Taking the register in a hall with no signal

Why is offline check-in a requirement rather than a feature here?

Because of where these classes happen. Church halls, community centres, basement studios and park pavilions are the rooms independent teachers can afford, and none of them have reliable signal. A register that needs a connection is a register that fails in the exact rooms this vertical exists for.

So it is designed offline-first rather than retrofitted: the device carries a signed manifest of who is admitted, matches against it with the phone in aeroplane mode, and syncs when it can. The name list is the primary method for classes rather than scanning, because reading a name off a phone beats asking twelve people standing on mats to find an email.

What should I do before I leave the house?

Open the class on your phone while you still have signal, so the manifest is loaded before you need it. That is the whole ritual — it takes a few seconds and it is the difference between a smooth door and a queue.

If you have taken any late bookings, refresh once more before you go in. Bookings made after your last sync are the one thing an offline register cannot know about, and a student who booked on the bus is exactly the person who will arrive last and flustered.

• Open the class in the app while you have signal.
• Refresh after any late bookings, on the way out rather than on the way in.
• Charge the phone — the register is on it and so is everything else.
• Know your place count: the room is full when the count says so, not when it feels full.

How do I handle someone who turns up without booking?

The simplest route is to have them book on their own phone while they put their shoes away — it takes a minute, the place comes off the same inventory, and the waiver gets signed without you having to remember it. If there is no signal in the room, they can book outside the door or on the way in.

If they pay you in cash, record the place from the back office when you next have signal. A back-office order lands on the same inventory, the same order and the same ledger as an online booking, with the payment recorded as external, so your attendance and your income stay consistent.

One caveat to know before you take the note: an externally-paid order cannot be refunded through bindro, because there is no card payment to reverse. The refund attempt fails honestly rather than pretending it worked. Cash you took is cash you hand back.

What you cannot do is take a card at the door through bindro — door POS is not turned on for this vertical. Their phone is the card reader.

What happens to the register after the class?

It syncs when signal returns, and the attendance it carries is the figure your payout is calculated against, so it is worth ticking people off properly rather than from memory afterwards. The sync is designed to survive a bad record rather than fail wholesale: one unreadable entry must not cost you a night's attendance.

Two days after the class ends, the money releases. Attendance and payment are separate facts — a comp place shows in the register and writes no revenue — so the register is a true record of who was in the room rather than a proxy for who paid.