Taking payment
Press Charge on the Sell screen and the Pay screen opens. The amount owed is shown large, with a button for each way the customer can pay. A sale can be paid one way or several. It is paid in full when nothing is left to pay.
Before you begin
- A shift open on the register. Money can't be taken without one.
- For cards, a card reader on the register. See Registers and devices.
- For a payment on an older order, press Take a payment in the menu. See Take a payment on an earlier order.
The ways to pay
| Button | When it appears |
|---|---|
| Cash | Always. |
| Card | When the register has a card reader. |
| Store credit | When the sale has a customer with a store credit balance. |
| Gift card | Always. It needs a customer on the sale. |
| Pay link | Always. The customer pays on their own phone. |
After each payment the screen shows what has been taken and Left to pay.
Cash
Tap one of the quick amounts, or key in the amount handed over. Exact is always the first button. The other buttons are the next notes up for the store's currency, and you can change them under Quick cash notes in Settings.
Press Take cash. The till shows the change in large type and records the payment.
Part payments and change
Change is only given on the cash that pays the rest of the order. If the customer hands over less than is owed, that amount is taken as a part payment with no change, and the sale is left part paid. If they hand over the amount owed or more, the cash pays the rest and the till shows the change.
Cash rounding
Some currencies have no small coins, such as Swiss francs, Canadian dollars and Danish kroner. Set the smallest coin for each under Settings → Commerce → Counter sales in the KahunaCart admin (pos.cash_rounding). The cash that pays the rest of the order is rounded to the nearest coin, halves up. A sale of 10.02 in Swiss francs is paid as 10.00, and 10.03 as 10.05.
The difference is written on the order as its own Cash rounding line, so the receipt and the invoice add up to what was paid. Card, store credit and a part payment in cash are never rounded.
Card on the register's reader
Pick Card. Choose All to put the whole amount on the reader, or Part to put some of it there and take the rest another way. Then press the send button, which shows the amount, for example Send 25.00 to the reader.
The till works with Stripe Terminal (the WisePOS E and the S700), Square Terminal and SumUp Solo, and with the test provider's simulated readers. They all look the same at the till. What the till says as the payment goes along:
| What the till says | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting for the card | The reader is asking the customer to tap or insert. | Wait, or press Cancel. |
| Cancelling… | You pressed Cancel and the reader hasn't confirmed it yet. | Wait. The till keeps asking until the payment is cancelled or paid. |
| Approved | The payment went through. | Nothing. |
| Declined | The bank said no. | Try again, or pick another way to pay. The amount is still owed. |
| Timed out | Nobody presented a card in time. | Try again. |
| Cancelled | Nothing was taken. | Choose another way to pay. |
| Checking with the reader… | The payment provider can't say how the payment ended yet. | Wait. The till asks again by itself. |
| The reader hasn't said yet | Still no answer after the till asked a few times. The payment may or may not have gone through. | Press Check again. |
| Given up | A staff member gave up on this payment. | Choose another way to pay. |
A provider can word things a little differently. A Square Terminal that is declined a card, for example, keeps waiting, because the customer can try another card on the same payment.
When the reader doesn't answer
Sometimes the provider can't say how a payment ended. The reader may be offline, or the provider may have no record of it yet. The till never guesses. It shows the payment as checking, asks again by itself, and when that doesn't settle it shows The reader hasn't said yet with Check again. Press it to ask once more.
If the answer is still unknown, Give up on this card payment appears. Before you use it, look at the reader, or at the provider's own app or dashboard, to see whether the payment went through. Give up only when you have to move on. The attempt is marked failed and a note on the order says which staff member gave up on it. If the payment does go through later, it is recorded on the order, and if the order was already paid another way, you are told it was paid twice so you can refund one of them. A payment the provider has already said it took can't be given up.
The payment is sent once
The till never sends the same card payment to a reader twice. If a connection drops while the payment is being sent, the till finds the payment at the provider when it asks again instead of sending it again. SumUp has no way to tell a repeat from a new payment, so for a SumUp Solo this matters most. The till sends the payment to the Solo once, and if it can't tell what happened it shows the payment as checking until the payment turns up.
While a card is on the reader
KahunaCart gives change only on the payment that pays the rest. So while a card payment is pending, the Cash button accepts only exact amounts, up to what the card leaves, and says why. When the card finishes, cash with change works as usual.
If the page is reloaded or the till locks while a card is on the reader, the payment is still shown when it comes back, before any other way to pay is offered. The idle lock never fires while a card is on the reader.
A shift can't be closed while a card is still on the reader. See Shifts and cash.
Split payments
Pay part one way and the rest another. A common case is a gift card for part and cash for the rest, or half on a card and half in cash. Each payment taken appears on the screen, and the sale finishes when the last one covers what is left.
