Discover the benefits of Dines' market-leading Offline Mode, keeping your business running even when connectivity issues arise.
Offline Mode
Dines’ market-leading Offline Mode is a feature which allows you to serve your customers and process payments seamlessly in the absence of internet connectivity.
Everybody has seen the havoc that internet issues can cause. If you have our Offline Mode set up, however, you don’t have to worry. In this guide, we will walk you through how to set up Offline Mode, to ensure that your service remains uninterrupted in the face of pesky internet outages.
Activating Offline Mode
You can activate Offline Mode via the EPOS tab on your Dines app. Please note that Offline Mode is strictly “per device,” so you cannot set Offline Mode for multiple devices at once.
Head to Functions > Checkout Settings, and then scroll down to the bottom where it says “View Offline Limits.”
Now, you will be presented with various options to customise your Offline Mode experience. We will briefly describe these options below;
Enable Offline Payments: This lets you choose whether you wish to activate Offline Mode. By choosing to Enable Offline Payments, you can accept both Cash and Card payments directly on your device, despite not having an active internet connection. Later, once you've reestablished a stable WiFi connection, all pending payments will automatically process.
Automatic Offline Mode: With Automatic Offline Mode enabled, our system cleverly reacts to a ropey connection. It automatically switches to Offline Mode when it detects a weak or unreliable connection, and deactivates the feature once your connection stabilises. This means that you’ll never have to worry about toggling Offline Mode manually.
To determine whether Offline Mode is enabled, just glance at the top of the Dines App. There, you'll notice either a red light (offline) or a green line (online).
Using Offline Mode
The following options will let you set limits within Offline Mode, should you have certain thresholds in mind for the feature. Hopefully any internet issues will be fixed way before you reach these limits, but they’re good to have as a backup!
It’s worth noting that the below Offline Mode limits will automatically reset when your device reconnects to WiFi. For example, if you have chosen a limit of 50 card transactions, you can store up to 50 transactions on your device while in Offline Mode. However, once your device syncs with WiFi, you will have the capacity for another 50 transactions the next time you enter Offline Mode.
Please note with the above, however, that you need to be online long enough for all transactions to sync. Typically, each transaction takes 10 seconds to sync. Therefore, if you have 50 transactions, it could take up to 10 minutes for all of them to process. You can check pending offline transactions using the Offline Information section below.
Number of Card Transactions: Limit how many card transactions you wish to take while in Offline Mode.
Value of Card Transactions: Set a limit for the monetary value of the transactions you take in Offline Mode.
Per Limit Charge: Set the maximum value of each transaction. For example, if you set this as £30, any transactions over £30 will not be allowed.
Time Since Last Online: Here, you can decide how long Offline Payments can be held on your device. It is highly recommended that you do not set this beyond 24 hours (1440 minutes), and that you reconnect your device to WiFi within this limit. The maximum limit which you can apply is four days (5760 minutes).
It is recommended that you reconnect your device to WiFi at the end of every night, at very least, and ensure that the green “Online” icon at the top of the EPOS is active. This will ensure the syncing of all successful payments.
Offline Information
It is possible to easily monitor progress towards your offline limits at any given moment. If you head back to Functions and scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will see “Offline Information.” Click here to get a full rundown of your Offline Mode activity, including the orders you have taken while offline.
Taking Orders on Offline Mode
Taking orders in Offline Mode follows the same process as doing so online, with the main notable difference being a note displayed at the top of each order on the checkout screen, stating "Offline Order." This serves as a reminder that you're processing this order without an active internet connection.
Check Connectivity
Think that your internet is running slow, but aren’t sure? You can check your connectivity speed through the Dines app. Simply go to Functions > Troubleshooting and select “Run Speed Test.”
The test will normally take less than a minute to complete. Generally speaking, anything over 10mbps will be ample for processing payments via Dines.
Important to Note
Please be aware that due to the nature of Offline Mode, our system will be unable to check for potential payment issues such as card declines. While the probability of encountering such situations is extremely low (our tests indicate less than 2% occurrence), it's important to keep in mind that our system won't be able to detect stumbling blocks like insufficient funds in a customer's account until you reconnect to the internet.
By enabling Offline Mode, you are acknowledging that you accept full responsibility for any potential payment issues.
Video
In addition to the above article, we also have an official Dines video which delves into Offline Mode. If you're eager to explore Offline Mode further, the video is available below.
Thank you for reading our article on Offline Mode. If you have any questions at all, or if you have suggestions for a Knowledge Base article you’d like to see, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team. You can contact us via email at care@dines.co.uk, use our Live Chat service here, or message us via WhatsApp on 07822 002783.