Alpha POS is the point of sale for South African restaurants, bars and cafés. Any phone, tablet or PC is a till, with no commission on your sales. A box at the venue keeps orders, kitchen tickets and payments going through an outage, and the owner follows every venue from a phone.
A At the venue
19:42 The internet drops
Table 4 sends its mains to the kitchen
New · Table 4
Bills close and the cash goes in the box
B The owner's phone
An alert: Box offline
19:58 The internet is back, and every sale reaches the owner app
Illustrative — not customer data.
Alpha POS · 2026
01 What Alpha POS does
The floor, the kitchen, the cash, the stock and the people, on the screens a venue already has. Every change is a permanent record of who, where and when, and the owner sees it all from a phone.
F—01
Floor, orders and bills on any screen
Tables sit where a manager drew them, each showing its status, time, guests and total. Tables, tabs, takeaways and staff meals; sizes, choices, notes, seats, Hold and Fire. Waiters work from their own phones, and a manager approves a void or a big discount with a PIN on the spot.
F—02
Screens and printers, per station
Each item goes to its station: a kitchen screen, a printer, or both. Screens run tickets oldest first, with timers, NEW, ADD and VOID, and all-day counts. Allergy notes print inverted and stand out on screen.
F—03
Blind cash-ups and a Z every night
One cash box per venue, opened with a counted float and cashed up blind: the manager counts by note and coin and only then sees what was expected. Payouts, drops and no-sales need a reason, and the day closes with a Z report.
F—04
SARS tax invoices, 15% VAT included
Categories, items with photos, sizes and choice groups. Import a menu from a spreadsheet. Recipes give every dish its plate cost and food cost %, and a suggested price for the category's target.
F—05
Every sale moves stock
Once dishes have recipes, every send takes its ingredients out of the right store. Blind counts show variance, and open bottles count by weight. A buying plan forecasts use from the last four weeks and says what to order from whom, and by when.
F—06
PINs, time clock, payslips
Staff sign in with a 4-digit PIN, and every action is checked against their role. They clock in and out on the till; timesheets, staff files, leave and payroll live in the owner app.
F—07
Every venue, from the phone
Today shows sales against the usual day, a projected close, labour, food and prime cost, and what needs attention. Change prices, mark dishes sold out, send supplier orders and record expenses from the phone.
F—08
QR at the table, receipts by phone or email
Turn on table ordering and guests scan the table's code, browse the menu with photos and send their order to the waiter, who accepts it before it goes to the kitchen. After paying, a QR code puts the receipt or tax invoice on the guest's phone, or the till emails it to a client it keeps.
F—09
Any browser is a till
Phones, tablets and PCs become tills, waiter phones and kitchen screens; pair one with a QR code or a manager's PIN. The Alpha POS app for Android adds network printing, QR scanning and alerts.
F—10
Every change on the record
Every action is a permanent record of who, which device, when and what, with the manager who approved it; nothing is edited or deleted. Staff PINs are stored as keyed hashes, table and receipt codes are signed, and every way in is rate-limited.
02 Offline
The box at the venue keeps the records, checks the rules and prints. It copies everything to Johannesburg whenever the internet is up, and the owner app reads that copy, so no till ever waits for the cloud.
Everything in the venue keeps working: orders, kitchen tickets, bills, payments and cash-up. The owner app, alerts, guest orders and phone receipts catch up when it is back.
Tills keep taking orders and payments. With the internet up, the cloud runs the venue by itself about 90 seconds later and tells the owner and managers. Nobody types anything.
Every record is on disk before the box confirms it, so a power cut can't take back a sale. The box starts by itself when the power returns.
A till keeps its own records until its server has them, then sends them again; duplicates are dropped. A sale made offline lands in the right business day.
03 Built for South Africa
Gap-free invoice numbers, the venue's VAT number and 15% VAT on every tax invoice, with the buyer's name and address from R5,000, or made out to the client it is emailed to. A venue not registered for VAT prints a receipt instead.
PAYE by SARS's annualised method, UIF and SDL, and each month's EMP201 totals with their due date. Payslips carry what section 33 of the BCEA asks.
Annual, sick and family responsibility balances, earned as the BCEA sets them, with public holidays left out of the days taken.
Records live on the box at the venue and on a server in Johannesburg, nowhere else. Every venue's contract includes an operator agreement under POPIA.
Keep your own card machine and your own rates: the till shows the amount to key in and records the slip number.
04 Getting started
Alpha creates the venue and sends the owner an invite to the owner app, where a passkey or a password signs them in.
You receive A venue ready to pair its first till.
A small computer on the venue's router, with the printers cabled beside it. A tablet-only venue on reliable internet skips it and runs from the cloud.
You receive A venue that trades with or without the internet.
Each phone, tablet or PC pairs with a QR code or a manager's PIN. The menu comes in from a spreadsheet; tables, stations and staff PINs are set in the back office.
You receive Tills, waiter phones and kitchen screens on one venue.
A test service, then the daily round: open the cash box, take orders, cash up and close the day.
You receive A Z report every night and Today on the owner's phone.
05 Questions
A monthly plan per venue, with no commission on your sales. Kitchen screens, printers and the owner app are never charged. Tell us about your venue on this page and we will send a quote.
Phones, tablets or PCs you may already own, a small computer for the venue (the box), and network or USB receipt printers. A venue with reliable internet can run on tablets alone, from the cloud.
Yes, beside it. The till shows the amount to key into your card machine and records the slip number, so you keep your own bank and your own rates.
The venue keeps trading on its box: orders, kitchen tickets, bills, payments and cash-up all work. The owner app, alerts and guest orders catch up when the connection is back.
Yes, once you turn it on. Guests scan the table's QR code and send their order to the waiter, who accepts it before it goes to the kitchen. Payment stays with the waiter.
Yes, for Android phones, tablets and card terminals, from pos.alpha-pms.com/app. The iPhone and iPad app is coming. Any browser works as a till too.
Not by itself. The AI receptionist, a separate Alpha product in testing, answers calls and WhatsApp; it comes to Alpha POS later as an add-on.
In South Africa: on the box at your venue and on our server in Johannesburg, nowhere else. Records are never edited or deleted, so every sale keeps who, where and when.
06 Book a demo
Tables, the kitchen, the cash-up and the owner app, on a venue full of trade. Tell us about yours: its tables or covers, how many tills, and the point of sale you use today. You will get a reply within one business day.