Every payment is recorded as its own line on the order, with who took it and on which register.
Store credit
Pick Store credit and the till offers the customer's balance, or less if the sale is smaller. Enter the amount to use and press Use store credit. The amount comes off the customer's account.
Gift card
A gift card needs a customer on the sale, because its whole value goes onto their account as store credit and the sale is paid from there. Whatever the sale doesn't use stays on the account. Enter the Gift card code and press Redeem gift card.
Pay link
Pick Pay link and the till draws a QR code on the screen. The customer scans it with their phone and pays on the store's pay page for that order. The till waits and shows Waiting for them to pay, and moves on by itself when the payment arrives.
The QR code is drawn in the till. It needs no connection to any other service.
Press Close the pay link to stop waiting and pick another way. The sale stays part paid if some of it was taken.
Take a payment on an earlier order
Not every payment is for a sale rung up on this shift. A customer may owe the balance on a booking, or may have placed an order online and want to pay for it in the shop. The till takes that money too.
- Press Menu, then Take a payment. It needs an open shift.
- Find the order by its number, the customer's email or their name. If only one order matches and it still owes money, it opens at once.
- The Pay screen opens for what the order still owes. Pay it any of the usual ways: cash, card, store credit, gift card or pay link, one payment or several.
The order can be a booking, an order placed online, or a counter sale from another day. Any order from the shop can be paid this way.
The till refuses with a sentence when the order is cancelled, has nothing left to pay, has a card payment still on a reader, is holding a card authorisation that has to be captured or released in the admin first, or is in a different currency from the register's shift. A counter sale rung up on another register isn't offered.
The money goes into the open shift like any other payment, so the drawer and the reader totals add up. The X and Z reports show it on its own line, Payments on earlier orders, and not as a sale, so your sales count and sales total stay true. A shift can close with an earlier order still owing money, because the balance was owed before the shift opened. It can't close while a card for that order is still on the reader.
When it is paid the screen offers the receipt, and Back to selling in place of New sale.
From the Bookings desk
With the Bookings add-on installed, a booking whose order still owes money has a Take payment button on the front desk, for anyone allowed to use the till. It opens the till with that order ready to pay (the address is the till's, followed by #/pay/ and the order's id). If the till is locked or no shift is open, it waits for the PIN and for a shift, and the order opens when they are done. If a payment is already on screen it asks you to finish that first, and opens the order afterwards. The desk takes no money itself. The till does.
Book next visit
With the Bookings add-on installed and a customer on the order, the Paid screen also offers Book next visit. It finishes the sale and opens the desk's New booking sheet for that customer.
A bookable service can't be rung up at the till, because a booking needs a time. The till says so and sends staff to the front desk, where the payment is taken from the booking afterwards.
When it's paid
The till shows Paid with the order number. If cash was handed over, Give change is shown large.
What happens next depends on the register's Receipts setting:
| Setting | What the till does |
|---|---|
| Prints the receipt at once through the browser's print dialog. Print again is on the screen. | |
| Ask | Offers Print receipt, Email receipt and No receipt. |
| None | Offers nothing. The sale is done. |
Email receipt asks for an address and sends the receipt to it. It doesn't add that address to the sale as a customer.
Press New sale to start the next one. After a payment on an earlier order the button reads Back to selling.
What the customer is emailed
A counter sale emails the customer only the receipt they asked for at the till. If the sale carries something delivered by email, such as a download, a license key or a gift card code, the order confirmation is sent too, because that is how the customer gets it.
A walk-in sale with no email sends nothing. The till won't take a walk-in sale that carries a delivered item at all. See Selling.
Emailed receipts are sent by the job worker, so it needs to be running.
What the receipt shows
The receipt is laid out for 80 mm thermal paper. It carries the store's name as invoices print it, the location's address and phone, the date and time in the store's timezone, the order number, the register and the first name of whoever rang it up. Then come the lines, the discounts, any cash rounding, tax per rate, the total, each payment with the change, and what is still owed. The return policy line follows when the store takes returns, then your Receipt footer, and the order number as a barcode so a return starts with a scan.
A logo can sit at the top. Set pos.receipt_logo under Settings → Commerce → Counter sales in the KahunaCart admin. It is printed in black and white.
Double taps and retries
A double tap, or a request the tablet sends again because the connection dropped, never takes money twice. Charging a sale, taking a tender, starting a card payment, taking a return and moving cash in or out all carry a key. The same key answers with what the first request did, so you get one sale, one payment, one return or one cash movement.
If a payment is sent again with a different amount after the money has already moved, the till refuses it rather than guess which one you meant. And if a request stalls so long that the shift is closed before it finishes, it writes nothing more. See Returns.