What belongs on a tablet till?

On the desktop, there is room to work through a supplier invoice or a long product list. At a tablet till, the next customer may already be waiting while you finish taking payment from the last one.

We give those jobs different amounts of space in Faida. The tablet’s main job is to help staff find a product, check the basket, and take payment.

Keep the basket in view

Consider a customer buying three items, then changing their mind about one. The cashier needs to see which line to remove and check the new total. Hiding the basket behind another screen makes a small correction harder to check.

The same applies to payment. If someone pays partly in cash and partly by mobile money, the remaining amount needs to stay visible. It is easy to lose your place when the customer is also asking for a bag or a receipt.

These are the details we want to get right before filling the tablet with more screens.

Leave setup on the desktop

Product setup, purchasing, and detailed reports belong on the main workspace. A cashier should be able to use the products and prices already entered there without setting them up again on each till.

A paired tablet uses that workspace over the local network. This also gives the setup a constraint: the main computer must stay awake and reachable. Putting it on a laptop that leaves with the owner at lunchtime will interrupt the tablet’s work.

Give the device a useful name

“Front counter” is easier to identify than a model number when someone calls for help. Check the branch during pairing, sign in as the staff member using that till, and try the printer where the tablet will actually be used.

Android tablets are in early access. If something takes too many taps or is hard to read from the counter, tell us which step gets in the way. That is useful feedback for the next version.