What makes our tills so reliable? 

Not a PC in a box

Our tills are not a PC in a big chunky box. This gives them a number of key advantages that all lead to a higher level of overall reliability.

  • A PC has a fan to cool it down but the fan will suck in gunk and grime over time. In a hospitality environment this will bring in highly corrosive elements such as coke and beer that will shorten the life of the unit. Not so with our tills, there is no fan, it does not require cooling and this increases the reliability.
  • Many of the PCs have hard disk drives, and as the most complex mechanical component in any PC it is the most lightly to fail. Our tills do not have hard drives all the information is held on a chip, a bit like an iPOD.
  • PCs have to run Microsoft Windows, ours do not.  In addition to the extra cost we all know that the PC makers and Microsoft want you to replace your hardware and software every three or so years. Just remember Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Seven coming this year. No software company writes their software for older versions of Windows so if you wish to upgrade then you also have to upgrade the operating system. Often the hardware will not run the latest version of Windows, thus to get the latest features you have to replace your hardware.  A till purchased from us twelve years ago would still be up-to-date today.
  • A PC takes several minutes to boot up, our till takes less than 2 seconds.  Consider a power failure on a busy Friday night, with our tills you will be operating two seconds after the power comes back, but if you have PCs you will have a very long two plus minutes.
  • A PC based till can get a Virus and therefore you need to have virus checker software. Our tills cannot get a virus, so more up time, less hassle with virus checkers and more protection.

Standalone operation

Normally our tills are connected to a host computer and send transactions to the host computer every couple of seconds.  But they will also operate completely standalone when required, and this aids reliability.

  • In the event that the host computer goes away:- turned off by the cleaner, internet is down or just off for maintenance the tills keep running, they keep running and running.  In fact a standard till in a coffee shop configuration will store up to 25,000 transactions until it has to be reconnected to its host.
  • This is a significant advantage in live operations. Take a busy Friday or Saturday night and the server packs in.  With most system you would be in deep do-do requiring engineers to come to site while you trade on paper for the weekend, ouch!
  • With a system from Centegra you don't worry, call us to let us know and then you just get on with business as usual. When the PC is fixed and the back-up restored then the tills automatically start sending their backlog of transactions down, the key is no loss of service.

Simple configuration

You can plug our till in and turn them on they will connect to the back office automatically, all you have to do is give the till a keypad and a location and within a few seconds the till is up and running and ready to go.

Our QEM software will even enable you to program in the location's Internet address and then any till connecting from that site will be automatically be setup, great when moving tills from one location to another (e.g. in to a conference room).

Designed for purpose

Our tills are designed for purpose they are a till and nothing but a till. When it comes to reliability less is more.  The less parts, moving or otherwise, to go wrong the more reliable.

I like to use the example of our tills being like a very very very clever calculator. Just like the one at the back of the kitchen drawer. It sits there for year after year unused and then works when you switch it on and does what you want.    Our tills give you the same benefit.