POS offline mode: what still works when the internet drops

An internet outage can affect order entry, card collection and kitchen delivery in different ways. Confirm each one for your exact POS app, devices and network. Some supported devices store card payments for later processing; Lightspeed K-Series describes a separate cellular payment-terminal route. Taking an order or saving a card payment does not prove the kitchen received it or the bank approved it.

Our reviews of Toast, Square, Clover, SpotOn, Lightspeed and SkyTab each give offline mode a few lines. This page sets the six side by side from each company's help pages and adds a plan for before, during and after an outage. SkyTab is now called Shift4 Dine, after Shift4 renamed it in May 2026.

What keeps running on each POS?

POS	Orders and kitchen	What stops or waits
Toast	New orders on terminals and Toast Go handhelds. Receipts print while Ethernet cables stay plugged in. Tickets reach a hardwired KDS if the network meets Toast's setup rules	Toast gift cards and loyalty, online ordering, new Mobile Order & Pay orders, menu edits including 86ing items, shift review, and reports until devices sync
Square	Square's offline help covers payments. Ask the vendor to confirm your printer and KDS path, then agree a controlled test and staff fallback	Close-of-day reports; loyalty points must be linked by hand later; new online and delivery-app orders may not reach the POS until the disruption ends
Clover	Clover's offline help covers payments. Ask the vendor to confirm your printer and KDS path, then agree a controlled test and staff fallback	EBT and gift card payments
SpotOn Restaurant	SpotOn says POS stations, KDS, handhelds, printers and kiosks stay connected and orders keep firing to the kitchen	SpotOn's restaurant page lists no limits; ask for them in writing
Lightspeed Restaurant (K-Series)	Orders, tables, sync between registers, kitchen printing, KDS, cash and clock-ins, all over the local network	Integrated card payments, Back Office reports and menu changes, item photos and allergen notes, gift cards, loyalty, delivery and online-order integrations
Shift4 Dine (formerly SkyTab)	The local network, printers and KDS keep working while the local network is up	Refunds and pre-authorizations; menu edits are saved only on the station where you make them

Sources: Toast's guide to using offline mode, Square's offline payments article, Clover's offline payments setup, SpotOn's restaurant POS page, Lightspeed's offline POS article and Shift4's offline payments FAQ.

Two details matter most at a busy store. Lightspeed says that if the local network fails as well as the internet, only one POS (the active device) keeps taking orders, and printers and the KDS stop. Toast says its offline KDS needs Universal Plug and Play multicast turned on in the router and at least one hardwired Toast device other than Elo V1 on the network to act as the local hub. These are Toast requirements; ask each other vendor for its own network design.

How long can offline card payments wait?

POS	Offline cards by default?	Limits you can set	How long they can wait	Not taken offline
Toast	Yes, background card processing is on by default	A per-payment limit; managers override anything above it	Toast warns an authorization can expire as early as 24 hours after the sale in some cases	Pre-authorizations started during the outage, Toast gift cards
Square	Yes, since April 2026, unless you opted out	A maximum per payment between $1 and $50,000, or cash only	Help article: Register, Terminal and Handheld upload within 72 hours, with 24 recommended. Reader and Stand acceptance sessions last 24 hours; their payments must upload within 72 hours of session start. Confirm the device conflict below	Typed-in cards, Square Gift Cards, Afterpay, Cash App Pay, Tap to Pay, EBT/SNAP, Kiosk Lite and standalone Kiosk
Clover	Yes, on Station, Station 2, Mini, Flex and Mobile	A cap per payment, a total per device, and approval above an amount	Up to 7 days	EBT and gift cards
SpotOn Restaurant	SpotOn says offline mode switches on by itself	Not stated on the restaurant page	Not stated on the restaurant page; payments sync when the internet returns	Not stated on the restaurant page
Lightspeed Restaurant (K-Series)	Cards run on the payment terminal in standalone mode over LTE or 4G	Not stated in the offline article	Not stated in the offline article	Any card, on a terminal without a cellular connection
Shift4 Dine	Yes, it comes switched on	An optional limit per payment	Up to two days; the POS flags offline payments older than 24 hours	Refunds, pre-authorizations, cards on a Shift4 Duo, and cards on the customer display unless it runs Shift4's Commerce Engine

Square's help article separates the 24-hour Reader and Stand acceptance session from the 72-hour upload deadline. Its Terminal product-page footnote still says payments are declined if the device does not reconnect within 24 hours of the first offline payment. These sources conflict for Terminal. Get the current limit for your exact device and app confirmed before relying on it; an earlier reconnect does not guarantee bank approval. Neither Kiosk Lite nor standalone Kiosk supports offline payments.

