Point of Sale

Point of Sale is where your till data comes into Spensa. One thing first: Spensa is not connected live to your till. Instead, you take the daily or period summary your till already prints or exports, and you upload it to Spensa as a PDF or photo, or email it in. Spensa reads the document automatically, turns it into a sales report, and builds a catalogue of everything your till sells. That gives you revenue charts, real sell prices for your menu items, and margin insights, without typing anything in. In some places the app calls a location an "establishment"; they are the same thing.

What this is for

• Upload your till's daily, weekly, or monthly summaries as PDFs or photos
• Email till summaries to a dedicated address, so they come in automatically
• Let Spensa read the location, the time period, and every sold item with quantity and price
• Review and correct a report side by side with the original document
• Approve reports to build and update your Point of Sale catalogue
• Keep the catalogue tidy: rename items, set categories, and link items to your menu items
• Group catalogue items with categories, each with a color and an optional tax rate
• See your revenue on the Point of Sale page and in Analytics
• Feed real sell prices and sold-item margins into Menu costs

Where to open it

In the left sidebar, click Point of Sale. The page shows three cards, Point of Sale Reports, Point of Sale Catalogue, and POS Categories, plus a revenue overview.

Point of Sale is on the web app only. There are no Point of Sale screens in the phone app. The assistant can help with till data too: ask it questions about your sales, or let it upload and edit reports for you.

Access and permissions

Owners and admins can always use this. Managers can too. Point of Sale uses the same permissions as invoices: anyone who can view invoices can view till data, and anyone who can manage invoices can upload, edit, and approve reports and manage the catalogue and categories. You can give other team members access with a custom role. Staff members who sign in with a username do not see Point of Sale; it belongs to the management side of Spensa.

Uploading till reports

Upload the summary your till produces, for example an end-of-day report, as a PDF or a photo.

1. In the left sidebar, click Point of Sale, then open Point of Sale Reports.
2. Click Upload Point of Sale Reports.
3. Drag your files into the dialog, or click to choose them. You can upload up to 10 files at once, each up to 20 MB. Spensa accepts PDF, PNG, JPG, and BMP files.
4. Check the two switches described below, then start the upload.

The two switches:

• Skip review after upload is on by default. Spensa then approves each report automatically as soon as it has found the location and the time period. Turn it off if you want to check every report yourself first.
• Process all images as one document appears when you picked two or more photos. It is on by default and treats the photos as pages of one document. That is right when you photographed a long paper report page by page. Spensa may still split the result into several reports if the pages contain more than one.

If Spensa finds a possible duplicate

Spensa checks whether you already uploaded the same file before. If it looks like you did, a message titled "Possible duplicate Point of Sale uploads found" lists the earlier uploads with their dates. Choose Review files to go back and change your selection, or Upload anyway if you are sure.

While Spensa reads your files

After the upload you land on a progress page: first "Extracting Point of Sale reports", then "Approving Point of Sale reports" if you left the review switch on. You can leave the page at any time; processing continues in the background. When Spensa is done, you are taken to the review page.

If a file contains no sales report at all, or cannot be read, the upload shows as failed. Failed uploads appear in a strip at the top of the reports list, where you can dismiss them.

What Spensa reads out automatically

A single file can contain one or several sales reports. For each report, Spensa reads:

• Which location it belongs to. Spensa compares the names on the document with your locations and picks the match. If it is not sure, it leaves the location empty for you to choose.
• The time period it covers. A report for one full day is stored as that whole day.
• Every sold item, with its name, quantity, price, the item code from your till (shown as Item ID), and a fitting category from your POS categories.

Spensa only takes genuine sold items. Summary lines, totals, tax lines, payment methods, discounts, tips, and voided rows are left out on purpose. Spensa also never invents categories; it only uses the ones you already have.

Reviewing a report

A report waits for you with the status To Review when you turned off "Skip review after upload", or when Spensa could not find the location or the period on its own. In the second case you also get a notification, "Point of Sale report needs review", that takes you straight to the upload.

The review page shows the original document on one side and the extracted reports on the other.

• Every item Spensa found is highlighted in the document. Hover over a row to see where it came from, or click a highlight to jump to the matching row. The magnifier button on a row (Show item in document) zooms the document to that spot. Use Show boxes and Hide boxes to turn the highlights on or off.
• A Download link lets you save the original file.
• Each report is a card showing its status, location, period, and item count. When one upload produced several reports, they are numbered.

