AWRA Help Center

Every rule on this page is off until you set it, so a workspace that never opens the settings tills exactly as before. The rules live on one page: Settings → Sales & POS → Till Controls (/settings/pos-till). The same rules are applied on the web till and in the mobile app. A sale or return rung up offline in the app that breaks one is kept and flagged when it syncs rather than refused, because the goods and the money changed hands hours earlier.

Who Approves: The Till Approval PIN

A cashier who holds the right permission approves their own refund or price change, and it is recorded under their name. Anyone else needs a supervisor who holds it to choose their name at the till and type their personal Till approval PIN (4 to 8 digits). A supervisor sets that PIN under Settings → My Account, or in the app under Profile; the card appears for anyone who holds a discount, refund or price approval permission. The lockout rules are the ones described for discounts in the POS guide.

Refund Approval

Under Refund approval you can set any of three triggers. A refund that trips one needs approval; one that trips none goes through as before.

• Refunds above this amount — for example 5000. Blank means no limit.
• Every refund paid out in cash.
• Refunds more than this many days after the sale — for example 14. Blank means any age.

1. On the sale’s page, start the return as usual. When a rule is on, the return form shows Approval reason, with a tooltip naming the rules your workspace uses.
2. Type the reason (for example Faulty unit, receipt checked).
3. If you hold Approve POS refunds, the form says you may approve refunds yourself. Otherwise choose a Supervisor (if needed) and have them type their Supervisor PIN.
4. Submit. If approval was needed and nobody gave it, the return is refused with the reason — for example that it is above the refund limit and paid out in cash.

The approver, how they approved (their own permission or a PIN), the reason and the time are kept on the return and shown under it on the sale’s page as payment-reversal evidence.

Price Changes

Changing a line’s unit price is a price override, recorded separately from discounts. Type the new price in the line’s price box at the till; the payment column then asks Why the price changed (for example Shelf label shows 450).

• A cashier holding Override POS price may change prices with a reason.
• Set Second person needed above (%) — for example 15 — and a change larger than that, up or down, needs a supervisor’s PIN even from a holder. Blank means a holder never needs a second person.
• A cashier without the permission can change a price only with a supervisor’s PIN. If no supervisor who may change prices has set a PIN, the price box stays locked.

The sale’s page shows each changed line with the original price, the percentage, the reason and who approved it.

A Barcode That Matches Nothing

When the till scans a code that matches no item or serial number, a Barcode not found prompt offers three ways on:

• Search the item by name — puts you back in the line’s item search.
• Sell as an open item — type a description and a price and add it to the sale. This appears only when your workspace has an open item and you hold Sell POS open item.
• Ask a manager to register it — add a note (for example Blue 500ml bottle, shelf C) and press Send to a manager.

Every miss is counted. A manager holding Edit items works the list at Unknown barcodes (/pos/unknown-barcodes, also linked from Till Controls), most-scanned first, with the counter, cashier and note. Choose an item and press Assign, and the next scan sells it; tick Replace its barcode if the item already carries one, because an item has one barcode. A code another item already uses is refused. Dismiss clears one you will not register.

The Open Item

Under Open item, choose one of your service items. Only service items are listed, because a typed description has no shelf to come off. Tick Also needs a supervisor’s PIN to put a second person on every open-item sale. An open item needs a description and a price above zero, and the sale line keeps the description you typed.

Loyalty Points

Tick Customers earn and redeem points at the till and set:

• Points per 1 unit of currency spent — 0.01 gives one point per 100 spent. It must be above zero before loyalty can be turned on. Points are whole and earned on what the customer paid.
• Value of one point when redeemed — for example 1.00.
• Smallest redemption (points) — for example 100.
• Points expire after (days) — blank means never. The oldest points expire first, and only those not already spent.

At the till, choose the customer (a walk-in sale earns nothing). Their balance shows under the customer field, and Redeem points takes points off the sale. A redemption is a reduction in the sale’s price, so it needs no separate account or journal. A return gives back the redeemed points and takes back the earned ones in proportion to what was refunded. The customer’s page lists every earn, redemption, return and expiry, and someone holding Edit customers can Adjust points by hand with a note (for example Goodwill for a late delivery).

