Light off, network gone. Still selling.

Why this matters more here

In a lot of the world a till that needs the internet is fine, because the internet is always there. Here, the light goes off at six, the router goes with it, and the mobile data comes and goes all evening. A till that stops when the network stops is a till you can’t trust on the nights you need it most.

So Tabworthy doesn’t wait for the network. Every sale is written on the phone first, the moment you tap. The network is only for the copy.

What keeps working

With no signal at all, you can still:

• ring up every sale, open tabs and add rounds,
• take cash, with the change worked out,
• take the card machine you already have,
• put a sale on a regular’s tab,
• see the day’s report so far.

And if two phones are selling for the same place, both keep going on their own. When they reconnect, they agree: nothing is sold twice and nothing is lost.

What needs a signal

A MoMo prompt has to reach your customer’s phone, so it needs a network on both ends. So does a pay link. When the network’s gone, take cash, or let them send it to your number and check it when the signal’s back. Mobile money explains the prompt.

Signing in on a brand new phone needs a network once, too, so it can bring your records down.

Catching up, by itself

When the signal comes back, everything that was sold offline goes up on its own. If the network drops halfway, it tries again. There’s no backup button to remember, no “sync now”, and no message telling you something failed while there’s a queue in front of you. The owner’s phone, wherever it is, shows the day as soon as the till has caught up.

We built it this way on purpose. A backup button at eleven at night on eight percent battery is a button that gets pressed six times and does nothing you can see.

If the phone dies, or walks

Phones get dropped, drowned and stolen. Once a phone has synced, your records are in the cloud as well as on it, so you sign in on another phone and the day is there. The copy on the phone itself is encrypted, so whoever has it can’t read your takings off it.

What hasn’t synced yet is only on that phone. That’s the one good reason to let it see a network now and then, even on a quiet day.

Keeping the counter going through dumsor

The app is the easy part. Keeping the phone charged, the change ready and the MoMo sorted when the light’s been off for four hours is harder. Selling through dumsor is our checklist for it.

What it doesn’t do

It can’t send a MoMo prompt or a pay link with no network. It can’t sign a new phone in offline. And it can’t bring back sales from a phone that was lost before it ever synced.