Internet outages are one of the biggest annoyances of the modern era. Fortunately they don’t usually last very long, but their effect on businesses can be stressful and inconvenient. With so many important aspects of business being reliant on network services, such as payment processors, the potential for lost revenue as a result of the Internet being down can be a real thing.
Users of SuperSalon can rest easy knowing that our advanced salon management system was designed with these outages in mind. When the Internet goes down due to inclement weather or other factors, almost all of SuperSalon’s features are still accessible and usable. A list of features in the system users WON’T have access to is as follows:
- Uploads to iOffice
- Integrated Card Processing
- SalonCheckin
- SMS Messaging
- Centralized Customer Database
Uploading Sales Data
The features listed above are all completely dependent on the location’s Internet connection, and will not be functional during an outage. All is not lost, however, as SuperSalon is designed to store data for when the connection is established again. All tickets and sales processed through the system during times when the Internet is disconnected are safely stored in the database.
The moment the Internet connection is reestablished, SuperSalon’s upload function will automatically begin sending data to iOffice. Even in cases where the Internet has been down for several hours, this process will require no action on the part of salon staff, and as long as the connection remain stable, iOffice will be fully synchronized in a few moments.
Integrated Card Transactions
When disconnected from the Internet, integrated card processing is impossible to do in real time. That distinction is made due to the fact that some companies do allow for off-line processing. It usually requires telephone authorizations, and may not be very time efficient, but it is possible. Transactional data is sent to the payment processor, with an authorization code, when the location is back online.
Not all of our partnered companies who provide integrated card solutions have this off-line processing capability. To find out if yours does, or if you’d like to possibly make a switch to one that has this feature, please call or email our Sales department, and they will be happy to assist you. Alternatively, you can inform your salon clients that card transactions are suspended when the Internet goes down.
SalonCheckin and Other SuperSalon Power Tools
When disconnected from the Internet, SuperSalon will not receive new appointment bookings from the SalonCheckin feature, nor will it be able to issue SMS text messages for the duration of the outage. However, salon clients will still be able to send their bookings, they just won’t receive a confirmation. As soon and the outage has passed, queued appointments will begin to appear in SuperSalon.
Likewise with the other power tools, when the salon has reestablished its connection to the Internet, text messages will immediately be sent, albeit a bit delayed. In the case of the Centralized Customer Database, however, this feature will be completely unusable for the duration of the Internet outage. Any changes to customer data will immediately be sent to it when reconnected.
Though many features of SuperSalon and iOffice are cloud-based, they are compartmentalized enough to still be almost fully functional without an Internet connection. Some of our clients in more remote locations even still use dial-up connections for their uploading and other network dependent capabilities.
We believe that it should be an industry standard for a point-of-sale system to be functional in any situation, and we pride ourselves on establishing that standard early on. If you’d like to know more about SuperSalon’s robust features and capabilities, let us know via phone or email, and we will be happy to tell you the rest of the story!