POS for pop-up shops

One device does the whole job

The Global Payments T650P is a handheld card terminal with a 360 by 640 screen, and SeroPOS has a compact layout for it. With Terminal Plus, SeroPOS runs on the terminal itself and talks to the payment app on the same device, so the cashier rings the sale and the customer taps their card on one handheld. No cables, no pairing and nothing else on the table.

Prefer what you have? SeroPOS also runs on Android phones and iPhones with a phone layout, and on iPads and Android tablets with the full layout. Moneris Go and Global Pay Cloud terminals take the amount from the app over the internet, and a Bluetooth receipt printer can be paired if customers want paper.

Venue Wi-Fi you can't count on

Every sale is saved on the device first with a unique token, then uploaded. If the connection is down, uploads retry every 20 seconds, back off for up to 30 minutes and park any sale that keeps failing on the device rather than dropping it. The app bar shows whether you are online, so staff know when they are working offline.

Plan for the screens that need a connection: Recent Transactions, the DSR, a phone's barcode lookup and card authorisation on most terminals. Take cash when everything is down, and the sales go up to the back office as soon as the signal returns. Sync DataBase in the drawer forces a sync before you pack down, so you leave knowing every sale is in.

• Sales saved locally first
• Automatic retries and back-off
• Parked sales are kept, never dropped
• Online and offline indicator

Stock that travels

Create a location for the pop-up, or one per recurring event, and move stock there with a stock transfer before you leave. The transfer records what went in the van. At the end of the event, transfer what is left back to the shop, and the difference is what sold, matched against the sales recorded at that location.

Additional locations are billed at the plan price, so a pop-up that runs all season may be worth its own location, while a one-day market can share your shop's location. Users can be limited to the pop-up location, which keeps a temporary hire away from your main store's stock and reports.

Setting up and packing down

Because the pop-up signs in to the same account as your shop or website stock, products, prices, categories and customers are already loaded. If you sell a smaller range at events, a separate POS menu holds just those items and appears as a pill on the till. Turn on Retail Mode for shop wording and hide restaurant screens.

At pack-down, print the DSR or read it on screen: sales, payments by method, item sales and payouts. Close the register with the counted cash. The back office holds the event's sales by location and date, so you can compare this weekend with the last one. Pop-up sales also count toward each customer's reward points if you add them to the sale.