What is an offline POS?
By the Hajza team Updated
The short answer
An offline POS is a point of sale that keeps ringing up sales when the internet drops. In Hajza, each sale taken offline is saved on the device and sent to the server when the connection returns, and the device keeps its copy until the server confirms the sale was recorded.
Why does a shop need one?
Load-shedding and patchy connections can take a shop offline for part of the day, and a customer at the counter will not wait for the router. A point of sale that needs the internet for every sale turns an outage into lost sales. An offline POS keeps the counter open and settles the records afterwards.
What can you do offline in Hajza?
Sign in while you are online first. Hajza then keeps the point of sale on that device, so it opens without a connection. From there you can:
- Ring up sales of products, and take cash, card, bank transfer or a split of these.
- Print a receipt for the sale.
- Adjust stock, receive a delivery against a purchase order, and draft a new purchase order.
- Add or edit brands, categories and products, and sell a product you created offline. Photos are added once you are back online.
What still needs a connection?
Everything that depends on the server's live figures:
- Signing in, and the screens outside the point of sale and stock.
- Appointments and the booking timeline.
- Paying with store credit, which needs the customer's live balance.
- Transferring stock between branches.
- Receiving a purchase order that was itself drafted offline, until it has synced.
How does the sync work?
When the connection returns, or the next time the point of sale opens, Hajza sends everything it queued. New brands, categories and products go first, so the sales that use them can find them.
Every queued record carries its own key, so a sale sent twice is recorded once. The device deletes its copy only after the server confirms it, and an expired sign-in never counts as a success: the queue waits and asks you to sign in to sync.
If the server refuses a record, for example a sale of a product that was deleted in the meantime, it stays in a review list with the reason, and you decide what to do with it.
Do offline sales land on the right day?
Yes. Each record keeps the time it was captured, and the server files it under that time. A sale taken on Monday and synced on Wednesday counts in Monday's reports and in the shift that was open on Monday.
What if two devices sell the last item offline?
Both sales are recorded, because both really happened. Stock stops at zero rather than going below it, and the sale is flagged so you can check the shelf. Offline selling can detect an oversell but not prevent it, because the devices cannot see each other until they sync.