Shared Tills, Tablets and Staff PINs
Pair a till, waiter tablet or kitchen screen, add staff with just a name and PIN, and see how the lock screen records every sale against the right person.
Updated 23 October 2026
Floor and kitchen staff don't need an email or a sign-in of their own. Give them a PIN, pair the café's till, tablet or kitchen screen once, and they tap their name to start. PIN staff and paired devices are free and unlimited on every plan.
Add staff with a PIN
- Open Settings, then Staff & what they can see.
- Under Staff with a PIN, type their name, choose their role and where they work, and give them a PIN of 4 to 6 digits.
- Tap Add. They can use any paired till or tablet straight away.
PINs can't be all the same digit or a simple run like 1234, and no two people at a café can share one. To give someone their own sign-in later, tap Give a sign-in next to their name: their sales and shifts stay theirs. Make PIN only does the opposite and frees up a sign-in.
Pair a till, waiter tablet or kitchen screen
- On the Staff page, under Shared devices, give the device a name (like "Front till"), choose what it is and where it is, and tap Add.
- You get an 8-character code, valid for 30 minutes.
- On the device, open cafeqr.app/pair, type the code and tap Pair this device.
The device now signs in on its own and opens only its own screens. It can never open settings, staff, your plan, billing, reports or menu editing, whatever PIN is typed on it. To stop using a device, tap Unpair; New code pairs it again or moves the pairing to another device.
| Device | Opens | Highest access a PIN gets |
|---|---|---|
| Till | The till, the waiter app, open tabs, the time clock and cash-up | Manager |
| Waiter tablet | The waiter app, the till for takeaways, open tabs and the time clock | Floor |
| Kitchen screen | The kitchen board | Kitchen |
The lock screen
Tills and waiter tablets open on a lock screen. Staff tap their name and type their PIN, and everything they ring up is recorded against them. A manager on a waiter tablet only gets Floor access there.
- The device locks after 2 minutes with nobody tapping it, or when someone taps Lock.
- Five wrong PINs lock that name for 5 minutes. A manager can tap Reset PIN lock next to them on the Staff page, and setting a new PIN clears it too.
- "Needs manager PIN" approvals still work as before: a manager types their PIN to approve a discount or refund without unlocking the device as themselves.
- Kitchen screens never lock.
Tips
- Pair the till behind the counter, not someone's phone. A phone is better with its owner's own sign-in.
- Change a PIN as soon as it's been seen. Anyone with a manager's PIN can approve refunds at the till.
- Unpair a device you've lost. It stops working on its next tap.