Choose the right moment to train

A new till rarely arrives at a convenient time. It might land on a Tuesday morning, and by Friday you are expected to be running full speed with it. The temptation is to gather everyone before service, talk them through the screens, and hope it sticks. It rarely does. Screens are learned with fingers, not ears, so the goal is to get every member of the bar team touching the till within the first five minutes of any training session.

Quiet service periods are your best classroom. Mid-afternoon lulls between 2pm and 4pm, Monday and Tuesday openings, and the hour before a midweek quiz are all ideal. Keep sessions to 45 minutes and work in groups of two or three. Any longer and attention drifts; any larger and half the group is watching rather than doing. If you can, book two sessions per person on different days, spaced a week apart, so the second one reinforces the first.

Start with the money, not the buttons

Before anyone learns where the gin lives on the screen, they should understand how the till handles cash. Walk through the opening float, the count, and where the readings live at the end of the shift. Show them how a void is recorded, how a refund is processed, and why both leave a trail. Bartenders who understand the audit trail treat the till with more care than those who see it as a magic box that prints receipts.

• Count the float together and agree the starting figure out loud.
• Demonstrate a cash sale, a card sale and a split payment in that order.
• Show where the end-of-day report sits and what it tells you.
• Explain who to call when the card reader drops its connection mid-round.

This takes fifteen minutes and saves hours of confusion later.

Build a tab from scratch, together

The heart of any bar till is the tab. Get your team building tabs rather than reading about them. Ask each person to open a tab, add four drinks with modifiers, move the tab to a different table, and close it. Modifiers are where most mistakes happen, so spend time there: no ice, extra lime, a double, a half pint, a dash, a swap from tonic to lemonade.

Encourage a naming convention for tabs, especially on busy nights. First names and a table number beat "bloke in the corner" every time. Show how to add a note, how to check allergens, and how to pre-authorise a card on a running tab. Then have them repeat the whole process twice without your help. Repetition is what turns a screen into muscle memory.

Practise split payments until they are boring

Split payments are the single biggest cause of queue friction when a new till goes live. Four friends, three cards, one wanting to pay cash for the round — it happens every weekend. Drill it deliberately.

• Split evenly between three cards.
• Split by item, with one person paying for just their drinks.
• Part cash, part card, with change given from the till.
• A customer changing their mind halfway through the split.

Time each person and let them repeat the sequence five times. Boring is good here. By the fifth attempt, the buttons are being pressed without thought, which is exactly what you want when there are ten people waiting.

Make practice feel like a Friday night

Flat drills only take you so far. Once the basics are in place, run short role-play rounds during a quiet shift. One person plays the customer, the others work the till. Give the customer a script with a few curveballs: a round with three different modifiers, a drink that is not on the menu, a request for a receipt to be emailed, or a complaint about the last round.

Keep each round to three or four minutes, then debrief. Ask what felt slow, what they had to hunt for, and what they would do differently. Rotate roles so everyone spends time both serving and watching. This is also the moment to test the awkward stuff: a card that declines, a tab that has been left open, a drink that needs removing from a bill.

Cheat sheets, shadow shifts and the first busy night

No one remembers every shortcut on day one. Produce a single laminated A4 sheet with the ten most-used functions, the void process, and the manager's contact for till issues. Keep it under the counter, not in a drawer, and update it after the first week once you know which buttons people actually struggle with.

Pair every new user with a confident colleague for their first two busy shifts. The buddy does not take over — they stand nearby, answer questions, and step in only if a queue is building. Once the first weekend is done, sit down with the team and ask which parts of the till still feel clunky. Small tweaks to button layout or preset categories often make a bigger difference than another training session. Recognise the people who picked it up quickly and ask them to teach the next intake. Nothing cements knowledge like explaining it to someone else.