Selling offline and how sync works

An internet outage should not stop you trading. The register keeps working offline, queues what happened locally, and reconciles when the connection returns.

What is cached for offline use

When the register signs in online it downloads your products, categories, customers, tax rates, and settings to the device, and pre-caches product images. That is what lets the grid, search, and pricing keep working with no network.

What still works offline

• Browsing and searching products, including by barcode.
• Looking up and attaching customers from the cached list.
• Ringing sales with cash or card, applying discounts, and printing receipts.
• Correct tax and pricing — totals are calculated the same way offline as online, so nothing drifts.

What needs a connection

Anything that has to check a shared balance in real time: gift card redemption, loyalty point redemption, store credit, and live card authorisation through a gateway. Reports and the admin portal also need to be online.

Coming back online

The register uploads the queued sales automatically and shows a sync badge with the progress. Each sale carries a unique client id, so a retry after a flaky connection can never post the same sale twice. Once uploaded, each sale is given its canonical sale number and appears in reports and stock as normal.

If something fails to sync

Sales stay queued on the device until they are accepted — closing the app does not lose them. If the badge still shows outstanding items after a few minutes online, check that the device is genuinely connected and that the shift is still open, then contact support before clearing anything.

When you need more than a fallback

If you trade somewhere with genuinely unreliable internet — a market stall, a food truck, a rural site — use SP360 Lite. It is a dedicated offline-first register that completes a full sale with no network at all and syncs into the same account when it reconnects.