Holiday Top Tips

Dear Nōwn Family,
As we move into the Christmas season we wanted to provide you with some tips for success during this busy period.
Below you will find some notes on the best way to use our POE (Point of Experience), with some easy to implement recommendations and suggestions. After years of fine-tuning our solution these are some ideas on how to get the best results, but remember you are still free to use our system as you wish. 
Remember in addition to the below, all our support documentation can be found here -> https://support.nownpos.com/

1. Hardware Understanding: Hardware setup is very daunting so it's important to understand how each piece of hardware in the system is used and why. Once you understand how everything comes together, it will make the whole process much easier!

2. Wifi Set Up: When setting up your POS it is very important to not connect it to the public network that your customers can connect to. This can lead to a serious security breach and should be avoided at all costs. The POS should be connected to an exclusive wifi network that has nothing else on it.

3. Create a station log in for each station. In order to ensure that your store data is protected and that the cashier abilities are limited, it is vital that you create a station log in. Otherwise, any staff member would be able to see the reports, settings, and make menu changes if they knew the manager PIN.

4. Ensure that you have set the correct role for each employee. It is very important that each employee is given the correct role for security purposes. This will ensure that everyone has the level of access you wish to give them and no more.

5. Pricing Sizes: it is very important to price your sizes as per our best practices. It is a common mistake for customers to set the base price of an item to $0, which may look fine for the cashiers but when you use the mobile app it looks like you have a bunch of free items on your menu.

6. Making Selections Mandatory: Whether customers are ordering your items on the mobile app or cashiers are working through an order on the POS, there are likely options that you want to be mandatory for the cashier or user to go through. This may be something such as the size of their drink or the toppings for their meal. If you set these fields as optional they can easily be missed and it could cause an inconvenience in the workflow. 

7. Have enhanced security turned on. There is no use of the different logins if this feature isn't turned on. Enhanced security ensures that various functionalities are PIN protected and it produces a loss prevention report based on various activities.

8. Clock in. In order for PINs to work, the POS needs to know who is working at a particular time. Best practices are for employees to clock in when their shift begins, and clock out when their shift ends. It is also recommended that they clock out and in when they're on break but it isn't critical if you are not tracking your hours in the POS.

9. Open the station to open your store, close the station at the end of the day to close the store. This helps you neatly organize your shifts and look them up at a later date through the loss prevention report. 

10. Void a transaction only when you made a mistake and require an immediate correction, this removes the transactions from the records so you won't see it in your Nōwn Reports. If there is a reason to do a refund we recommend following the refund workflow. This ensures that the transaction is properly documented in the reports for accounting purposes.
The three most common issues we see at Nown are Internet, Printer issues and Credit Card Terminal issues. Below are a few points to help with any situations you may encounter.
Internet

As a cloud based system a strong internet connection is vital for Nown to run smoothly. Below are several tips to help you diagnose and fix a weak internet connection.

  • Check to see whether the low connectivity warning is showing in Nown in the top left of the screen.
  • Run an internet speed test at https://www.speedtest.net/. A speed of 25mb download and 6-10 upload is considered a good speed. Anything under 5 - 10mb download and 1-2 upload is considered a bad speed.
  • Make sure you are connecting Nown and the printers to a private network that is separate to a guest network.
  • Make sure that all cables are undamaged and fully plugged into the router and printers.
  • Check to see whether the internet is connected to the tablet / ipad.


Printer

For any printer issues make sure to check the support documentation dedicated to printer support. https://support.nownpos.com/article/155-printer-not-working

  • Check to see whether the printer and ipad / tablet are both connected to the same network / router. 
  • Check to see if the printer has paper.
  • Check to see if the printer has power, If not check that the power cable is plugged in and turned on.
  • Check to see whether the printer is connected to a router by turning the printer off, holding the feed button, turning the printer back on. A long piece of paper will print out, if the IP address is 0.0.0.0.0 this means the printer is not connected. Check the cables and internet connection if this is the case.


Credit Card Terminal


Before you proceed please ensure you look at the four cases outlined below in order you take the right approach to correct it.

  • If transactions are consistently going through the terminal but the POS is saying they are not, please email us at support@nownpos.com ASAP.
  • If the transaction amount shows up on the terminal and it is processing indefinitely or keeps saying declined despite you having available funds, please contact your payment processor immediately (Global Payments, Moneris, Merrco)
  • If you have a Clover credit card terminal please refer to the instructions at the following link. https://support.nownpos.com/article/301-clover-terminal-troubleshooting
  • If you have one of the following issues: terminal isn’t working, terminal is not communicating with the POS, transactions can’t get to the terminal, or a payment unsuccessful message. Please refer to the instructions at the following URL https://support.nownpos.com/article/121-credit-debit-transaction-issue