The till that
doesn't stop.
Aura runs your floor, your kitchen, your bar and your counter from one system — and keeps ringing sales when the power and the network go down. Yoco, SnapScan and Zapper are built in. So is your VAT201.
Three things that break a South African till
Most point-of-sale software is designed somewhere with reliable power, one tax rate and card machines that always answer. Aura starts from where you actually trade.
The power goes out
Aura's terminals hold their own database. Staff sign in with a PIN, ring items, assign seats, apply manager-approved discounts and take walk-in payments with no server in reach — every sale committed atomically, numbered correctly and queued. When the power returns the queue drains itself.
The load-shedding playbook →SARS wants a number
Every settled sale posts a balanced double-entry journal. VAT is extracted per line after discounts, so a discounted bill reports the right VAT. Pull a SARS-ready VAT201 for any period as CSV or PDF, and hand your bookkeeper a Xero or Sage/Pastel journal from the same ledger.
Reports and VAT →Guests pay six different ways
Cash with 5c rounding and quick-tender chips. Yoco on the card machine, by payment link, or Tap to Pay on the device itself. SnapScan and Zapper by QR. EFT, gift cards, house accounts and store credit. Split any bill evenly, by seat, by item or by amount — each portion its own payment leg.
Every way to get paid →Take the restaurant, the shop, or just the QR codes
Restaurant and Shop are two tills; QR Ordering puts the menu on your guests' own phones. Hold both tills and each terminal picks which one it runs — table service in the dining room, a shop register on the merch counter, one catalogue and one set of reports. Add QR Ordering to either for less than it costs on its own.
Restaurants, bars & cafés
Table service the way a floor actually works — with the kitchen in the loop.
- Live floor plan over a photo of your real room, drag a sale between tables
- Seats and courses: ring round the table, fire the starters, hold the mains
- Kitchen display with station routing, all-day view, 86 from the ticket
- Reservations with pacing and covers caps, waitlist, WhatsApp confirmations
- Bar tabs with an optional Yoco card pre-authorisation
Retail & shops
Switch a terminal to shop mode and the hospitality surface disappears.
- Scan with any USB or Bluetooth scanner — repeat scans merge into one line
- Variants by size and colour, each with its own SKU and price
- Park a sale, or sell on layby with deposits and tracked installments
- Store credit as a tender, and refunds back to credit instead of cash
- Stock counts, reorder points, branch transfers, barcode label sheets
QR Ordering
Your guests order and pay from their own phones — with or without a till.
- Scan the code on the table: your live menu, no app to install
- Pay by card on the phone through Yoco — tip included, receipt on screen
- Or "add it to my table's bill" and settle everything with the waiter
- Orders land on the kitchen display the moment they're placed
- Table, takeaway, kiosk and booking codes all print from the Back Office
Ring it, fire it, run it, settle it
The kitchen and the floor stop guessing
Fired tickets land on the kitchen display routed to the right station. When the chef taps Ready, every terminal on the floor pops a green "ready to run" banner naming the table — so a runner collects the food while it's still hot, instead of the pass shouting.
- Tiles turn amber at 5 minutes and red at 10; rushed tickets pin to the front
- Tick items off as you plate them — the ticket shows 3/5 progress
- All-day view totals outstanding dishes across the whole board ("6× Sirloin")
- Long-press an item to 86 it — gone from the till, the QR menu and the back office at once
- Optional paper prep tickets per station over the venue LAN
Cash up without arguing about it
The register screen runs the whole drawer lifecycle. Open with a float, record every paid in and paid out with a reason, and count down by denomination at close — R200 notes to 10c coins, totalling as you go. The variance against expected cash shows live: green when exact, red short, amber over.
- No-sale needs a manager PIN and is logged against the register with their id
- Closing runs the Z-report in one step: locks the shift and posts the journal
- Card tips reconcile to the cent; cash rounding deltas are tracked separately
- Managers watch every open register and its live expected cash from the back office
- Yesterday's variance shows on the screen before you open today's drawer
Guests order from their own phones
Print a QR per table and guests open your menu — no app install. Photos, allergen warnings, modifiers with price deltas, a note per item and a tip before they order. It fires straight to the kitchen, station-routed, and the table is marked occupied.
