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.

The tablet prints straight to its printer over your store network, so a tablet prints only once it’s bound to a printer — or shares a station that is. Until then its receipts still show on screen, with a note that no printer is bound to this device.

If you ring sales on more than one device but have only one cash drawer, the extra device can share the drawer’s station instead of having one of its own — see Share one drawer between devices.

Most of this page needs the Manage stations permission. The one exception is matching your staff to Loyverse: that needs Manage staff instead — see The Staff section.

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 stations permission — the controls are hidden if you don’t have it.

If someone has just given you that permission, switch away from the app and back, or close and reopen it. A newly granted permission arrives on the next refresh — re-entering your PIN on its own won’t pick it up.

On the Register screen, open the ☰ menu and press Station. (The same screen is also under Settings → Station & receipt printer.)
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.”
If your printers aren’t listed yet, add them first — see Add your printers below.
Press Bind this device to a station (or Change station printer if it’s already set).
Under Printer, pick the printer at this counter. Each one shows its name and network address, and the selected one is ticked.
Optionally give the till a Name (e.g. Front till) so it’s easy to recognise.
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.

There’s no separate reachability check: the tablet talks to the printer itself, so the way to find out whether it can reach the printer is to send it something.

Press Test cash drawer to send a real open-drawer command from the tablet 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), the tablet couldn’t finish sending to the printer, 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). If the printer didn’t confirm, check the drawer before you try again.

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. The tablet sends it to its bound printer the same way it sends a real receipt, so a sample that prints means real receipts will too. It doesn’t open the drawer — that’s what Test cash drawer is for.

Test receipt works once this till is bound. Until then the button is greyed out, with the note “Bind this device to a printer above to send a test receipt.” — bind the till first (see Set up this till).

On success you’ll see “Test receipt sent to the printer.” If it can’t print, the message tells you why — for example, the printer didn’t respond (check it’s powered on and on the store network), or the tablet couldn’t write to it. If the printer doesn’t confirm, check whether a sample receipt came out before you try again.

Some stores ring sales on two devices but keep only one cash drawer — for example, a tablet at the front counter with the drawer plugged into its printer, and a computer in the back office with no drawer at all. Set the second device to ring for the station that has the drawer, and from then on:

Every sale on it, cash and card, goes into that station’s till. The cash is walked to that drawer, so that’s the drawer it’s counted in. There’s one till and one Z-report for the station, whichever device rang the sale — see Open & close your cash drawer.
Its sales are recorded against that station, and its receipts print to that station’s printer.
If that till is closed, it tells you whose. A payment the till has to be open for is refused with the station’s name and an Open the till button, rather than a plain “the till is closed” — see When the till is closed.

Sharing is set per device, on the device that’s going to ring for the drawer — not on the drawer’s own device. You need the Manage stations permission. If you never set it up, nothing changes: each device keeps its own till, exactly as before.

On a computer (back office)

Open Settings → Stations on the computer you want to share.
In the card for this device, choose the station it should ring for — the one with the drawer.

The card then reads Rings for and the station’s name. A device that isn’t sharing shows that it uses its own till.

On a tablet

On the Register screen, open the ☰ menu and press Station.
Press Ring for an existing station.
Pick the station with the drawer — each one shows the printer it prints to — and press Ring for this station.

A Rings for card then names the station and says “This device shares that station’s till and prints to …” with its printer.

Ring for an existing station only appears on a tablet that has no station of its own. A tablet that’s already bound to a printer is a drawer itself, and it stays one.

The same holds on any device: one that has a station of its own can’t be set to ring for another station, and choosing one is refused. To turn a station’s device into one that shares another drawer, first close its till, then retire its station from the back office (see Manage stations from the back office), and then set it to ring for the station with the drawer.

To undo it, press Stop sharing on the device’s Rings for card (on the computer or the tablet). The device goes straight back to its own till and its own printer, exactly as before it shared — nothing else about the station changes. If your store requires an open till before taking payment, open the device’s own till before its next sale.

While a device rings for a station, that station can’t be retired. To retire it, stop sharing on each device that rings for it first — see the retire step in Manage stations from the back office.