Fixing the location and period

1. Open the report card.
2. Pick the location in the Establishment field.
3. Pick the time period with Select date range.

On a report that is still to review, these changes are saved automatically.

Editing sold items

Click a row to open it, or click Add Item to add a row Spensa missed. For each item you decide what should happen in your catalogue:

• Link to Existing Item: the sold row is counted on an item that already exists in your Point of Sale catalogue. Pick it from the list. You need to select a location first, because each location has its own catalogue.
• Create New Item: the sold row becomes a new catalogue item when you approve. Its switch Try to match an existing item is worth knowing: when it is on, Spensa first looks for an existing catalogue item it can confidently reuse, for example one with the same item ID or name, and only creates a new item when there is no clear match.

On the report card, a small colored dot shows the plan for each new row: blue means Spensa will reuse an existing catalogue item when it finds a confident match, green means a new catalogue item will be created.

You can edit the Sold item name, Item ID, Quantity, and Unit price. Spensa calculates the Total price for you. To remove a row, open it and use the trash button. If an upload contains a whole report you do not want, click Remove on that report card.

Approving reports

Click Approve Point of Sale Reports in the page header. A report can be approved when it has a location, a start and an end for its period, and at least one item, and when every item is either linked to a catalogue item or has a name or an item ID. If the button is grayed out, point at it to see what is still missing.

What approval does

Approving turns a draft into a permanent sales report. While Spensa works, the report shows as Finalizing, then Approved. Approval also:

• Creates the new catalogue items you chose, and links every sold row to a catalogue item.
• Updates the catalogue items that were sold: the name is refreshed, a missing item ID or category is filled in, and the latest prices are stored. If an item you removed earlier is sold again, it returns to the catalogue.
• Carefully links newly created catalogue items to your menu items. Spensa only links an item when it is confident it is the same dish or drink; it does not match different sizes or variants, and it never changes links you already set yourself. You can adjust every link later in the catalogue.

The reports list

Open Point of Sale Reports from the Point of Sale page to see everything you have uploaded.

• Use the pills All, To Review, and Approved to filter by status.
• The search box finds reports by location name, item names, and file name.
• Reports are grouped by upload. Each group shows the file name, how many reports it contains, an overall status, and the date ranges. Each report card shows its location, status, item count, period, and upload date, plus a number when the upload holds several reports.
• Click a report to open its review page.
• To delete several reports at once, open the three-dot menu, choose Select Reports, tick the reports, and delete. Deleting removes the reports and their items for good, so Spensa asks you to confirm. You can delete up to 100 reports at once. Reports that are currently finalizing cannot be deleted.
• Uploads that are still processing, and failed ones, appear in a strip at the top of the All view. Failed uploads can be dismissed there.

What you can still change after approval

Approved reports are not frozen, but a few rules apply:

• Items can still be added, edited, and deleted, but every item on an approved report must be linked to a catalogue item. Categories then come from the catalogue item, not from the row.
• The period can still be changed. Edits on approved reports are saved with the Save Changes button in the header.
• The location is locked. An approved report cannot move to another location.
• Approval cannot be undone. If a report is wrong beyond repair, delete it and upload the file again.

The Point of Sale catalogue

The catalogue is the list of everything your till sells, as your till knows it: one entry per item and location, with the item ID from your till, the latest prices, a category, and a link to the matching menu item. It fills itself as you approve reports. There is no button to create catalogue items by hand; if you ever need one, the assistant can create it for you.

Open Point of Sale Catalogue from the Point of Sale page.

• Each card shows the item's name, its item ID, its location, its category, the linked menu item, the date of its latest report, and its latest price.
• Search items by name. Open the Display menu to sort by name, latest report start date, latest report end date, or creation date, in either direction. By default, items from the most recent reports come first.
• Open the Filter menu to filter by location and by category, including subcategories. Active filters are shown above the list; Clear all filters removes them all.
• If you can manage till data, you can change the linked menu item directly on the card.
• To delete several items, switch to selection mode and delete up to 200 at once.

Editing a catalogue item

Click an item to open it. Changes are saved automatically. You can edit:

• The Name (required) and Item ID.
• The POS category and subcategory.
• The Linked menu item. The list shows a recommended match at the top and lets you search your menu items. View menu item jumps to that menu item.

Below the form you see the most recent approved reports that include this item, up to 20. Click one to open it.

Removing catalogue items

Use the Delete button on the item page, or select several items on the list. If an item appears in any approved report, it disappears from the catalogue but its sales history stays intact. If it was never part of an approved report, it is deleted completely.