Toast, Square and Clover each say you are responsible for payments declined after you reconnect, and Shift4 says a payment approved offline can still be declined by the card's bank. Square adds that it cannot give you contact details for a guest whose offline payment failed.

What happens to online, delivery and phone orders?

Check the provider's order path, including any backup connection, queue and recovery process. Toast says its online ordering is unavailable offline and suggests turning it off, switching DoorDash and Uber Eats to a backup method, and pausing Mobile Order & Pay. Square says new online orders may not appear on the POS until the disruption ends, then show up in Square Dashboard. Lightspeed lists delivery and online-order integrations as unavailable.

Ask any phone-ordering provider how an order is received, queued, delivered and reconciled while the restaurant's POS is offline. Maple Pro supports phone ordering into supported POS systems, but an integration listing does not establish an offline workflow. Confirm your restaurant's exact setup and staff fallback before launch. Do not count a caller's accepted request as a delivered kitchen ticket.

What should you set up before the next outage?

1. Confirm the supported offline payment mode while online. Toast only lets you change its setting when fully online, and Shift4 says a POS without the right updates may fail to go offline. Do not enable or test offline cards on an unsupported device such as either Square kiosk app.
2. Agree payment limits and staff authority. Where the system supports limits, set them with your processor and decide who may approve an exception. Keep a supported payment alternative for checks outside those limits.
3. Document the kitchen network. Ask the vendor and network owner which POS, printer, KDS and kiosk connections must remain available. Distinguish loss of upstream internet from loss of the local network; do not apply one vendor's subnet or cabling rules to all systems.
4. Confirm a backup connection. Toast suggests cellular backup to reduce the risk of expired authorizations. Lightspeed K-Series describes a standalone card-terminal path over LTE or 4G; that is a working cellular connection, not a stored-card payment.
5. Agree a permitted contact process. Toast suggests an optional dining option that collects a guest name and phone number for follow-up. Confirm your own collection, access and retention rules; do not write card details into order notes.
6. Print device-specific recovery instructions. Toast warns against restarting or unplugging devices and changing the router during an outage. Square's payment guide permits a restart or power-off if pending payments still upload before expiry, but warns against signing out or deleting the app. Record the rule for each device; do not use one shutdown instruction for every POS.
7. Name who pauses online ordering and switches the delivery tablets, and write down how.
8. Agree a controlled test outside guest service. Ask the vendor and processor for an approved method, supported test payment, limits and recovery steps. Check order entry, kitchen delivery, staff fallback and later reconciliation separately, including declines and duplicates. Do not unplug live equipment or force an unsupported kiosk payment.

What do you do when the connection comes back?

1. Follow the vendor's recovery steps and confirm uploads. Keep each device available as its instructions require. Shift4 sends one pending payment every two minutes and says to allow one hour for every 30 pending payments; check the queue rather than assuming reconnection finishes it.
2. Do not force the batch. Toast says not to press Capture on the Close Out Day screen; authorizations are captured once the device reconnects.
3. Check for declines in your payments report, and call guests using the contact details you took offline.
4. Fix tips, loyalty and time entries. Square has you add handwritten tips and link loyalty points after the upload, and Toast advises against running payroll until everything has synced.
5. Turn online ordering back on and check the delivery tablets are back to normal.

Published by Maple, which sells AI phone answering and Pro phone ordering into supported POS systems. No Maple offline order-delivery capability is established here. This AI-assisted guide compares each vendor's own help pages and restaurant pages with an original outage checklist. It does not report hands-on testing of any POS, and each vendor's settings, limits and time windows can change, so check its current help page before you rely on them.