On a tablet that’s sharing, Make this device its own station does the same thing and binds the tablet to a printer in one go. It asks first — “Stop sharing and make this device its own station?” — because saving means its sales and receipts stop going to the shared station. Press Stop sharing and save to go ahead, or Keep sharing to leave it as it is.

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 tablet whose station is retired stops printing until you bind it to a printer again (or set it to ring for another station). A station whose till is still open won’t retire — the cash in its drawer hasn’t been counted yet. Close that till first (count it and close it as usual, so its Z-report is complete — see Close the till), then retire the station.

A station also won’t retire while other devices are still mapped to it — a device that rings for it, or a till you’ve mapped to it on Counter mapping. Retiring it would leave those devices ringing for a station that no longer exists, so the app tells you how many are still mapped. For a device that rings for the station, press Stop sharing on that device (see Stop sharing). A till you’ve mapped to it can be unmapped or re-pointed on Counter mapping. Then retire the station.

If the station’s till is opened or closed at the very moment you retire it, nothing is changed and the app says the till changed while the station was being retired. Press Try again to retire it again.
Counter mapping — telling us which imported till is which of your counters — is a back-office screen. See below.
The Print log — whether a till’s receipts actually printed, day by day — opens from a station’s row. See Check a till’s print log.

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.

Check a till’s print log

A till that prints straight to its printer over your store network reports back whether each print got through. The Print log shows those reports for one till and one day — the place to look when a customer says they never got their receipt.

Open it from Settings → Stations: press Print log on the station’s row. You can also open it for a single device from Counter mapping. You need the Manage stations permission — without it, the Print log button isn’t shown.

Pick the day

The log opens on Today. Press Previous day to step back one trading day at a time, and Next day to step forward again — you can’t step past today.

Pick the device

If other devices ring for this station or are mapped to it on Counter mapping, each one keeps its own log. A Device picker then appears: This station’s device is the station’s own till, and each Mapped device is one of the others. Pick one to see its day.

If the app couldn’t load the devices mapped to a station, it says so — “Couldn’t load devices mapped to this station — showing its own device only.” — so don’t read the log as the whole story for that station until it loads.

What the day says

The top of the log gives the day a verdict:

Verdict	What it means
All printed	Every print the till reported that day was confirmed by the printer.
Print problems	At least one print didn’t confirm. The log says how many of the day’s prints didn’t confirm, then splits them: how many failed to print, how many may have printed, and how many printed.
No reports	The till sent no print reports that day. That isn’t the same as everything printing — the till may not have printed anything, or its app may be too old to report.

May have printed needs care. The till lost track of the print before the printer confirmed it, so the receipt may or may not have come out. Check with the customer before you reprint, or they may get a duplicate.

Under the verdict, each print is listed with its time, what it was (for example Receipt, Reprint, Cash drawer, Test print or Z-report) and what happened to it:

Result	What it means
Printed	The printer confirmed it.
May have printed	The till lost track before the printer confirmed — see above.
Printer refused the connection	Something at the printer’s address turned the till away — check the printer’s address.
Printer didn’t answer	The till couldn’t reach the printer — check it’s on and on the network.
Write failed / Write timed out	The till reached the printer, but sending the print didn’t finish.

If the log can’t be loaded, it says “Couldn’t load print reports for this station. Try again.” — press Retry. Opened for a single device from Counter mapping, it says “Couldn’t load print reports for this device. Try again.” instead, and the rest of the log talks about “this device” rather than “this station” too. That’s a problem fetching the log, not a verdict on the till. If your role doesn’t allow it, you’ll see “Your role can’t view print reports.”

Map your tills to counters

If you came from Loyverse, your old tills came with you. Counter mapping is where you say which of your counters each one actually is — so a counter keeps one sales history no matter how many devices have rung up on it over the years. Until a till is mapped, its sales aren’t attributed to any counter.

You don’t need Loyverse to use it. If your store has no Loyverse connection, Counter mapping lists the registers you’ve set up on the Stations screen, each with a Swann Retail tag, and you map them the same way.

