The internet or BigLedger is down: sell by hand, catch up afterwards

This guide gets a shop through an afternoon with no connection, and its sales into the books afterwards. It is for the cashier and branch manager while the line is down, and the administrator and accounts clerk who catch up after it. Read Step 1 today: an outage is the one time you cannot prepare for an outage.

An outage, at a glance

1. Before: prepare each till while it is connected.
2. During: work out which situation each counter is in.
3. During: keep selling on a till with Offline Mode on.
4. During: write a paper sales sheet everywhere else.
5. After: send every till’s Transaction Queue.
6. After: key the paper sheets back, dated the day they happened.
7. Next morning: run the check.

Meet GadgetSphere

GS-KK-01, one of GadgetSphere’s two Kota Kinabalu shops, loses its mall connection on a Saturday from 14:10 to 15:25. Till 1 has Offline Mode on and rings 11 bills in that time, RM 6,420.00 (cash RM 1,930.00 + card RM 4,490.00). Till 2 does not, and its cashier writes 7 paper sheets, RM 3,180.00. By Monday morning all 18 sales, RM 9,600.00, must be in BigLedger on Saturday’s date.

Before you start

Of the applets you open in the browser, one keeps working without the server: the POS General till, and only with Offline Mode on. Sales invoices, goods receipts, stock transfers, payments and reports keep nothing on your machine; with no connection they wait, on paper.

• A bill rung up offline exists only in that browser on that PC until it is sent. Clearing the browser data, reinstalling or swapping the machine before then loses it.
• “Successfully posted to FINAL” on an offline till means saved on this till. The server has not seen the bill, so nothing has reached stock, the ledger, the member’s points or the e-invoice queue.

Step 1: Prepare each till while it is still connected

POS General › Personalization › Offline Settings

The outcome: each till can sell, print and keep a second copy of its bills with no connection.

Offline Mode is a setting on each cashier’s login, saved through the server, and the till sells from data it has copied down: items, prices, price books, customers, employees, members and the receipt layout. Every sync button refuses while the till is offline (You are offline. Reconnect to sync offline data.), so none of this can be done during an outage. The copied data, the queue and the number counter belong to the browser on that PC, whichever cashier signs in. For each till:

1. Turn on Offline Mode and Enable Offline Print, set a Local Running Number Prefix such as {BRANCH_CODE}-{DEVICE_CODE}, press SAVE, then SYNC ALL (offline settings).
2. Check the POS Agent is running and print one test receipt. With offline print off, an offline till prints no receipt and says nothing (what prints, through what).
3. Under Cashbill Backup and Recovery, press SELECT BACKUP FOLDER and pick a folder on the PC. Each queued bill is then also written there as a file, which survives a cleared browser, for as long as the browser (Chrome or Edge) holds permission to the folder. Pending backups should read 0; RECONNECT / RETRY BACKUPS gives the permission back.
4. Pull the network cable and finalise one sale. If FINAL answers Customer is not linked to this document branch. Cannot post to FINAL., the applet’s customer branch filter is on. It asks the server at every FINAL, so that till will not sell offline: the administrator chooses between the filter and Offline Mode.

Three things the product leaves to you. Keep the drawer key at the counter: the standard offline print does not open the drawer. Keep a pad of numbered sales sheets at every counter. And ask your card acquirer what the terminal does when the shop’s line is down: it is their device, and the answer is theirs, not BigLedger’s.

Step 2: Work out which situation each counter is in

The outcome: nobody waits for a screen that is not coming back.

The till cannot tell you whose fault it is. The branch manager opens another website on the same line: if it loads, the fault is probably not your line, so call BigLedger support; if not, your internet provider. Then tell head office how many counters are on paper.

Step 3: Keep selling on an offline till

The outcome: Till 1’s 11 customers leave with a receipt, and every bill waits safely on the till.

Ring each sale on the Create Cash Bill screen and finalise it there. The bill is saved in the till’s own database, dated by the PC’s clock, and takes the till’s own number, your prefix followed by the till’s counter; the server numbers it again later, and a returning customer is found by the local number (the receipt number is the till’s own). What changes at the counter:

• The drawer stays shut on the standard offline print. Use the key.
• Card payments. The till reaches the terminal through the POS Agent on the same PC, not the internet (counter hardware). If the terminal itself is offline, follow the acquirer’s instructions and keep the slip.
• Serial numbers, points and vouchers come from the server. The serial list for an item, a member’s points balance and a voucher’s validity are all read online. If a serial will not pick, sell the unit on a paper sheet (Step 4). Do not promise a redemption: the branch manager decides, and checks it after Step 5.
• Sessions, reports and approvals wait. Closing a session is a server call, and Z Report, Cashier Collection, Settlement Adjustment and the approval listings answer This feature is unavailable in offline mode… while the line is down. If the shift ends first, cashier and supervisor count the drawer and sign the count on paper.
• No stock from other branches. The Stock Details and Sales History tabs are hidden in offline mode unless your role has their show-permission. Phone the branch.
• The server has checked nothing yet. Its stock check, a member’s redeemed-points balance and the fiscal-period lock run, where they apply, when the bill is sent (Step 5). A member’s new points and the e-invoice follow from there too.

