How do I make a POS training manual for staff on an iPad?

Why a guide made from your own till works

Most POS training material is a blank template or the vendor’s own help pages. Neither shows your menu, your buttons or your discounts. A manager in a Square Community thread asking for a cashier training manual, viewed more than 9,000 times, put it simply: “there needs to be screenshots for everything in your manual… it’s difficult to do training as a result.”

And people forget. When a gym member asked on Reddit whether staff are trained on the till at all, one reply was: “Yes. Does any human forget how to do something when they aren’t repeating it? Also yes.” (r/PlanetFitnessMembers)

A guide made from screenshots of your own iPad till answers both problems. It shows exactly what your staff will see, and it is there for the task they do once a month.

This works with any POS app that runs on an iPad, such as Square, Shopify POS, Lightspeed or TouchBistro.

Pick the tasks that cause the most calls to a manager

Do not document the whole POS. Start with the tasks people get stuck on:

Task	Why it trips people up	Finished when
Refund a sale	Done rarely, often with a customer waiting	The refund receipt appears
Void an item	Easy to confuse with a refund	The item is gone from the ticket
Split a bill	Several ways to do it	Each guest has their own total
Apply a discount	Different discounts, different rules	The discounted total shows
Take cash and give change	The drawer and the screen must agree	The sale closes and the drawer opens
Clock in and out	New staff do it before anything else	Their shift shows as started

Ask your team which tasks they call you over for. That list beats any template.

Record each task on the till

The iPad records its own screen (Apple’s instructions):

1. Turn on Do Not Disturb, so a message does not appear mid-recording.
2. Swipe down from the top-right corner to open Control Center, and tap the Screen Recording button.
3. Do the task slowly, with a test item. Pause for a second on each new screen.
4. Stop the recording from the red button at the top of the screen.

Record in a practice setup, not during a real sale. Use your POS provider’s training or test mode if it has one; if not, ask your provider how to practise safely. When the task needs a staff passcode, stop before typing it or cover it later. A recording shows every digit you tap.

Test first. Apple notes that some apps do not allow their content to be recorded. If your recording comes out black, take a screenshot of each screen instead: press the top button and a volume button together, or the top button and the Home button on an iPad with a Home button.

Turn each recording into a guide

Import the recording into Walkthru on the same iPad. It cuts the recording into one screenshot per screen. Then, for each step:

• Delete what nobody needs, such as a loading screen.
• Mark the button. Tap, press-and-hold and swipe markers show the kind of touch. On iPad you can place them with Apple Pencil.
• Write one instruction as the step’s title. Use the words on the button: “Tap Refund”, not “Go to the refund area”.
• Add a label on the picture for a warning that belongs on the screen, such as “Manager only”.
• Add a tip for a rule that is not on the screen, such as “Refunds over $50 need a manager”.
• Cover customer details. Walkthru reads each screenshot on the iPad and offers to cover email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses and card numbers it finds. It does not look for names, so check every step yourself; order notes and receipts often carry them.

Nothing is uploaded. Walkthru has no account and no server, so your till’s screens stay on the iPad.

Put the guide where staff will use it

Where	Export	Why
A binder or a laminated card at the counter	PDF guide, one step per page	It is there when a customer is waiting
The staff group chat	Step images	Staff can look ahead on their own phones
New-hire onboarding	Video reel with a voiceover	It shows the whole task before they try it

In the one-step-per-page layout, each step’s title prints in large bold type above the screenshot, so put the instruction there. For a voiceover, see adding a voiceover to a screen recording.

Then test it. Give the printed guide to someone who has not done the task, say nothing, and watch. Where they hesitate is the page to fix.

Keep it current

POS apps update often, and an update can move a button. When a page stops matching the till, record that task again or replace the one screenshot that changed, and reprint that page. Write the date on each guide’s cover. See updating a guide after the screens change.

For a written procedure with an owner and review dates, use the mobile SOP template.

The free way

For one or two tasks, you can do it by hand: take a screenshot of each screen, open it in Markup and circle the button with Apple Pencil, then paste the pictures into Pages and write an instruction under each. It works; it just takes longer, and it takes that long again after the next POS update.