still name it. Close its open session first.
• A till with a session open says session open in the Status column — that's your cue that someone hasn't cashed up.
• Stock sold at the till comes off the same stock as the website. Sell your last copy on the counter and the web page stops offering it.