Hardware
The screen Phlo POS runs on is your choice, and stays your choice. And when you would rather not keep a Windows install alive behind the bar, it brings a till system of its own: the machine boots into the till and into nothing else.
We bring a machine to the intake and set it up on your counter. Nothing to install, nothing to decide on the spot.
On what you have
Windows, Linux, an Android tablet, an iPad, the industrial terminal already bolted to your counter. The till installs as an app and does not care which one you picked. Replace it next year with another brand and nothing has to be rebuilt.
This is how the busiest counter we run works today, on a terminal the venue bought long before we arrived.
On our own system
A system of our own that boots straight into the till. No desktop, no updates nagging during service, no second thing running on the counter. It installs onto the machine, and it runs from a USB stick just as readily.
Because it runs from a stick, it is also the recovery plan: a till with a dead disk keeps selling while the hardware is replaced.
The old way was a configuration file per machine and a pairing code typed from the back office. That makes every machine different and every install handwork, and it fails where nobody notices: a mistyped secret gives a till that sells but does not print.
At first start it wants one thing: which back office it is joining. Not a key, not a code, not a file on a stick.
With their own account, seeing only the stores and tills they are allowed to set up. Nobody is handed a shared password to put a counter live.
Issued on the spot, and rotated so the machine this till used to be stops being it. Receipts carry names, amounts and the last digits of a card; a retired till should not keep receiving them.
A small agent on the machine carries the identity, so nobody ever types a pairing code into a screen behind a bar.
There is no revoke button, because setting up the replacement is the revoke.
Wondering whether your own screens and printers can stay? That is one of the first things an intake answers.
A till is not only a screen. These are the parts that make a counter work, and they are chosen for your situation rather than sold as a bundle.
Receipt printer, kitchen printer, cash drawer. Driven by a small agent on the machine, which keeps printing when the connection does not, and which knows by kind where a ticket goes rather than picking whichever printer answered first.
A barcode scanner that types like a keyboard works without any focus fiddling, and that is almost all of them. Staff badges sign a cashier in on the same reader.
A cloud reader where that exists, and a serial terminal where it does not: we implemented a bank's own terminal protocol to its specification, and the exchange is readable byte by byte on the till itself.
The receipt mirrored live as it is rung up, including what a promotion just saved them, and the change due after closing.
A fixed screen at the bar and tablets in the room work the same order, because the order lives in the database and not on one device.
Reboot, shut down or swap the screens from the back office, never during an open business day, and every command written down before it goes out. There is no remote shell on your till.
Usually, and we would rather you did. A touchscreen, PC or tablet that is not ancient can usually serve. Receipt printing goes to the Windows spooler or a Linux device path over the same contract, and the cash drawer opens through the printer as it always did. Bring what you have to an intake and you get an honest answer about what fits.
No. Plenty of counters run the till on the Windows machine that was already there, and that is fine. Our own till system exists for when you would rather not maintain a Windows install behind the bar: the machine boots into the till and into nothing else.
No, and that is deliberate. We sell software, not terminals with a mark-up. If you need advice on what to buy you get it without a commission attached, and you buy it wherever you like.
The system runs from a USB stick as readily as from the internal disk, so a machine with a dead disk keeps selling from a stick while the hardware is sorted out. Replacing a till is setting up a machine again, not rebuilding an install from somebody's notes.
Yes. We bring a stick and set it up on your counter, on the screen you already have, pointed at an environment of ours. It runs entirely from the stick and never writes to your disk, so nothing that is running there today is at risk.
As many as the counter needs. A till is software on a device, not a licence per counter, so adding a screen for busy days and taking it away again costs nothing in licences.
A custom till has no list price, because the scope decides it. After an intake you get one price for the whole project: build, hardware advice, installation and training in a single amount, agreed before we start.
Ready to look at it properly?
Tell us how you sell today and what gets in the way. You get a fixed scope and a fixed price, or an honest no.
What an intake looks like
You hear back from the people who would build it, not from a sales desk.
Wondering what your counter needs?
Start an intake