Items, Cashiers and Tenders in Business Central

Your items, prices and barcodes are already in Business Central. This is how the register at Ridgeline Outfitters uses them, from the first tile to the card reader. Here's how.

Last time, the setup wizard built the store and the Front Counter register. It's ready to sell, but it has nothing to sell yet. Start with categories. Each one becomes a tab on the register, with its own tile color. Apparel, Hydration, Trail Food, Camp and Gear. The sort order lines the tabs up from left to right. Now the items. Each POS item is the tile your cashier taps, and it links to the Business Central item you already have. Here's the Trail Tee. Give it a name and a category, then map it to item one thousand. The status turns to Mapped. From here on, Business Central owns the price, the stock and the posting. That matters at the end of the day. Only mapped items post to sales invoices, so map every item before you open. Then the rest of the catalog. Give each item a name and a category, and type its Business Central item number. Do that for every item, and the whole catalog sells at Business Central prices. Last, pick your favorites. They get a row of their own above the tabs, for the things you sell all day.

The Trail Tee comes in small, medium and large. Those sizes are variants on the Business Central item. The POS item reads them from there, so there's no second list of sizes to keep. Barcodes work the same way. Each one is an item reference in Business Central, and it can point to an exact size. When a cashier scans the medium, the line lands as a medium. No picker, no typing. Tap the tile instead, and the register asks which size.

Every sale belongs to a person. That's what POS users are for. Sam Ortiz and Jamie Chen are cashiers. Each one links to a salesperson, so their name follows the sale into the posted documents. Give each person a discount limit. Ten percent is plenty for a cashier. Alex Rivera is the supervisor. Tick one box, and Alex can approve bigger discounts and price overrides for the team. Then give everyone a PIN, four to eight digits. It's stored as a hash, so nobody can read it back, not even you. On a shared register, each cashier signs in with their own PIN, so the till always knows who's at the counter.

Now, how people pay. The wizard already made the basics: cash, an external card machine, vouchers and on account. Cash gets quick buttons for common bills and works out the change. On account needs a customer with a Business Central account, and the invoice stays open in receivables. Each tender can post to its own settlement account, so the money lands in the right place at the end of the day. Now the card reader. Give it a card tender of its own, so reader sales stay apart from the old card machine. In POS Setup, choose Stripe as the payment provider, and point it at the new card tender. Paste your Stripe secret key. It goes into secure storage for this company, and it's never shown again. Then pair the reader with the register. Copy the reader's ID from your Stripe account, and paste it on the Front Counter. That's the whole setup. The register now has a Pay card button.

Last, receipts. A register can print through the browser, a cloud thermal printer, a USB printer, or one on your network. Ridgeline starts with the browser, which prints or saves a PDF. You can move to a silent thermal printer later, in one place. Add a header and a footer, like your returns policy, and every receipt carries it. Let's try it. Sam signs in with a PIN. Trail Tee in medium. Scan a bottle. Both prices come straight from Business Central. Pay card. The customer taps, and the reader approves it.

The receipt shows the size, the card and your footer. Items, people and payments, all from the Business Central you already run. Next: a sale at the counter.