Stations — bind a till to its printer

A station is one till — this tablet — wired to one receipt printer. The cash drawer plugs into that printer, so once a till is bound to a printer it has its drawer too; there’s nothing separate to set up for the drawer. Binding matters when a store has more than one till: each receipt, and each drawer pop, goes to the printer at the right counter.

A till that hasn’t been set up still prints — it falls back to the location’s default printer — so you’re never stuck while you get your tills bound.

Set up this till (on the tablet)

You do this on the till itself, so it knows which printer is at its counter. You need the Manage settings permission — the controls are hidden if you don’t have it.

1. On the Register screen, press Station in the top bar.
2. The This device card shows what this till is currently using — a printer name, or, if it’s not set up yet, “This device isn’t bound to a station yet — bind it to a printer below to print receipts here.”
3. If your printers aren’t listed yet, add them first — see Add your printers below.
4. Press Bind this device to a station (or Change station printer if it’s already set).
5. Under Printer, pick the printer at this counter. Each one shows its name and network address, and the selected one is ticked.
6. Optionally give the till a Name (e.g. Front till) so it’s easy to recognise.
7. Press Save.

The binding takes effect straight away — every receipt and drawer pop for sales rung up on this till now goes to that printer. Repeat on each till in the store.

Add your printers

Your store’s receipt printers are managed from this same Station screen, in the Printers at this location card:

• Press Add printer, give it a Name (optional, e.g. Front counter) and its Address — the printer’s LAN address (IP or host). Port :9100 is assumed if you don’t add one.
• Edit or Remove an existing printer from its row. Removing a printer that this till currently prints to warns you first — receipts won’t print here until you bind another.
• A brand-new location shows “No printers yet. Add one to bind this device and print receipts.” — add your first printer here, then bind the till to it.

Check the printer — diagnostics

Once a till is bound, the Station screen shows a Diagnostics card for its printer:

Row	What it shows
Printer	The printer this till is bound to.
Address	The printer’s network address.
Reachable	Checking… while the app runs a fresh reachability check (it fires one automatically when the screen opens), then Yes if a print agent can reach the printer, No if not.

Press Probe now to re-run the reachability check on demand — for example right after plugging the printer back in — instead of waiting for the next automatic check.

Press Test cash drawer to send a real open-drawer command to the printer and confirm it responds. On success you’ll see “Drawer-open job sent to the printer.” If it can’t, the message tells you why — the printer didn’t respond (check it’s powered on and on the store network), no print agent is online, or the printer has no cash drawer (a built-in handheld printer can’t pop a drawer — use the store’s network printer for that).

Test the printer

On the Station screen, press Test receipt to print a sample receipt — a quick way to confirm a printer is wired up and reachable without ringing a sale. It’s available as soon as you’ve added a printer, so you can check one before you’ve bound this till to it.

When this till is bound, the sample prints to its bound printer. If no till is bound yet, it falls back to your business’s first printer — so a single-printer store can test straight away; on a store with several printers that’s the first printer on file, not necessarily the one you just added.

Manage stations from the back office

A couple of station controls also live in the back office (on the web):

• The all-stations overview — every till in the store and the printer it’s bound to — is in the back office.
• Retiring a station (unbinding a till you’ve removed) is a back-office action. A retired till simply falls back to the location’s default printer, so retiring one never stops it printing.

Adding, editing and removing printers, and binding a till to one, are all done on the tablet (above) — so you can set a printer up standing right at the counter where it lives.