Training a new counter assistant on your order system in a single shift
Short answer: teach the happy path first, let them do it for real within an hour, and save every exception for after lunch. Most counter training fails because it front-loads edge cases nobody remembers.
Hour one: the happy path only
Search a product, add it, pick the customer, submit. That is the whole job most of the time. Do it once yourself while they watch, then hand over the tablet and have them do three practice orders back to back. Do not mention discounts, delivery charges or payment status yet.
Hour two: real orders with you standing there
Practice orders teach the buttons; real customers teach the pace. Stand beside them for the first handful of genuine orders and resist the urge to take the tablet back. The mistakes they make in front of you are the ones you get to correct cheaply.
After lunch: the four exceptions that actually occur
- The customer is not in the list. Type the address in and carry on — see why customers go missing from order search.
- The price needs changing on one line. Show the line-level override, and show the margin warning that appears if they go below cost.
- The scanner stops responding. Tell them to search by SKU and carry on rather than stop the queue; the scanner checklist can wait until the counter is quiet.
- They are not paying today. Show them where payment status is set, and be explicit about which statuses your business allows them to choose.
What to write down
One side of A4, taped inside the counter: your customer naming convention, who is allowed to discount and by how much, and which payment statuses are theirs to set. Everything else lives in the software.
Why this works
A trade counter system that needs more than a shift to teach is the wrong system. Order entry that mirrors the conversation — what do you need, who are you, where is it going — is learnable in an hour because it matches what the assistant is already doing with their mouth.
Trade Order POS is deliberately shaped that way: scan or search, pick the customer, submit into Linnworks. Find out more →
Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.