POS System Update Checklist

Schedule the update for the lowest-cover night of the week — typically Sunday or Monday after close. Avoid Friday and Saturday service entirely. Confirm no private events, large parties, or catering pickups are booked through the window.

Pull the current build number from the manager terminal (Toast: Setup → About; Square: Settings → Hardware). Read the vendor's release notes end-to-end — flag any breaking changes to modifiers, tip handling, or EMV firmware that will need staff training.

Post the window in 7shifts (or your scheduling tool) and the back-of-house Slack/group chat. Brief the opening manager for the next service on what may have changed — modifier screens, tip-out flow, gift-card lookup.

Pull sales mix, tip declarations, and payroll exports to CSV. Tipped-employee tip credit records need to be retrievable for FLSA recordkeeping regardless of what happens to the POS — keep a copy outside the POS environment.

Menu structure is the most common thing to break after a POS update — nested modifiers, price tiers, and happy-hour rules in particular. Export the menu config from the back office and screenshot the current modifier trees for the top-20 sellers.

An untested backup is not a backup. Open the export on a second device, confirm the menu and sales files load, and attach the verified file here. If the vendor manages backups (Toast, Square), confirm a successful snapshot timestamp from the past 24 hours.

Pull the open-tab report and walk every station before triggering the update. Tabs left open through a version push lose tip and modifier data in some POS platforms and reappear as $0 voids the next morning.

Run the update on the manager/server terminal first, not on a service station. Watch for the install to complete and the terminal to reboot fully before pushing to satellites.

Bar, server stations, expo, and the KDS bumpscreens at grill / sauté / pantry. Wait for each device to come back online before moving to the next — a half-updated KDS will route tickets to nowhere.

EMV firmware lags the POS update by hours on many platforms. Force the pinpad update from the device menu and verify the reader accepts a chip insert, swipe, and contactless tap before declaring the window closed.

Check every terminal's About screen against the target build. Note any device that failed mid-install, threw a network error, or rebooted into the prior version.

Ring a $0.01 test ticket and tender against cash, chip, contactless, gift card, and a comp. Void one, refund one, and split one across two payments. Confirm the receipt prints from the correct printer and the tip line shows.

Send a ticket with items routed to grill, sauté, pantry, and expo. Confirm allergen flags render in red on the bumpscreen, modifiers print under the parent item, and ticket times start at fire.

Walk the menu and ring the top sellers as a server would — burger temps, sub options, half-and-half pizzas, happy-hour pricing windows. Modifier breakage is the #1 silent failure after a POS update.

Verify DoorDash, UberEats, Grubhub, and your direct online ordering (Toast Online Ordering, ChowNow) are pulling orders into the KDS. Place a test order on each channel — a stale OAuth token after an update is common.

Confirm sales push to R365 or QuickBooks and that 7shifts (or Homebase) is pulling labor and sales for the labor-percentage view. A broken sync that runs unnoticed for a week corrupts prime-cost reporting for the period.

Walk the lineup through any reordered buttons, new modifier prompts, or changes to the tip-out flow. Five minutes here prevents a night of misrings and comps.

Trigger the rollback from the back office or have the vendor restore the snapshot taken before the update. Do not attempt to limp through service on a half-failed install — broken tip handling or missing modifiers cost more than the downtime.

Use the priority/24-7 line if it's mid-service or pre-open. Include the affected terminal serial numbers, the target build, error screenshots, and the timestamp of the rollback. Most vendors require the ticket open before they'll review escalation.

Capture what failed, what the workaround was, how long service was affected, and the vendor's root-cause response. File this in the operations folder — the next update at this location, or at a sister location, will need it.