Open it from Settings → Stations, then press Counter mapping. You need the Manage stations permission — the same one the tablet controls need.

Each row is one till we know about:

What you see	What it means
The name	What the till is called — the Loyverse name for an imported one, or the name you gave it on Stations.
A Loyverse tag	This till came across in your Loyverse import.
A Swann Retail tag	You configured this register on the Stations screen.
The ID underneath	The till’s permanent identity. This is what a mapping is actually pinned to — see the note below.
Counter	The counter this till is mapped to, or Not mapped.

A device that’s mapped to a counter but has no station of its own — a computer that rings for another station, for example — still gets a row, named Browser device · mapped and the date it was last mapped (an imported till reads Till and the end of its ID), and marked “Mapped to a counter — no station of its own”. Its full ID is underneath, so two devices mapped on the same day still tell apart. You can unmap or re-point it here like any other row.

Each row with a Swann Retail tag also has a Print log button that opens that one device’s print log. Tills with a Loyverse tag don’t — they print through Loyverse, so they never report a print here. Like the Print log on the Stations screen, it needs the Manage stations permission.

To map one, pick the counter from its Counter dropdown. It saves as you pick — there’s no separate save button. To undo a mapping, set the dropdown back to Not mapped.

“Set up before counters had a permanent identity”

You may see a warning naming one or more stations that can’t be mapped yet. Those tills were set up before counters had a permanent identity of their own, so there’s nothing stable to pin a mapping to.

The fix takes a few seconds and only has to be done once per till:

Go to Stations.
On that register, press Configure this device.
Press Save — you don’t have to change anything.

Saving gives that counter its permanent identity, and it appears in Counter mapping straight away.

If the screen looks empty

“No devices yet” — you haven’t set up a register yet. Configure one on the Stations screen and its till appears here to be mapped. If you use Loyverse, tills imported from it appear here too.
“No counters to map onto” — you have tills but nothing to map them to. Configure at least one register on the Stations screen first; that’s what creates the counter.
“Couldn’t load your devices” — this one isn’t about your store. Something went wrong fetching the list. Check your connection and press Retry.

The Staff section

If you have the Manage staff permission, Counter mapping also has a Staff section. It matches each of your people to the same person in Loyverse, so a receipt pushed to Loyverse is credited to them on their own sales report. Anyone you don’t match simply isn’t named on the pushed receipt.

If you have Manage staff but not Manage stations, there’s no Stations screen for you to open it from. Go to Settings → Staff mapping instead. It’s the same Counter mapping page, and it shows you only the Staff section.

If your store has no Loyverse connection, the Staff section shows “Nothing to match yet”. That’s expected, not an error: there’s nobody in Loyverse to match your people to until Loyverse is connected.

“Couldn’t load your staff” is different — that one means something actually went wrong reading the list. Check your connection and press Retry.

“Loyverse needs reconnecting”

If the Devices or Staff section shows “Loyverse needs reconnecting”, Loyverse no longer accepts the access token Swann Retail saved for it — usually because the token was revoked or replaced in Loyverse. Until you reconnect, your Loyverse tills (in Devices) and your Loyverse employees (in Staff) can’t be listed.

In Devices, the message sits above your Swann Retail tills, which stay listed so you can keep mapping them to counters while Loyverse is disconnected. The Staff section shows only the message, since there’s nobody in Loyverse to match your people to until it’s reconnected.

This isn’t a temporary hiccup, so there’s no Retry — trying again won’t help until the token is replaced:

If you have the Manage settings permission, press Reconnect Loyverse. It takes you to Integrations → Connected POS, where you paste a fresh token — see Connect your Loyverse account.
If you don’t, there’s no button. The message asks you to get someone who manages your store’s settings to reconnect it under Connected POS.

Compare it with “Couldn’t load your devices” or “Couldn’t load your staff”: those mean something went wrong fetching the list this time, so checking your connection and pressing Retry is the fix. If the token is the problem but something else also failed to load, you’ll see the “Couldn’t load” message first — press Retry, and if “Loyverse needs reconnecting” appears, reconnect as above.