Point of sale
Overview
The till is the surface for selling at the counter. Three decisions shape it, and all three are deliberate:
The receipt IS the document. No sales order is created per receipt — the receipt itself is the commercial truth. Anything else would be double bookkeeping for the same transaction.
Gross is the truth. At the counter the gross price is entered and displayed; tax is calculated out of it. The other way round, rounding differences would appear exactly where the customer does the arithmetic.
A TSE outage does not stop selling. If the technical security device fails, selling continues and the outage is logged. A shop that closes on a signature fault would be the worse answer.
Core tasks
Take payment. At the terminal you enter items, take payment, close the receipt and print it.
Run a shift. You open the shift with the opening float, book cash in and out and close with a cash count. The difference is recorded, not hidden.
Take back a receipt. Refund and void are separate transactions with their own permission — a receipt is never silently changed.
Produce the DSFinV-K export. For a cash audit you produce the export for a period and download it.
Selling serial- and batch-tracked items. If an item requires a serial number, its line shows "Serial numbers 0/1". A click opens the capture; scan the number of each unit there. Only when every number is captured can the receipt be finished. For batch-tracked items the batch that expires first is pre-selected (FEFO) — take the one you are holding. A return puts exactly these units back into stock. If no single batch covers the quantity, the register spreads it over several and records the split on the receipt; a return refills exactly those batches. The register asks for the serial number offline too: the offline catalogue knows the tracking type, and the receipt can only be finished once every number is captured.
Click & collect with serial- and batch-tracked items. When a customer collects an order, the serial numbers and batch of the collected lines are captured and booked exactly like on a normal receipt — at the register via the Pickup button, through the API as pickupUnits per order line.
Showing the customer display. "Customer display" at the register opens a view for a second screen at the counter (/pos/display): lines, total, notices and, after payment, the change. The second device only needs the permission Read customer display (pos.display.view) — a pure display account that neither takes payments nor sees receipts — and remembers the register; "Full screen" hides the navigation. A display that hangs does not stop the sale.
Fields in detail
The receipt is the document. A till sale creates no order and no invoice but the receipt itself — and gross is the truth: the customer pays a gross price, tax is extracted from it, not added on top.
Register
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Key registerKey | yes | short, stable text | The register's technical identifier. Do not change it once receipts run on it. |
Name name | yes | text | What the register is called. It appears on the receipt and in reporting. |
Brand brandId | no | one of your brands | Which brand sells — determines number range, receipt layout and tax case. |
Warehouse warehouseId | no | an existing warehouse | Which stock is sold from. |
Workplace workplaceKey | no | text | Which workplace serves the register — for receipt printer and cash drawer. |
Device serial number serialNumber | no | text | The serial number of the device, not the register key. It is part of reporting the till system to the tax office. |
Acquired on acquiredOn | no | date | When the register was acquired — also part of that report. |
Decommissioned on decommissionedOn | no | date | When the register was taken out of service. Only then is the report complete; an empty value clears the entry again. |
Active active | no | yes/no | Whether this register can sell. |
Fiscal device
| Field | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Mode tseMode | selection | How the technical security device is connected. Its failure does not stop selling — sales continue and are recorded afterwards, because a shop cannot close because a device is stuck. The catch-up is logged. |
Device id tseTssId, client tseClientId, serial tseSerial | text | The security device's details. They belong to the till registration and must match the device. |
Kind of security device tseKind | hardware or cloud | Whether the security device is a plugged-in unit or a service. Part of the till report as well. |
BSI certification tseCertificationId | identifier, BSI-K-TR-0374-2020 for instance | Under which certification the security device is approved. Without it the till report is incomplete. |
Details on the receipt
| Field | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Site name locationName | text | The shop's name on the receipt. |
Street locationStreet, postcode locationPostalCode, city locationCity, country locationCountry | text | The address of the site. Required on the receipt — the address of the point of sale, not of the head office. |
Tax number taxNumber / VAT ID vatId | text | The tax identifiers that must appear on the receipt. |
Till session
| Field | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Opening float | amount | The change in the drawer at opening. |
| Count record | denominations | What is actually in the drawer at closing. |
| Difference | counted against expected | Till difference. It is recorded, not smoothed over — a difference argued away is worse in an audit than a documented one. |
Receipt
| Field | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Items | articles with quantity | What was sold, at gross prices. |
| Payment methods | cash, card, voucher … | How it was paid. Several methods on one receipt are allowed. |
| Change | amount | What was handed back. |
| Batch / serial numbers | per line | The captured unit of a serial- or batch-tracked item. It is stored on the receipt, and a return puts the same unit back. |
Split batches batchAllocations | per line, read-only | Which batches were taken in which quantity when one batch alone was not enough. A return puts exactly these quantities back. |
Pickup units pickupUnits | per order line: batch or serial numbers | Only with a collected order. Determines which unit is booked out on click & collect — checked like any receipt line (one serial number per unit). A line that is not open on this order is rejected. |
| Void | with a reason | A receipt is not deleted but voided — with its own document and a reason. Anything else would be a finding in a till audit. |
Settings & permissions
- View/set up tills:
pos.register.view/pos.register.manage - Receipts and daily journal:
pos.sale.view· Selling:pos.sale.execute - Refund and void:
pos.sale.void - Shift and cash count:
pos.session.manage - DSFinV-K export:
pos.export.manage - Customer display on a second device:
pos.display.view— the minimal permission of a pure display
device; it only reads the display. Pre-assigned to Sales, blocked for external users. The register itself (pos.sale.execute) may read the display as well.
Module flag: module.pos.
FAQ & troubleshooting
The receipt cannot be closed. Check whether a shift is open — without a shift there is no cash balance to post against.
The TSE reports an error. Keep selling; the outage is logged and has to be filed afterwards.
The cash count does not match. The difference is posted as such. It is not levelled out — that would falsify the cash book.
The receipt cannot be finished although the shift is open. A serial-tracked item is still missing a serial number — the line shows how many are captured. Without one number per unit it would be impossible to trace which device was sold in a warranty or recall case.