Service Area on the Sales Point

When something stops working at the Sales Point, the service area answers the first question: is it the device, the network, a printer, or a background service? It holds the state of every service, the status of the assigned printers, the list of connected Sub-Terminals, and the app's log. All of these views live under Menu → Settings, spread across the categories Devices & Connections and Service & Diagnostics — see Settings.

Status display in the menu

The header area of the menu sums up the state of the Sales Point in a few lines. You see it without opening a single view — the same states appear as chips on the welcome screen:

Services

Menu → Settings → Service & Diagnostics → Services lists the background services of the Sales Point. These services handle everything that does not hang directly off an input — syncing, feeding printers, supplying Sub-Terminals, triggering the daily closeout.

Reading a row correctly

Every row shows Active or Inactive first, and the reason below it. What matters is the reason, not the colour alone:

When a service does not need to run at all

On a Sub-Terminal, the Main Sales Point runs certain services on its behalf. The Main Sales Point service, for instance, supplies the Sub-Terminals — on the Sub-Terminal itself it has nothing to do and therefore reads Inactive · Not required right now.

That is the normal state and not a sign of trouble. The same goes for services whose function is not licensed or not configured on this Sales Point — Caller ID without a connected phone system, for example.

Restart and auto-restart

Tap a row and it expands to show details and the auto-restart.

• Auto-restart — after a failed start the Sales Point waits out a cooldown and then tries again by itself. The row names the next attempt ("Retry at 14:32") and counts down. In most cases there is nothing for you to do.

• Restart now — starts the service immediately, without waiting for the cooldown. The button only appears for a service that should be running and is currently being held off.

• Open log — jumps straight into the log of that one service, filtered to its entries.

Sync status

Menu → Settings → Sales Point → Sync status lists every data type separately and answers two questions apart from each other: what is still waiting on its way to the cloud, and what is currently not coming from the cloud? The Unsynced data: n row in the menu is the short form of this page.

Each row stands for one data type — Articles, Customers, Payments, Order screens, Cash journal entries and so on. Tap a row and it expands to show:

Show pending only reduces the list to what is currently out of sync; Show all data brings the rest back. With nothing outstanding it reads All data is in sync.

Uploads: what the colours mean

The number next to a data type is the count of waiting records. Its colour says whether that matters:

Downloads: what is missing cannot be counted

How many changes in the cloud are waiting to reach the Sales Point is unknowable — it only asks the cloud for anything new since its last position. What is measured instead is the time since the last clean pass. A row then carries the Download badge:

A clean pass is a successful reconciliation — and explicitly also the finding that there was nothing to do. A failure, a rejection or a run skipped for a missing connection do not count. So a Sales Point without internet cannot keep reporting "just checked".

When a backlog is normal

• During service, especially at peak times: blue numbers are the normal case and clear on their own.

• After a large change in bessa Manager — an article import, say: the Sales Point catches up a lot at once and the numbers are briefly high.

• After an interruption of the internet connection: once it is back, the Sales Point works through the backlog.

It is a case for support when a number stays red over a longer period, when Last error always shows the same message, or when Download is critical although the device is demonstrably online. Give them the technical name of the data type concerned — that is what locates the spot in the log immediately.

Printer status

Menu → Settings → Devices & Connections → Printer status shows for every assigned printer whether it is reachable right now. The view answers the question "is the device not printing, or is nothing being sent to it in the first place?".

Per printer you see:

• Details — name, display, vendor, type, connection (Internal, USB, Bluetooth or Network) and the current status. While the check runs it reads Checking.

• Settings — the paper width, among others.

• Assignments — under "Used as", every printer role and printing group that points at this printer.

From the options menu, Refresh all re-checks every printer. An empty list means no printer has been assigned yet — the view then offers Open Printer assignment directly.

Print jobs

Printer status answers whether a printer is reachable. What was actually sent to it and what became of it is in print jobs — two different questions, two different views.

Menu → Settings → Devices & Connections → Printing queue shows Current print jobs and history of all printers. The view has two sections:

• Queue — what is running or waiting right now.

• History — what was printed most recently, failed jobs included.

The Printers filter narrows the list to individual devices; All lifts the selection again. If nothing has ever been printed it reads No print jobs yet. Jobs appear here while printing and stay in the history afterwards.

Reading a job's status

A waiting job additionally names the number of attempts and, while another one follows, Retrying soon. If it has been trying in vain for a while, it is marked as stuck — which is exactly what the status row in the menu reports.

What you can do with a job

Tap a job and its detail view opens with Printer, Enqueued, Last change, Attempts, Last error, Used as, Printing group, Area and Source. If the job came from a Sub-Terminal it reads Forwarded from another Sales Point.

Plus four actions:

• Cancel — takes a waiting job out of the queue.

• Retry — puts a failed job back in.

• Printer — jumps to the printer concerned in Printer status.

• Open receipts — jumps to the receipt the job belongs to.

Queue per printer

You find the same two sections per printer as well: tap a printer in Printer status and its detail page shows that printer's queue and its recent prints. With nothing outstanding it reads No jobs waiting.

Sub-Terminals

Menu → Settings → Devices & Connections → Sub-Terminals lists, on the Main Sales Point, every Sub-Terminal linked to it. The header names the Main Sales Point itself.

Per Sub-Terminal you see:

• Bound / Not bound — whether the device is permanently assigned to this Main Sales Point.

• Connected / Disconnected and Online / Offline — whether the connection is up at this moment.

• IP address — the address currently in use. When an address is configured in the bessa Manager it is shown additionally as IP address (manager configured); where the two differ, that is a starting point for connection problems.

• Device, brand, model, OS, OS version, app version — useful when one device behaves differently from the rest. Mixed app versions in the same venue are a common cause.

• Demo — marks a device in demo mode, see Demo Mode.

When the status display on a Sub-Terminal reads Master not reachable, check this list on the Main Sales Point: if the device shows as Offline there, both sides see the same problem and the cause is in the network. See Wireless Ordering on Sub-Terminals.

Support log

Menu → Settings → Service & Diagnostics → Support log opens the app's log. It records what happens in the background and is the basis of any troubleshooting that goes beyond the status.

The view knows two sources:

• Live — what is happening right now. Reproduce the problem while the view is open and you watch the entries appear. Jump to live takes you back to the bottom.

• Files — the history already written to disk. Load history from file and Load older reach further back.

Narrowing the view

• Log sources — every service writes into its own area. Pick one instead of searching the combined stream. Open log in the service list gets you there faster.

• Level — Trace, Debug, Info, Warning and Error. Show errors hides everything but errors.

• Search — step through the hits with Next and Previous; Hide non-matching reduces the list to the hits.

• Wrap lines makes long entries readable on a handheld.

Getting a log to support

Menu → Settings → Service & Diagnostics → Upload support log packs the log files and transfers them to bessa. The Sales Point confirms with Support log successfully uploaded!; packing and transferring takes one to two minutes. The file is then available for download in the bessa Manager under that Sales Point.

Useful details for support, on top of the log:

1. When exactly did the problem occur (date and time)?

2. On which device — the Main Sales Point, or which Sub-Terminal?

3. What was the last step before the error?

Related topics

• Remote Sales Point Control — log level, log download and remote commands in the bessa Manager

• Welcome Screen at the Sales Point — the same states as chips, right after signing in

• Settings — the four categories of the Sales Point settings

• Printer Settings — connecting and assigning printers

• Wireless Ordering on Sub-Terminals

• Sales Point Closing

• Support