A shop does not stop selling because the internet does. Your till should not either.
An offline-first point of sale treats the network as a bonus, not a requirement. Here is how that works in practice.
Sales are saved on the device first
When a cashier completes a sale, the receipt is written to the till's own storage before anything is sent anywhere. The sale is real the moment it is saved locally, so a dropped connection never blocks the queue at the counter.
Syncing happens in the background
Once the connection is back, the till sends the saved sales to the server in order. Stock levels, reports and other branches catch up without anyone pressing a button.
What to ask any POS vendor
- Can I print a receipt and record a payment with the internet unplugged?
- What happens to stock counts if two branches sell the same item while offline?
- How do I know when everything has synced?
These three questions tell you more than any feature list. They are also the ones we keep in mind when we build the B-Codex POS System.