Laybys¶
Goods set aside and paid off in instalments. You hold the stock, the customer pays it down, and they take it when it is clear.
Where: menu → Sales → Laybys.
Starting one¶
Ring the order up as normal, then Pay → More → Lay-by.
The dialog asks for the customer. Search for them, or add one on the spot. A layby needs a phone number — the only thing in the app that does. If the customer you picked has none, the dialog says so before you get as far as failing, with Add to fix it there.
Create Layby takes a snapshot of the order and hands you a reference: fourteen digits, the date and time it was made. That reference is what goes on the docket and what staff type into the search box later. Print Receipt gives the customer their copy.
No deposit is asked for here. The order stays on the payment screen, so take the deposit with the normal Cash or Card buttons — or dismiss and let them pay later. Either is fine; the layby exists from the moment you create it.
Taking a payment¶
Find the layby, open it, Take Payment. That loads the original order back onto the till, and you take the money with Cash or Card like any other sale. The layby updates itself.
When it is done you get a summary: the total, paid to date, and what is left — or Layby paid in full, "The customer can take the goods now."
Every payment goes onto the same order, so the layby, the order and the payments list all agree. The order is the record; the layby follows it.
Finish the payment before you leave the screen
Taking a payment loads the layby's order over whatever was on the till. Ring up the next customer only once you are done — a part payment resets to a fresh order for you automatically.
Finding one¶
Search matches the customer name, phone and reference, in any word
order, and forgives a typo or two — "smyth" finds Smith. Punctuation and spaces
are ignored, so 021 234 567 and 021234567 are the same search. Laybys
made since email was added to the record match on that too; older ones
match name, phone and reference only.
Outstanding at the top right is the total still owed across every active layby, with the count.
Chips: All, Active, Completed, Cancelled.
A row shows who it is for, what is still owed, the reference, the item count, the phone, and a bar showing how far along it is.
Cancelling¶
Cancel on an active layby. It asks once, and cannot be undone.
What cancelling does and does not do:
| The layby | Marked Cancelled. It stops accepting payments. |
| The order | Unlocked, so its lines can be edited again |
| Money already paid | Stays where it is. Nothing is refunded. |
Giving the deposit back is a separate, deliberate act: reopen the order and refund it, so the money movement is recorded as a refund rather than quietly vanishing. Whether you refund at all is your layby policy, and the app takes no view on it.
If the till is offline the layby may cancel while its order stays locked. The message says exactly that — do not cancel it twice, just unlock the order once you are back on.
What the till does with a layby order¶
A layby order is locked: its lines cannot be changed, and it says "Layby order - items locked". Discount, cash-out and notes are unavailable, and the buttons say so rather than doing nothing. Unlocking is a deliberate act with its own permission — see Sell.
The Account tender is greyed out on a layby order. A layby is credit; putting it on a charge account as well would be two of them.
Good to know¶
- A layby never expires. It stays active until it is paid off or cancelled. There is no deadline and no automatic sweep, so a stale one sits in Active until someone deals with it.
- You cannot pay more than is left. The app refuses an overpayment rather than banking it.
- The last payment closes the layby automatically — there is no "complete" button to remember.
- The reference is the date and time it was created, so two laybys clash only if they were made in the same second on the same site.
- Cancelling on one till reaches every other till, but a layby open on another screen shows the old figures until it is refreshed.