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by pmlnr285 days ago |
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upvoteby xlii284 days ago|
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Depending on the country it’s not that easy. Maybe something changed in the meantime but where I am those blocks are prefilled-numbered and stock needs to be controlled.

It’s not like you can (could?) keep a block „just in case” and thus many shopkeepers wouldn’t even bother in case of outages.

Depending where you live a good old trust can be a currency. Humans are great when it comes to adaptation, I bet I could just write on paper name, CC number and leave it on a paper for shopkeeper and everything would resolve just fine..

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upvoteby xp84284 days ago|
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I hear you, and in my second job 20+ years ago we were still trained (in a cursory fashion) to use physical charge slips in case of a POS system network outage, a full power outage would strain my imagination for ability to transact business at the majority of stores other than small mom and pop operations, and tbh even if such an outage had happened to me in 2005, I would not expect my department store to remain open and conduct sales.

Most retail workers are GenZ and struggle to understand what this would even look like because they’ve never conducted any transaction without POS computers (for looking up prices, for tallying them, for figuring tax and total, and computing change), so even if a dusty manual in the stockroom technically spells out a method of ringing sales using nothing but pen and paper and maybe a solar calculator, I would be surprised if any of the clerks working any given day would have the initiative to initiate an offline protocol. Most likely the store manager would usher customers out, lock up the store, keep the staff for 30 minutes to see if it came back on, and then go home.

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upvoteby Thaxll285 days ago|
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How do you open the cash register for change when power is out?
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upvoteby nickjj285 days ago|
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> How do you open the cash register for change when power is out?

I've only seen a few but I believe they have springs on the inside and roll on little wheels similar to how desk draws roll. Most can be opened with a key to trigger that event.

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upvoteby edhelas285 days ago|
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With the physical key, everything doesn't need to be electronic you know
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upvoteby seydor285 days ago|
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Many countries require receipts to be sent to the tax services instantly. In many cases a long enough power cut (days) would render all transactions illegal

(And in many cases you cannot legally pay large amounts of money in cash, it has to be electronic)

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upvoteby blenderob285 days ago|
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Which countries exactly? I've traveled in UK and France and in both countries when the online cash register was down, they opened their physical ledger, made an entry and gave me a physical handwritten paper receipt written with pen and ink. They said they would make enter the same data online when the online cash register comes back up.
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upvoteby pjc50285 days ago|
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I believe this is France (NF525), but I don't think it says "instantly".
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upvoteby mytailorisrich284 days ago|
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My understanding is that this (NF525) only applies to computerised cash registers (software must be certified NF525 compliant), which there is no obligation to use in the first place.

So it is perfectly legal to use pen and paper and a cash box.

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upvoteby immibis284 days ago|
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Most governments are not as stupid as the anti-government wingnuts would have you believe. They will not prosecute you for taking transactions non-electronically during a power outage.
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upvoteby jjice285 days ago|
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I'm sure they'd make an exception.
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upvoteby mytailorisrich285 days ago|
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How can this even be a legal requirement?
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upvoteby cbg0284 days ago|
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In some countries whenever you print a receipt, a copy is also sent to the IRS equivalent of that country. Obviously there are events where that can't happen due to technical reasons outside of the store's control.
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upvoteby mytailorisrich284 days ago|
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Which countries? And, again, I doubt that this is the full picture because there are many cases where people simply don't "print a receipt" perfectly legally...
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upvoteby thyristan284 days ago|
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Germany for example mandates printing a receipt. The receipt must be stored in a certified storage inside the cash register and is signed cryptographically, including the hash of the previous receipt such that there is a hash-chain of printed receipts. Therefore each printed receipt that the customer takes home (and maybe at some point hands in to the tax office for some reason) can be used to check the integrity of the cash register storage and all prior receipts in the chain.

https://www.lexware.de/wissen/buchhaltung-finanzen/neue-rege... https://www.lexware.de/wissen/buchhaltung-finanzen/kassenbon...

Many other EU countries have similar regulations, and in some cases had them for a long time.

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upvoteby aforwardslash284 days ago|
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Same in Portugal. Sync with the tax authority can be immediate or deferred (every x days). Obviously, you can still invoice manually using a receipt book, in case of failure or unavailability of software systems.
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upvoteby mytailorisrich284 days ago|
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Thanks! European red tape madness strikes again... At least in France cash registers are not mandatory (for now...) so there is a way around this madness.
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upvoteby District5524284 days ago|
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This is a bit more than just red tape madness, it's a strategy to make businesses more transparent. This is about trying to reduce non-reported transactions and too many people dodging their reporting. Even if the rules for cash registries and reporting are detailed, a) that's not really expensive for businesses - it's easy to automate and there are quite a number of competitors; b) compared to accounting and tax rules, they are dead simple.

Receipts or invoices are the basis for a firm's whole economic activity, including the underpinning of their financial reporting, their tax burdens etc. And businesses failing to provide receipts erodes not only the tax base, but also any rights a consumer may have.

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upvoteby mytailorisrich284 days ago|
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The thing with red tape madness is that it is always perfectly justified.
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upvoteby aforwardslash284 days ago|
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Its actually less red tape. Getting a second copy of a given invoice is trivial, processing of invoices for tax rebates is also mostly automatic (such as health and education expenses); tax invoicing uses well-defined formats, so its trivial to migrate between systems, and perform all kinds of analysis. Also, it increases transparency - you know that eg. the VAT you're paying is not ending in the vendor's pockets.
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upvoteby drooopy284 days ago|
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What red tape madness are you even talking about?
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upvoteby inglor_cz285 days ago|
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Force majeure should apply.
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upvoteby guappa285 days ago|
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Source?
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upvoteby seydor284 days ago|
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Despite the EU having a directive to not make electronic invoicing mandatory, they now allow exceptions that introduce mandatory online invoicing. For example greece romania italy: https://sovos.com/blog/vat/greece-mandatory-b2b-e-invoicing-...
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upvoteby guappa284 days ago|
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In Italy it doesn't have to be in real time. It's a once a month thing!
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