Multiple POS's is one the "Master?"

[MarkSpiegelman]

We are a pasta manufacturer and a ghost kitchen.  We have (4) POS's and (2) KDS devices.

I have always had questions about how the POS integrates with Squares Cloud.

1) Is there one POS that is the so-called Master?  I ask because if so, I would ensure this POS is on a backup power supply.

2) If this Master station is rebooted and not logged into Square, will online orders still come in via another connected POS?

Please educate me as I want to foresee and prepare for outages that could be prevented on my end.

Thank you!

-Mark

[Candlestore · Accepted solution]

@MarkSpiegelman ;

The actual POS stations you have, none are actually the Master.  The Master is in the cloud, and your POS stations every X minutes Talks to the cloud.  Either sending or recieving updates.  These updates would be things you sell to reduce inventory, sales coming in etc.  This is why your POS needs an internet connection.  Now as far as an order coming in while your rebooting a system, I recommend rebooting one at a time so you always have one that could receive an order and let you know.  But even if you rebooted both The order would be shown on a computer in your Square Dashboard through the internet browser interface.  

The bigest thing I have done to have backup to offset outages was to have a Cell Tablet as a Hotspot.  If my Internet crashes, I switch my POS stations to the Hot spot WiFi instead of my normal Cable internet connetion.  Then I am back and running.  Might have to switch a few minor things with Receipt Printers but I have instructions by the Printer just incase.

Things I have noticed, when I add or change something on a Computer in Square and go to my POS, the POS may not see it right away.  I tap More ( Bottom Right) - Items then search for the new item. then go back to my checkout screen and its there.  I check my other POS and it is not there I either repeat these steps or I just let the pos sit and about half hour later I check again and the new item is there.  The only other thing you may want to have for just incase would be an UPS system if you ever lost power to your POS systems.

[MarkSpiegelman]

Hi Keith,

Thank you for your response; it matters a lot.  

I am relieved that the cloud is the master and that one POS failing or rebooting won't kill the works.

Your suggestion about WiFi backup is also intelligent.

All the best!

-Mark

[ryanwanner]

@MarkSpiegelman  building off of what @Candlestore said here...

If you are accepting online orders at all, you'll want one of your devices to be dedicated to collecting the online orders. Printer profiles can get a little finicky with online orders if you have multiple devices watching for them. So in overall terms, no, there isn't a master terminal, but I always made my online order collector the "main" device on my setup. Since I was counter service based, I made my counter device the "main" for the store. It helps when you're trying to troubleshoot print queues and overall randomness.

[MarkSpiegelman]

Hi Ryan,

Good point; I'll pick one as the main one and have it be the one that prints online orders.

Cheers!

-Mark