Setting Up Core POS for the First Time

Before you touch a terminal

1. Build your product catalogue first — categories, items, prices, and modifiers (size, add-ons, spice level). Everything downstream depends on this existing before you configure anything else.
2. Set your tax rules once, at the catalogue level, rather than per-item. Kenyan VAT and any category-specific exemptions should be defined centrally so every new item inherits the right rate automatically.
3. Decide your terminal structure — one till per register, or shared tills across a counter and a floor — before you start adding devices. Retrofitting this after staff are already using the system creates duplicate sales records.

Staff and permissions

1. Create role templates before individual staff profiles — cashier, supervisor, manager — each with the specific permissions that role needs (void approval, discount limits, end-of-day reports).
2. Add staff to roles rather than assigning permissions one-by-one per person. When a permission needs to change, you change the role once instead of every profile in it.
3. Set up PIN or badge login before go-live day, not during it. Staff fumbling with first-time login during service is the single most common source of a rough opening shift.

Hardware, last

Connect receipt printers and card terminals only once the catalogue and staff are already configured — this way, the first real transaction you test is representative of an actual sale, not an empty placeholder item.

Run a full test transaction — sale, discount, split payment, refund — before opening, on every terminal you've connected, not just one. A working terminal one doesn't guarantee terminal two is configured identically.