Inventory & POSSales & invoicingProduct
A POS system that works offline and posts to your books
Nefin Team5 min read
Most cloud tills have the same weak spot: when the internet drops, so does the till. The queue grows, someone starts writing sales on paper, and that paper has to be typed into the books later, if anyone remembers.
Nefin POS is built the other way round. Every sale is saved on the till itself first, so selling never waits for a connection. The bookkeeping happens afterwards, on its own: each sale is sent to Nefin and posted to your books as soon as the till is back online.
- The till shows Offline. Two flat whites and a croissant go on the order: 8.00 plus 20% VAT, 9.60.
- The sale is paid in cash, 10.00 tendered and 0.40 change, and sale S-0042 is saved on the till, waiting to sync.
- The connection comes back, and the queued sale is sent to Nefin.
- S-0042 appears in Nefin's POS sales list and the till marks it Synced.
- Its journal posts, dated the day of the sale: debit 1000 Cash 9.60, credit 4000 Revenue 8.00 and 2200 VAT Output 1.60.
Selling doesn't wait for the internet
The till keeps its own database on the computer it runs on. A sale, a refund or a closed shift is written there first, then placed in a sync queue. While the till is connected, the queue sends one item every few seconds; while it isn't, items simply wait their turn.
- A sale keeps its own date. One rung up offline on Friday posts to Friday, even if it syncs on Monday.
- Retries are safe. Nefin recognises a sale it has already received and never posts it twice.
- Refunds wait for their sale. A refund only syncs once the sale it reverses is in Nefin.
- Problems are visible. Settings, then Nefin, shows how many items are pending and how many failed, and a failed item can be retried or discarded.
Connect the till to Nefin
On first launch, choose Connect to Nefin and sign in with your Nefin email and password. The till creates its own access key, so each terminal can be seen, and revoked, from the POS Terminals page in Nefin. Or set the till up on its own and connect it later: when you do, the sales you made before connecting are sent too.
Use an account that doesn't ask for an authenticator code when it signs in; the till can't complete that step. POS sync is part of the Professional plan and up. Nefin POS is available for Windows today.
What comes down from Nefin
| From Nefin | Used on the till for |
|---|---|
| Items, with price and VAT rate | The products you sell. Nefin owns the price and the VAT rate. |
| Bank accounts | Recording which account received a card payment |
| Employees and their roles | Who can sign in with a PIN, and what each person may do |
Change an item's price or add a bank account in Nefin and a connected till picks it up within seconds, no restart needed. Staff changes are flagged on the till instead of applied, because you choose which employees to import and set their PINs yourself.
Ringing up a sale
Each line takes VAT at its item's own rate, added to the price, so a basket with two rates is still exact to the cent. At the end of the order, take payment one of four ways:
- Cash, with the amount tendered and the change worked out for you.
- Card, taken on your own card terminal. The till records which bank account received it.
- Split between cash and card.
- Other, with a short description, for anything else you accept.
Receipts print through any printer the computer can print to, or save as a PDF, and printing can start on its own after every sale. You set the header line and footer text, and whether your logo appears.
Refunds and shifts
A refund returns a whole sale. It needs a reason and the PIN of someone allowed to approve refunds, and it's recorded against the current shift. In Nefin, the sale's journal is reversed.
Shifts keep the drawer honest. Open one with a float, record pay-ins and pay-outs as they happen, and close it by counting the cash. The till shows what it expected, what you counted and the difference, and can download a Z-report as a CSV when the shift closes.
What lands in your books
Each sale is its own journal entry, not a daily lump, and each one is listed on the POS Sales page in Nefin with a link to its journal:
| On the till | In your books |
|---|---|
| Cash or Other sale | Debit 1000 Cash; credit each item's revenue account (4000 Revenue by default) and 2200 VAT Output |
| Card sale | The same, with the debit on the bank account that received the money |
| Refund | The sale's journal, reversed |
| Closed shift | Pay-ins to 4100 Other Income, pay-outs to 6000 Operating Expenses, and any over or short to 6900 Cash Variance |
