Offline and load shedding
The terminal is offline-first — critical for load shedding.
Works offline (commits to the device, syncs later):
- Signing in with a PIN
- Ringing items and building an order (notes, seats, discounts)
- Walk-in ring-and-pay sales (not bound to a table/tab) — committed atomically with correct numbering, stock depletion, and loyalty points
- Voids, comps, and discounts (audit rows sync later)
- Seating tables and rearranging the floor plan
- Checklists — viewing and ticking
- Viewing the local menu, cart, and customer display
Needs a connection:
- Sending an order to the kitchen; all KDS actions
- Billing/settling a table or tab; splits, moves, merges
- Gift-card and house-account tenders; refunds
- 86'ing an item and logging wastage
- Clocking out, X-report, and Z-report
- The Tabs list, Orders history, waitlist, and reservations
- First-time device setup (initial download of your menu and staff)
How sync works: changes queue on the device and push automatically — every 30 seconds while online, immediately on reconnect, with per-item retry backing off from 1 minute up to 1 hour. Anything the server permanently rejects is parked after 10 attempts (dead-lettered) for review rather than blocking the queue. The app also pulls the latest menu, prices, staff, customers, tables, and reservations, so every device converges. The sync badge in the top bar shows the state: green Synced, amber Queue 1–9, red Queue 10+ or parked items.
Where your data lives: desktop terminals persist their database at ~/.aura/aura.db, and Android/iOS store it in the app's private storage — restarting loses nothing. Browser terminals don't keep local data across a page reload, so use the web POS as a convenience screen and desktops/tablets as your real tills.
Load-shedding playbook:
- Put the router and the receipt printer on a UPS — the terminals run on battery.
- During an outage you keep ringing and taking ring-and-pay walk-in sales offline.
- Defer table/tab billing, kitchen sends, and the Z-report until power/data returns (or use a mobile hotspot for the server link).
- When power returns, the queue drains automatically; check the sync badge is back to Synced, then run the Z-report to close the day.