If a buyer asks for an e-invoice in their own name, write their name, ID type and number, tax ID and address on the receipt copy; the accounts clerk completes it in My E-Invoice Admin once the bill is on the server. Whether a late submission matters is your tax adviser’s question.

Step 4: Write a paper sales sheet everywhere else

The outcome: Till 2’s 7 sales can be keyed back by someone who was not there.

BigLedger has no part in this step, so the sheet carries what a cash bill will ask for: sheet number, date and time, item code and quantity, serial number for serialised stock, the price charged and any discount, payment method with the card slip stapled on, the customer’s details if they are a member or want an e-invoice, and the cashier’s initials. Prices come from the shelf label; the branch manager decides, and initials, any price nobody can confirm.

The back office does the same: a delivery is counted onto the supplier’s delivery order and signed, a customer payment gets a hand-written receipt, and the usual clerk keys each later.

Step 5: Send every till’s queue, and deal with what did not go

POS General › (the till) › Transaction Queue

The outcome: Till 1’s queue is empty, and all 11 bills are in BigLedger dated Saturday.

Reconnecting sends nothing by itself, and nothing sends on a timer. A till’s queue goes when a person does one of three things while it is connected and Offline Mode is still on:

1. finalises the next bill on Create Cash Bill, which sends the whole queue, that bill included;
2. opens the Transaction Queue tab, if that tab has not sent in the last 15 minutes;
3. presses SYNC ALL on that tab.

A till that rings nothing after 15:25 still holds its 11 bills at closing. So the supervisor opens the tab on every offline till and presses SYNC ALL (empty every offline till’s queue). Only finalised bills go, oldest first; a draft stays until someone finalises it at that till.

A bill still listed after SYNC ALL has not reached the server. Do not key it again: that makes two. If the line dropped mid-send, press SYNC ALL once more. Otherwise the server refused it, and the reason flashes on screen: There’s not enough stock for item … where the stock check is on, or The selected date falls within a locked fiscal period. The branch manager takes a stock refusal to whoever keeps the stock records and a period refusal to finance, who alone decide about a closed month; then SYNC ALL again.

Do it the same day. A bill the server has never seen keeps the date it was rung up on, but one the server already holds as a draft, begun before the line dropped or refused on an earlier attempt, is re-dated to the day it is finally sent. A Saturday bill fixed on Monday goes in dated Monday; the accounts clerk checks the dates of any bill that needed a second attempt.

Only then close the session, print the Z Report and count the drawer: a Z Report printed before the queue went is short by RM 6,420.00, and the drawer looks RM 1,930.00 over (empty the offline queue before you count the drawer).

Step 6: Key the paper sheets back, dated the day they happened

POS General › Create Cash Bill › Others

The outcome: Till 2’s 7 sheets are 7 cash bills dated Saturday, each traceable to its sheet.

Key them at a login with Offline Mode off, such as Till 2’s: with Offline Mode on, FINAL replaces the date you chose with today’s. In the Others panel turn on Change Transaction Date and pick the day of the sale. The till allows up to seven days back, and only for a login with the edit-transaction-date permission (document behaviour settings). Type the sheet number into Reference: the bill takes a new BigLedger number at FINAL, never the sheet’s, and numbers are not in date order. Choose the payment method the customer used.

A back-dated bill lands in the Z Report of the day it is dated. Past seven days the till refuses (backdated bill refused), and finance raises a Sales Invoice (Internal) instead. Paper goods receipts and payments are keyed in their own applets with their own dates; if the month was closed in between, expect the locked-period message above.

Two people, not one: the clerk keys, and the branch manager ticks each sheet against its bill, checks its date, and signs the pad’s total, RM 3,180.00, against the keyed total.

Step 7: Run the morning check

The outcome: on Monday the accounts clerk can say that Saturday is complete.

Add five lines to the morning arrival check:

1. Every offline till’s Transaction Queue is empty: seen on the till, not assumed.
2. Sheets written = bills keyed. 7 sheet numbers, 7 references in the Cash Bill Listing, no gap in the pad.
3. Saturday’s Z Report, run again, is RM 9,600.00 above any copy printed before Step 5: RM 6,420.00 queued + RM 3,180.00 from paper.
4. The card total equals the acquirer’s batch for the day (reconciling the day’s cash-up).
5. One queued bill and one keyed bill have posted: journal and cashbook line written (how to tell whether the posting happened).

What BigLedger does not do in an outage, and who does it instead

What success looks like

At GS-KK-01 on Monday the Cash Bill Listing for Saturday shows 11 bills with a local number and 7 with a sheet reference, all dated Saturday, and the pad’s 7 sheets are ticked and signed. The 30-second check, any day: open the Transaction Queue tab on each offline till. Empty means nothing is waiting on that till; the paper half is Step 7’s count.

Common mistakes

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