- Live order status on the guest's phone: received → preparing → paid
- 86'd items are already hidden — guests can't order what you're out of
- Takeaway links for click-and-collect with a promised pickup time
- Kiosk mode for a counter tablet, with an automatic 45-second reset between customers
- Online booking links that respect your pacing and covers caps
Five apps, one server, no add-ons
Everything below is part of Aura — not a module you unlock later. The tag on each card shows where it runs.
The Sale screen
Browse or scan, modifiers with price deltas, VAT and stock badges, seats and courses, order notes, manager-gated discounts, park and layby.
How it works → TerminalFloor plan
Live table status, covers, elapsed time and course progress. Drag a sale to another table, split or merge bills, edit the layout in arrange mode.
How it works → KitchenKitchen display
Station-routed tickets, ageing colours, rush and recall, all-day totals, 86 from the ticket, and optional paper prep printers per station.
How it works → Guest phoneGuest QR ordering
Photos and allergens, modifiers, tips, live order status, SnapScan payment, plus takeaway, kiosk and online-booking modes.
How it works → Back officeBack office
Sixteen pages: menu, prep stations, inventory, tables, people, registers, customers, reservations, checklists, reports, gift cards, loyalty, settings, tools.
How it works → Guest screenCustomer display
A large-type live mirror of the cart with VAT-labelled totals, an idle welcome screen, and a thank-you screen after payment. Pops onto a second monitor.
How it works → TerminalRegister & cash-up
Float, paid in/out with reasons, manager-gated no-sale, denomination counting, live variance, X-report and a Z-report that posts the journal.
How it works → Back officeReports, VAT & accounting
Menu engineering, service pacing, heatmaps, server performance, VAT201 as CSV or PDF, and balanced journals for Xero or Sage/Pastel.
How it works →What does it cost?
Aura is priced per venue on what you actually run — tills, screens and locations. Tell us your setup and we'll quote it.
See how pricing works →The South African specifics are the whole job
Imported point-of-sale software makes you bolt this country on afterwards. Aura starts here.
Offline-first, not offline-tolerant
PIN sign-in, ringing, seats, discounts, voids, comps, checklists and walk-in ring-and-pay sales all work with no connection. Desktop and mobile terminals persist to disk, so a restart loses nothing.
A return from your own ledger
Standard, zero-rated and exempt sales, output VAT at 15%, input VAT from received purchase orders, VAT payable — for any period, as CSV or PDF. Nothing retyped from a spreadsheet.
Cash rounding done properly
The 5c rounding applies to the cash portion only. A mixed card-and-cash bill charges the card to the exact cent, and tips are never rounded. Rounding deltas reconcile on the X and Z reports.
The channel guests actually read
Receipts go out on WhatsApp with a secure web link valid for 90 days. Booking confirmations send the moment a manager confirms. Both quietly no-op when the credentials aren't set.
The card machines you already have
Yoco card-present, pay-by-link, tab pre-authorisation and Tap to Pay. SnapScan and Zapper by QR, including a per-order QR for guest self-service.
A menu your guests can read
The guest ordering site opens straight from the table's code in whatever browser the phone already has — photos, allergen warnings and modifiers with their price deltas, on the live menu rather than a printed one.
The help centre
More than forty sections of searchable how-to — one-page quick starts you can print and hand to a new hire, a full setup walkthrough, a hardware guide, a troubleshooting table and a glossary.
Open the help centre →Developer hub & sandbox
The REST API, JWT auth, idempotency, the offline sync protocol, webhook verification and a realtime event stream — plus a live Swagger sandbox with a one-click demo token.
Open the developer hub →Already on Lightspeed, Tebi or Pilot?
Aura imports your menu straight from their CSV exports — pick the source, preview the mapping, commit. Barcodes and SKUs come across with it.
Switching to Aura →Security & POPIA
Eight roles with server-side enforcement, manager overrides recorded against the approving manager, salted PIN hashes, signed receipt links and an audit trail for every discount, void, comp and drawer open.
How Aura is secured →See it running on your own menu
Book a walkthrough and we'll load your menu into a demo tenant first — so you're looking at your restaurant or your shop, not a sample one.