What still works when your café's internet drops: Servatto Register offline
10 November 2026
It's 8:40 on a Saturday, the queue is out the door, and the router stops talking to the outside world. What does your till do?
Servatto Register is built to keep the counter moving, and it is also straight about what it can't do without a connection. Here's the honest list, so you can plan for it before it happens.
What keeps working
Cash sales. Ring up the order, take the cash, give change. The till saves the sale on the device and sends it later. The top bar changes to something like "Offline · 3 to sync" so you can see how many are waiting.
PIN clock-in. Staff can still clock in and out with their PIN on the till, and the times are recorded as when they actually tapped, not when the connection came back. Staff PINs are stored on each till in a form that lets people sign in without the internet.
Managers signing in to sell. On a current Register version, a manager can sign in and sell offline too. That's a setting the business owner can turn off if they'd rather managers only sign in online.
A printer paired directly to the tablet. Our terms note that a printer paired straight to a tablet keeps printing during an outage, and the kitchen screen keeps showing what it already has.
When the till is back online it shows "Syncing", then "Online". Sales are dated from when the till took them. A cash sale taken at 8:40 counts in the cash drawer that was open at 8:40, even if it only reaches us after you've closed.
What needs a connection
This is the part worth reading before a busy service.
- Card payments. Your card terminal talks to your payment provider, so cards need a connection. Our terms say the same: card payments, payment links and delivery orders won't work while you're offline.
- Refunds, voids and other manager approvals. The till can't approve a manager PIN by itself, so these wait until you're back online.
- Split payments. The till tells you split payments need the internet.
- Rewards lookups. You can carry on selling; points are added when the till reconnects.
- Live Orders and new staff PINs. These need a connection.
- Most of Settings. A manager the till recognises can still open Settings → Hardware offline, to fix a printer or the cash drawer. The rest waits.
- A Chrome (browser) till can't sign in offline. The offline sign-in is for the tablet app.
One more thing worth knowing: an offline sale only reaches the kitchen board when it syncs. A sale that arrives more than an hour after it was taken goes onto the board as Done rather than Preparing, so a long outage won't flood your kitchen with old tickets, but it also means the kitchen won't see offline orders as they happen. If you're cooking to order, write tickets by hand or pass the orders on until you're back.
A simple plan for the day the Wi-Fi dies
- Say it out loud. Tell the team "cash only until the internet's back". A sign by the till helps.
- Keep taking cash. Watch the "to sync" count in the top bar.
- Don't sign out or reset the till while sales are waiting. That's straight from our help centre.
- Check the router first. Most outages are a power-cycle away. If the till says it's offline while other devices have internet, contact support with the till name and the number waiting.
- When it says "Online" again, let it finish syncing before you close the drawer.
Why we think this is the right trade-off
A till that refuses to do anything without the internet stops your café. A till that quietly accepts everything can hide problems, like a refund nobody approved. Register lets you sell and clock in, and holds back the things that need a second pair of eyes or a payment provider.
The sensible habit is to treat cards as the part you can't control: know what your payment provider says to do when their service or your connection is down.
Getting started
Register is available on Android tablets (iPad is in App Store review, and a Chrome till is in early release). There's no monthly fee for Register. You pay your payment provider's own processing rates for cards.
- Install Register and pair it to your shop from the Back Office.
- Do a test: turn the tablet's Wi-Fi off, ring up a cash sale, then turn it back on and watch it sync.
- Print the "what works offline" list above and stick it next to the till.
Details and setup help are on servatto.com, or email [email protected].
Servatto publishes this post and sells the software described in it.