Bill customers at the counter with local receipts and history

A small counter has a specific set of constraints that most billing software ignores: the queue does not wait, the connection is not reliable, the hardware is whatever is on the desk, and there is no budget for a subscription per till.

The connection is the real risk

Every cloud point-of-sale system has the same failure mode. The broadband drops, or the mobile signal fades, and the till stops taking payments. There are customers holding items, a queue behind them, and nothing to do but wait.

A browser-based till that keeps its item list and transaction history on the device does not have that failure mode. The retail billing tool works this way: once the page has loaded, billing continues regardless of what the connection does.

The practical consequence is that connectivity becomes a convenience rather than a dependency. You can trade through an outage and reconcile later.

Designing for a thermal receipt

Thermal receipts are unlike any other document you produce, and treating them as a small page is the usual mistake.

• The width is fixed and narrow, typically 58 or 80 millimetres. Everything must fit that measure, and long product names wrap rather than shrink.
• The length is unbounded. There are no pages, so there is no pagination to worry about, but there is also no reason to waste paper.
• Resolution is low. Fine type and detailed logos come out muddy. Use bold, simple shapes.
• Thermal print fades. Receipts kept in a wallet or a warm shop become illegible within months, which matters for returns and for anyone keeping them for expenses.

What belongs on the receipt: your business name and address, your registration number where required, the receipt number and date and time, each line item with quantity and price, the tax breakdown, the total, the payment method, and your returns policy in one short line.

What to leave off: anything that will not fit on the width, decorative elements that waste paper, and marketing that pushes the total off the visible part of the slip.

Keep a sales history you control

A till that forgets what it sold is not much use at the end of the day. Local history gives you the day's total, the items sold, and a record to reconcile against.

The obvious caveat is that local data lives on one device, and devices are dropped, stolen, replaced, and cleared. So build an export habit:

1. Export the day's transactions at close, every day.
2. Keep the exports somewhere that is backed up, not only on the till.
3. Check that the export actually contains what you expect, once, at the start, rather than discovering the format is wrong three months in.
4. Retain records for whatever period your obligations require.

Exported transaction data is usually easiest to work with as a spreadsheet or CSV; the CSV formatting guide covers turning those exports into a readable summary when you need one on paper.

Where a full invoice is needed instead

A retail receipt and a tax invoice are not the same document. Counter sales to unregistered walk-in customers are generally served by a receipt. A registered business buying from you needs a proper tax invoice with their registration details, because that is what supports their input credit claim.

Have both available. When a customer asks for a proper invoice, produce one with the GST invoice tool rather than trying to make the receipt carry particulars it was never designed for — the invoicing guide covers the required fields.

As with anything tax-related, confirm your specific obligations with a qualified adviser rather than relying on a general guide. Requirements differ by registration type and by what you supply, and they change.

Practical setup advice

• Test the printer before opening. Connection, paper width, and character encoding are all easier to fix at eight in the morning than at midday.
• Keep the item list short and searchable. Cashiers work by muscle memory, and a well-ordered list is faster than any search.
• Have a fallback. A duplicate book and a pen cost almost nothing and will keep you trading if the device itself fails.
• Count the cash against the till total daily. The discrepancy you find on the day is fixable; the one you find at month end is not.