When the system is down: a one-page procedure to rehearse

Something will fail during a busy hour. The difference between a bad twenty minutes and a bad evening is whether the people on the floor know what to do without calling you.

Four failures, four responses. Print this, adapt it, put it under the till, and rehearse it once.

1. The internet is down

If your POS signs invoices on the device: keep selling normally. That is what it is for.

1. Confirm it is the internet, not the power. If the terminal is on, carry on.
2. Keep selling. Do not switch to handwritten receipts while the terminal is issuing signed invoices.
3. Do not restart the terminal. A restart during an outage risks unsynced state on some systems.
4. Tell the manager, with the start time.
5. Card payments: if the payment terminal has its own mobile data, it may keep working. Check.
6. When the line returns, confirm the pending count returns to zero and check for rejections.
7. If the outage passes twelve hours, use a phone hotspot so the terminal can report.

Seeoffline rules.

If your POS does not work offline: you have a harder problem. Options: a backup 4G/5G router with automatic failover (the right fix, and inexpensive), or a manual procedure. A handwritten note is not a tax invoice, so the sale still needs a compliant invoice issued once you are back — agree the approach with your accountant in advance, not during the outage.

2. The power is out

Nothing works. The procedure is about safety and about the customers in front of you.

1. Secure the cash drawer
2. Serve customers already mid-transaction if you can do so safely, and write down what is owed
3. Decide quickly whether to close — a shop with no lights and no till is usually closing
4. When power returns, start the terminal before opening the door, and check that the last transactions are intact

A small UPS on the terminal and the router buys ten to fifteen minutes, which is enough to finish the customers in front of you and close cleanly. It is one of the cheapest resilience purchases available.

3. The printer fails

Usually paper, usually at the worst moment.

1. Change the roll. Every staff member should have done this at least once, in training, not for the first time at peak.
2. If it is not paper: check the cable, then the power, then restart the printer.
3. If it still fails, offer a digital receipt over WhatsApp or SMS. This is a genuinely good fallback and customers often prefer it.
4. If the kitchen printer fails and you have a KDS, you are fine. If you have no KDS, hand-write tickets and slow the floor deliberately rather than losing orders.

Keep a spare roll under every till and a spare printer in the office. A printer is the cheapest component to have a spare of and the most disruptive to lose.

4. The terminal itself fails

The one people panic about, and the one with the best answer if your system supports it.

1. Open the browser cashier on any laptop or tablet and keep selling. On Wameed this takes about five minutes, works offline, and signs ZATCA invoices.
2. If your system has no browser cashier, move to a second terminal if you have one.
3. If you have neither, this is why a spare device matters. See thehardware guide.
4. Report it and arrange the replacement the same day.

5. Card payments are down

The POS works; the payment provider does not.

1. Cash only, and say so clearly at the door and at the till
2. Do not accept "I will transfer it later" without a record — if you do, record it as a receivable against a named customer
3. Note the start time; you will want it when reconciling
4. Check whether the payment terminal has a fallback path — many have a separate mobile connection

The rehearsal

Once. Twenty minutes. Unplug the router during a quiet hour and have the team work through the internet procedure. Change a paper roll. Open the browser cashier on a laptop.

A team that has done it once behaves completely differently from a team reading a page for the first time while customers wait.

The page itself

One side of A4, laminated, under the till:

• The four failures, with three lines each
• The manager's number
• The support number
• The wifi password and the router location
• Where the spare paper is

That is it. Anything longer will not be read at the moment it is needed.