Offline POS mode
When the connection drops mid-shift, offline mode keeps the register useful: cash, check, and other manual tenders keep recording locally, and everything syncs back automatically, exactly once, when you’re back online.
What works offline (and what doesn’t)
Section titled “What works offline (and what doesn’t)”- Works: cash, check, and “other” manual tenders through Checkout’s payment flow.
- Blocked, on purpose: card-present, card-on-file, financing, and payment links. A card can’t be authorized without a connection, so BenchKey tells you that plainly instead of faking an approval you’d eat later.
BenchKey decides you’re offline honestly: it probes the real server rather than trusting the browser’s online flag, so captive portals and sleeping Wi-Fi don’t fool it.
Taking a sale during an outage
Section titled “Taking a sale during an outage”- Open the invoice’s payment flow in Checkout as usual. An amber banner tells you offline recording is active.
- Record the cash/check amount and apply. The sale is stored on the register device with a “recorded offline, will sync automatically” confirmation.
- A running “waiting to sync” count stays visible until the queue clears.
The checkout screen itself survives a hard refresh mid-outage (the screen is cached; your data never is).
When the connection returns
Section titled “When the connection returns”Queued sales replay automatically, on reconnect, when the tab regains focus, and on a background timer. Replay is cross-tab safe (two registers never double-send) and idempotent end-to-end: every offline sale carries a unique key from the moment it’s recorded, and the server returns the original result if the same sale ever arrives twice. A crash mid-sync is reclaimed and retried, not lost and not duplicated.
Turning it on
Section titled “Turning it on”Offline mode is in beta and enabled per shop, contact support and it’s switched on for your account. It works on every plan.