Some of the best changes to a till system don't come from a product roadmap. They come from standing at the bar on a Friday night watching someone use the thing you built.
Here's what we kept seeing — and what you kept telling us. A busy wet-led venue sells the same products in the same size over and over: pint, pint, pint. But because those products have variations (a half, a bottle, a jug), every single press opened the variation popup and asked the question. Tap the product, tap "Pint", tap confirm. Three touches for the thing you sell nine times out of ten. One operator described it as "being asked if I'm sure, four hundred times a shift". Fair.
From v1.5.85, there's a better way — and it came directly from that feedback.
Press the size first, not after
The Variation Bar flips the order of the conversation. Switch it on for a category and a slim bar of that category's variations — Pint, Half, Bottle, whatever your products actually carry — appears along the bottom of the POS screen, just above the function bar.
From that moment, the popup is gone for that category:
- Selling the usual? Just press the product. It goes straight into the basket at its default variation — the one you've marked as the default in the Back Office. One touch, no questions.
- Selling something different? Press the variation on the bar first — it lights up — then press the product. The item lands in the basket at that variation, and the bar resets, ready for the next sale.
If you've ever used a shift key, you already know how to use it. Nothing to learn, nothing to explain at handover — the bar is simply there, and the till gets out of the way.
The grid tells you what a press will do
The product buttons play along. With nothing selected, each product shows its default variation's price — the price a press will actually ring. Pick a variation on the bar and the whole grid re-prices to match: every product that comes in a Half now shows its Half price.
And the products that don't come in that variation? They grey out and politely refuse to sell until the selection clears — so there's no way to accidentally ring a "half" of something that's never had one. What you see on the grid is always exactly what the next press will do.
Deliberately one press at a time
We made the selection one-shot on purpose. The bar arms for a single press, sells that one item at the chosen variation, then drops back to defaults. We tried the alternative — a sticky selection that stays on — and the failure mode is obvious to anyone who's worked a busy service: someone leaves "Half" lit, the next three rounds ring through at half prices, and nobody notices until cashing up. One press, one exception, back to normal. The fast path stays fast and safe.
Changing category clears the selection too, and tapping the lit button again deselects it. No hidden state hanging around.
Everything else just works
Under the bonnet, the Variation Bar sells through exactly the same machinery as the old popup — so member pricing, price shifts, add-on prompts, stock checks and seat selection all behave precisely as before. Refunds keep the popup deliberately, because when you're handing money back, slower and explicit is the right speed. And kitchen tickets, receipts and reports see a normal variation sale, indistinguishable from one rung through the old way.
Switching it on
It's per category, and it's one tick. Open Back Office → Product Setup → Categories, edit the category, and turn on Variation Bar. The bar builds itself from the variation names already on your products — no list to configure, no buttons to design. If your draught products have Pint and Half variations, your bar says Pint and Half. (A small bonus: if someone once typed "Pnit" on a product, it'll show up as a button — the bar doubles as a free spelling check on your catalogue.)
Categories where the popup makes sense — build-a-pizza, anything where staff genuinely should choose every time — just leave the toggle off and nothing changes.
Available now, everywhere
The Variation Bar ships in v1.5.85 across every POS platform — web, Windows, Android and iPad — and the Back Office toggle is live today. Tills on automatic updates will pick it up on their next check.
This one's yours. It exists because operators took the time to tell us where the till was costing them seconds, and seconds are the whole game at the bar. If there's a screen on your epos247 that makes you answer a question you've already answered a hundred times today — tell us. Apparently we'll build it.
