In this guide 6 sections
Pick one shared system when every site has a dependable connection and head office alone sets prices, items, credit limits and stock transfer rules. Pick synced branch installs when a counter or plant must keep billing through an outage, whatever the weather does to the signal. Many owners land on a hybrid.
Start with the worst week of each connection
List every branch and plant beside its connection, whether fibre, broadband, a mobile dongle or a leased line, and write down the longest outage of the past year. Ignore the average day. A plant at the edge of town that loses signal every storm season is a different problem from a showroom on a business park.
A central system lives or dies by that link, because when the billing screen waits on a server in head office, a dead line means a dead counter. Staff queue. Customers leave. The owner hears about it by evening.
Power matters as much as signal. Nobody plans for it. A router without a UPS drops the session the moment the lights flicker, even when the line itself is fine and the provider shows no fault.
- Connection type and provider at each site
- Longest outage in the past year, in hours
- Whether a UPS or generator covers the router and the billing PC
- Whether the counter may pause or must keep billing
Who sets prices, stock levels and credit limits?
Central control is the strongest argument for one shared system, because head office owns the price list, the item master and customer credit limits in one database. One change reaches every till at once. No branch bills last month’s rate.
Synced installs can copy that control, but the copy arrives on a schedule, so a discount ended on Monday may stay live at a branch until its next sync. That gap starts disputes.
Stock is harder still. Two branches selling the last carton from a stale local count is the classic overselling fault, and a shared system avoids it by showing one number to everyone. Synced installs must reserve stock or accept clashes, and each reservation needs a rule for how long it holds before the carton is released.
What happens to billing when the link drops
Demand a live test, not a promise. Pull the cable on a test branch and raise three invoices, then watch whether the screen freezes, refuses the bill or carries on and queues each sale. Offline billing brings its own rules.
Each branch needs its own invoice number series, such as a branch prefix, so queued bills never collide when the link returns and the queue uploads. Returns against offline invoices need it too.
- Invoice numbers that cannot repeat across branches
- A visible queue showing bills waiting to upload
- Conflict rules when two sites edit the same customer
- A clear message to the cashier about which prices are cached
Compare running cost and failure modes
One shared system means one database to back up, one version to patch and one place to read a report, so month-end consolidation is a query. Not a spreadsheet chase. The weak point is the network.
Every site depends on it. Synced installs spread the risk. A broken line stops reports from head office, not the sale, but the price is more moving parts: a sync service per site and a conflict log. Several copies can drift apart.
Neither choice is free of work. It is a trade. You are choosing which failure to manage.
- Backups: one set against one per site
- Patching: one server against every install
- Reporting: live against as fresh as the last sync
Test the choice on one branch first
Pick the branch with the weakest link and run it for a month on your preferred model, logging every outage, every queued bill and every price complaint. Real numbers beat a vendor demo.
If the weak branch copes, the stronger ones will, and if it struggles, you have found the case for a hybrid before paying for the wrong design everywhere. Fill in the worksheet below for every site this week, then compare the rows side by side and mark the branch where one model clearly fails.
Branch connectivity and ownership worksheet
Print this as one grid. Columns cover link type, longest outage, power backup, who sets prices, who controls stock transfers, whether billing may pause, and the model you lean towards. A last column records the pull-the-cable test result for each site, with the date and the staff member who ran it.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Can a central system work offline?
Only if it was built for it. Some billing clients keep a local cache and upload queued invoices later, so ask for a live demonstration with the network cable removed, because brochures rarely mention it.
What is a hybrid setup?
Head office keeps the master prices, items and customers, and each branch holds a local copy that it bills against before uploading sales when the connection allows. Changes flow down, transactions flow up.
How often should branch installs sync?
Prices and stock shown at the counter need the shortest gap, while reports and ledgers at head office can wait longer without hurting anyone. Match the interval to the damage. Not to a technical default.
Does head office lose visibility with synced installs?
Only for the gap between syncs. A dashboard should show the time of each branch’s last upload, so a silent site is spotted the same day instead of at month end.