Customer Lookup, Purchase History And Sold By

• Find by phone, name or email under the customer field searches your customers (ten results at most).
• Once a customer is chosen, Purchase history shows their last ten till sales and, for someone who may see invoices, their last ten invoices with what is still owed, plus their loyalty balance.
• Sold by credits the sale to a salesperson while you stay on it as the cashier. Only active users can be chosen; leave it on Nobody else when you made the sale yourself.

POS Risk Report

Open Sales Reports → POS Risk Report (/pos/reports/risk). For a period, grouped by cashier or by counter, it counts:

• Voids — a sale fully returned on the same day it was rung up. A till sale cannot be deleted, so that is what a void looks like in AWRA.
• Returns, charged to whoever processed them; manual discounts, charged to whoever gave them; and cash shortages on that cashier’s drawers.
• Price overrides on sale lines.
• After hours — sales and returns outside your trading hours. Set the hours for the workspace, or per counter, at the foot of the report (needs Manage POS counters); until they are set this column is empty.
• No sale — the cash drawer opened from the till with nothing rung up. See Receipt Printers & Cash Drawer.

Each cashier is measured against the median of the others. A flag means a rate is above the multiplier you choose (2 by default, under Flag above × workspace median) and above a small floor, and nobody with fewer than five sales is flagged on rates. Click a figure to see the transactions behind it. The report covers one currency at a time — your base currency by default — and cash shortages show only there. A flag is a question, not a finding.

On Mondays, everyone who may open the report gets a POS risk digest by email and in the bell naming who stood out last week. It is silent when nobody did, and it has its own row in notification settings.

POS To Ledger Reconciliation

Open Sales Reports → POS to Ledger (/pos/reports/ledger-reconciliation). For each day, counter, currency and payment method (Cash, M-Pesa, Card / bank) it sets four figures side by side:

• Taken — what the till recorded, net of change and of refunds paid out in that method.
• Posted — what reached the ledger in that method’s settlement account, with Posted − taken beside it.
• Counted — for cash, what the drawer count implies was taken.
• Settled — for M-Pesa and card, the gateway payments that succeeded.

Below the table, Unposted sales lists every sale in the period with no revenue line in the ledger. Filter by counter, cashier, payment method or currency, and tick Differences only to hide matched rows. Currencies are reconciled each on its own and never added together. Card and bank transfer post to the same bank account, so they share a row.

Permissions

• View settings / Edit settings — see and change Till Controls.
• Approve POS refunds — approve a refund a rule holds, your own or another cashier’s by PIN.
• Override POS price — change a line’s price at the till, with a reason.
• Sell POS open item — sell the open item.
• Use POS — customer lookup, purchase history and reporting an unknown barcode.
• Edit items — work the unknown-barcodes list. Edit customers — adjust loyalty points.
• View POS risk reports — the risk report and its weekly digest.
• View POS cash drawers — the POS to ledger reconciliation.

Approval limits per role, item or category, a fixed list of reason codes, and loyalty tiers or points posted as a liability are more we can add to your workspace.

Common Mistakes

• Turning on a rule before anyone can approve it. If no supervisor holding the permission has set a till approval PIN, the till says so and a cashier without the permission cannot finish the refund or the price change. Set PINs first.
• Sharing a PIN. Every approval then reads as that supervisor’s, and the risk report stops telling you anything.
• Using a price change as a discount. A discount is still governed by the discount limit in Sales Defaults; a price change is a separate control with its own reason and approver.
• Choosing an open item for everything. Open-item lines carry no stock. Register the barcode from the unknown-barcodes list so the next scan sells the real item.
• Reading after-hours as zero. An empty After hours column means trading hours are not set, not that nothing happened.

Related

• Returns & Receipts — taking goods back against a sale.
• Receipt Printers & Cash Drawer — printing, the drawer and the No sale button.
• Closing & Signing Off A Cash Drawer — the count that feeds cash shortages.
• Point of sale — the feature overview.