Convenience store cashier SOP - ringing sales by handwritten slip when the POS or network is down; the last approved transaction number anchors the timeline, one slip per sale with no batch catch-up, and when in doubt the item stops selling

You are the front-end operations lead for a convenience
store. Write an archivable Manual Sales During POS or
Network Outage SOP. Scope: register system failure,
network outage, or power loss that takes out card
payment and system ringing while the store stays open.
Write it as a document executable by whoever is on
shift - every step carries a condition, and no step is
a principle without one.

Structure it in the five sections below.

1. Immediate actions (within 5 minutes of noticing)
- Post the sign at the register face: "Cash only /
  card payment temporarily unavailable" - one line,
  no technical explanations
- Write down the last approved transaction number and
  its time. That number is the boundary between
  system money and slip money; back-entry after
  recovery starts right after it. Skip this and
  everything downstream is guesswork
- Notify up the chain per [escalation chain]: who
  first, how fast it reaches the manager
- Execute section 3's stop-sell list before waiting
  for instructions

2. Handwritten sales slips (one slip per sale; no
   batch catch-up, ever)
- Six mandatory fields: time / item / quantity /
  unit price / amount / cashier signature
- One slip per transaction, written at the moment of
  the sale. "Take the cash now, write it up when
  it's calm" is absolutely forbidden: a slip written
  from memory does not hold up in reconciliation,
  and when the cash won't balance, the person who
  can't explain it is the cashier
- Slips numbered in sequence; a voided slip is never
  torn out - line through, mark VOID, keep it
- Customer wants a receipt: give them a slip copy or
  a handwritten note listing items and amount

3. Stop-sell rules by category
- Stop-sell list: [stop-sell list] - whether heated
  fresh food, tobacco, and other trace-sensitive or
  time-sensitive categories stop selling follows
  company policy; fill it in. Tobacco's stop and
  restart especially follow company policy, never the
  shift's own judgment
- Write this principle into the body of the
  document: when in doubt, stop selling the item. A
  category the manual flow cannot run age checks,
  traceability, or promotion logic for costs less
  unsold than unexplained
- After stopping, add one line to the sign: "some
  items temporarily unavailable"

4. Back-entry and reconciliation after recovery
- Enter slips into the system one by one, in slip
  time order. Never merge by category - merged
  entries will not tie back to the slips
- Finish within [back-entry deadline]; if you can't,
  report the remainder honestly rather than entering
  a made-up total
- Reconciliation: when the gap between total slip
  amount and cash counted exceeds [variance
  threshold], investigate on the same shift.
  Unresolved gaps get reported as gaps - never
  quietly topped up with your own money. A
  papered-over variance hides the cause, and the
  same mistake comes back for an encore
- Log the first system transaction after recovery;
  it and the last approved number before the outage
  pin the outage window shut, end to end

5. The record
- Before the shift ends, write the timeline: outage
  noticed at / last approved transaction / slip
  count and total / variance and what the
  investigation found / recovery time and first
  transaction
- File the timeline and every slip, voids included,
  for the post-mortem and any audit

Constraints:
- No POS brand names, no click-path steps. System
  actions stay generic ("enter per slip"); whoever
  uses the SOP adds the keystrokes for their own
  system
- No "small cash variances are normal during
  outages" allowance - over the threshold means
  investigate; the SOP grants no exemptions
- No fabricated numbers, no "tighten procedures"
  unverifiable actions
- No pleasantries - start at section one

Why it is written this way

The last approved transaction number is the anchor of the whole SOP. The dead knot of an outage reconciliation is "which system transaction was the last real one, and where does the paper start" - and a transaction number carries a time and an amount, and is still queryable after recovery. Writing it down in the first five minutes costs ten seconds; skipping it means reconstructing the boundary from memory and camera footage. Pairing it with the first system transaction after recovery pins the outage window shut at both ends - to an auditor that is called traceable, and in an argument it is called evidence.

One slip per sale, no batch catch-up, is the only operating rule written as an absolute prohibition, because the entire value of a handwritten slip is that it was written as the sale happened. Cash first, paper later, and the slip degrades into a note written from memory; when a variance shows up, whether the cashier can clear themselves depends entirely on the slip's credibility - and a back-filled slip reads as discounted by every manager and auditor. Keeping voided slips is the same logic: a torn-up void is a sum of money nobody will ever explain.

The stop-sell list stays a variable while the principle goes in the body, because that split is a division of authority: companies rule differently on heated fresh food, tobacco, and similar categories, so the list must be filled in by whoever owns the policy. But "when in doubt, stop selling" cannot be left to on-the-spot judgment - during an outage the cashier is pushed from two directions, customers waiting and sales to protect, both pushing toward "ring it up." Stating the principle in advance makes the unpopular decision for the shift before the pressure exists. Tobacco is named specifically because it already carries age-check and traceability requirements in normal operation, and a manual flow cannot carry those actions.

Investigate same-shift over the threshold, and never quietly top the drawer up: one side protects the process, the other protects the person. Same-shift, because memory decays fast - who took the payment, roughly when, what kind of customer are all fading facts once the shift ends. No papering over, because the moment the books look balanced, the cause is gone forever and the same person repeats the same mistake. Worse, once topping-up becomes habit, the day a real over-and-short shows up, nobody believes the cashier anymore.

Variables