If duplicates have crept in, ask the assistant to merge two catalogue items into one. All sales rows from both end up on the item you keep.

POS categories

Categories group the items your till sells, such as food, wine, or coffee. Spensa uses them on report rows, catalogue items, and filters.

Every new organization starts with six ready-made categories: Food, Wine, Beer, Spirits, Non-Alcoholic, and Coffee / Tea. They appear in your language automatically. You can edit or delete them like any other category.

1. Open POS Categories from the Point of Sale page.
2. Click Add Category to add your own. Give it a name, pick a color, and set a tax rate if you want (0 to 100 percent).
3. To refine a category, add subcategories to it. A subcategory can have its own tax rate; leave the field empty and it uses the category's rate.

Each category card shows its color, how many POS items use it, and its tax rate. Deleting a category or subcategory removes it from all items that use it; the items themselves stay. You can create up to 250 categories, and up to 100 subcategories per category.

Emailing reports in

Each location has its own email address for till reports, in the form yourcompany.yourlocation.pos@documents.spensa.ai. Anything sent there is processed and approved automatically, so this is the easiest way to keep Spensa fed every day.

1. Go to Settings and open Inbound email.
2. Open the Point of Sale tab and copy the address for your location.
3. Send or forward your till summaries to that address as attachments. Many till systems can email their end-of-day report on their own; point them at this address.

Because the address belongs to one location, Spensa always knows which location the report is for. If Spensa cannot read the time period, the report waits with the status To Review and you get a notification. If the sales summary is in the email text itself rather than in an attachment, Spensa reads that too. Emails and files you already sent before are skipped quietly.

The same settings page keeps a history of received emails, with the sender, the subject, and how each attachment was handled.

Emailing reports in is available on certain plans. If your plan does not include it, you will see an upgrade note.

Where your sales data shows up

Sales from approved reports appear in several places:

• Revenue on the Point of Sale page. A chart of your revenue over time, with quick ranges (All, 1y, 3M, 1M, YTD, MTD) and a location filter. It fills automatically once reports are approved.
• The Sales tab in Analytics. The same revenue view, plus the sold item margin map: every bubble is a menu item linked to a catalogue item, placed by sales value and average sold price, sized by quantity sold, and colored by margin. Click a bubble to open the menu item. You see the margin map only if you can also view menu costs; items without a price or a complete cost are left out, and the chart says so.
• Sell prices in Menu costs. When a catalogue item is linked to a menu item, that menu item's sell price can come from your latest approved till data. Such prices are labeled "Point of Sale" rather than "Manual entry", and the price history charts include them. A menu item's page also lists the till items linked to it.

How this connects to other parts of Spensa

• Menu costs - linking catalogue items to menu items feeds real sell prices and sold-item margins into your menu costing.
• Analytics and Home - the Sales tab in Analytics shows your revenue and the sold item margin map.
• Invoices - invoices use the same permissions and the same kind of upload, review, and email flow, so if you know one, you know the other.
• Settings and billing - the email addresses for sending reports in live under Settings, in Inbound email, and your plan's monthly allowance covers the automatic reading.
• Notifications - Spensa notifies you when a report needs review before it can be approved.
• Assistant - the assistant can answer questions about your sales, upload and edit reports, tidy the catalogue, and manage categories.
• Inventory - till sales do not change your stock. Inventory counts only change when you count or record them there.
• Team and permissions - control who can view and manage till data with roles and custom permissions.

Good to know

• Spensa is never connected live to your till. Only what you upload or email in ends up in Spensa.
• Till sales do not reduce your inventory counts.
• Reading reports automatically counts toward your plan's monthly allowance. When it is used up, new uploads are paused and you see "Upload blocked by your current plan." Uploading works again when the allowance renews or after an upgrade.
• You can upload up to 10 files at once, each up to 20 MB. One file can contain several reports; Spensa splits them for you.
• A report covering one full day is shown as a single date.
• Approval cannot be undone, and approved reports keep their location.
• You can delete up to 100 reports and up to 200 catalogue items in one go.
• You can create up to 250 POS categories, and up to 100 subcategories per category.
• The tax rate on a category is a label for your reference. It does not change any numbers in Spensa.
• If you rename one of the six ready-made categories, it keeps your new name in every language. Rename it back and the translated name returns.
• If a catalogue item you removed is sold again on a newly approved report, it comes back to the catalogue with its history.