Power cuts at the till: how to keep selling and keep your records straight

In much of the Caribbean, a power cut is an ordinary part of running a shop. A storm, a fault down the road or planned maintenance can take the lights, the fridge, the card terminal and the router out for an hour or a whole day. Customers still come in, and the shop can usually keep selling. What you lose, if you are not careful, is the record of what you sold.

A sale that was never written down is stock that left the shelf without explanation and cash in the drawer that nothing accounts for. At cash-up you will be short against your system, or over, and not know why. The fix is dull and reliable: a paper routine you set up in advance and follow every time.

Keep these items together in one place that everyone on staff knows, not scattered between the back room and your bag.

• Light. At least one rechargeable torch or battery light that stands up on the counter, and spare batteries. Phone torches work in a pinch, but drain the phone you need for other things.
• Power bank. Keep it charged. It keeps a phone going for the hours you most need it.
• A paper tally sheet. A printed or hand-ruled page with columns for time, item, quantity, amount and payment type, in a clipboard with a pen on a string.
• A calculator. Battery or solar.
• A small stock of change. Coins and small notes in a pouch, so you are not breaking large bills in the dark.
• Signs. A card that says "Cash only" and a pen to write other notices.

If outages are frequent where you are, an inverter or small generator may pay for itself. That is a cost and safety decision for you and an electrician: never run a generator indoors or in a closed space. The routine below works with or without one.

1. Light the counter first

   Customers and cash need the light more than the shelves do. Put a light where you hand over change.

2. Note the time

   Write the time at the top of the tally sheet. You will need it later to separate normal sales from outage sales.

3. Post the cash-only sign

   Card terminals and most wallets need power, a signal or both. Say so at the door so people are not surprised at the counter.

4. Check the fridges and freezers

   Do not open them more than needed. Write down the time the power went, because it decides how long chilled stock stays safe.

5. Assign the till

   One person takes money. Others fetch goods. The fewer hands in the drawer, the fewer mistakes.

Write each sale as it happens, not later from memory. For each one, record the item, how many, the price and how it was paid. Where you can, tick items off a price list rather than writing names, which is faster and keeps the spelling consistent. For repeat items such as bread or water, a tally mark per sale works, as long as the price is printed on the sheet.

Give a handwritten receipt if a customer asks. A small duplicate receipt book keeps a copy for you without extra work. Do not give credit or hold items on trust during an outage unless you can write it on the sheet, because the sheet is your only memory.

Add up the sheet at natural breaks, say every hour, and write the running total at the bottom. If you are interrupted, you do not lose the count.

An outage is also a time when cash is easier to lose or take. Keep the drawer closed between sales and do not leave notes visible. If takings build up during the cut, move larger notes to a safe place out of sight, and note what you moved. Close earlier than usual if you cannot keep the shop lit and secure. Never count a day's cash in a dark or open space, and do not tell customers or passers-by how much is in the drawer.

For more habits that protect your takings, see where your stock goes and the daily shop routine checklist.

Do not cash up first. Your system or sales record is missing the outage sales, so the expected cash will be too low. Enter the paper sheet, then count.

Here is an example. The shop opened with a float of $100. Before the outage, the system recorded $640.00 in cash sales. During the outage, the tally sheet shows 36 cash sales totalling $388.50.

A $2.50 gap on a day like this is small enough to be change or a rounding error. If it were $50, the paper sheet is where you would look first: a missing line, a wrong price, or a sale that was paid but never written. This is the same method as cashing up at the end of the day, with one extra step.

1. Enter the paper sales

   Record each outage sale with its real payment type, so stock goes down by what you actually sold.

2. Check the total against the sheet

   The system total for the outage window should match the sheet total.

3. Check stock for the busy items

   Count the products that sold most during the cut. A quick count catches anything you sold but did not write down.

4. Keep the sheet

   Staple it to the day's cash-up. It is your evidence if the numbers are ever questioned.

If the power was out long enough for chilled or frozen goods to become unsafe, do not sell them. Remove them and record them as damaged stock, with the quantity and the cost. Record the loss so your stock figures are right and your profit reflects what really happened. Spoilage is also a clue: if outages are frequent, carry less frozen stock, or buy smaller amounts more often. Reorder points help you size those smaller orders.

Shopkeepa is built with unreliable connections in mind, and it runs on a phone, tablet or computer, so a charged phone and power bank can keep you recording sales when the lights are out. Keep the paper sheet as your backup anyway, then enter any sales you wrote by hand and remove spoiled stock as damaged. Stock and cash-up figures then agree again. Payments are recorded, not processed, so a card or wallet sale still depends on your provider being reachable.

Shopkeepa is in development and open to early access shops. See how the point of sale records each sale.