Running a till through load-shedding
Trading through an outage is a solved problem, and a cheaper one than most people expect. The mistake is buying power for the wrong things.
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Work out what has to stay on
The chain for one cash sale is short: the device running the till, the light over the counter, and the internet. That is tens of watts, not thousands, and it is well within a small power station or a modest inverter.
Fridges, ovens, air conditioning and lighting for the whole floor are a different order of cost entirely. Decide deliberately which of those you are keeping and which you are letting go for two hours.
Do not forget the internet
Powering the till and not the router is the most common error. A fibre ONT and a router draw very little and are easy to put on the same backup.
Your provider's street cabinet is on its own supply, however, and may be down regardless. A mobile hotspot as a fallback is worth having and costs almost nothing to keep in a drawer.
Prefer devices with their own batteries
A tablet or a laptop running the till is its own backup and needs nothing extra. A desktop with a monitor needs a UPS large enough to run both.
If you are buying a till device anyway, this is a reason to choose the battery-powered one even where a desktop is cheaper.
Know what your card machine does
Most modern card machines are battery-powered and connect over the mobile network, so they often keep working when the shop's own line is down.
Confirm it, and confirm what happens to a payment that was approved on the machine while the till could not see it. That reconciliation — approved on the machine, missing from the till — is the situation worth being ready for.
Have a written fallback, and practise it once
Decide in advance: cash only, or cards too? Who writes what down? What gets entered afterwards, by whom, and when?
Run it once on a quiet afternoon. Staff improvising during an outage is what turns a two-hour inconvenience into a day of reconstruction.
General information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Where this page describes a legal requirement it reflects the legislation as commonly applied and legislation changes — confirm anything that matters with SARS or your own accountant.