Docs and training.

The demo shop

Choose Try the demo for a made-up supermarket with 90 days of sales. The staff PIN is 1234. Nothing in the demo touches your business, and it is never backed up or synced.

Setting up

Choose Set up my business. Six short steps, and only the first two are required.

Recovery phrase

After setup the app shows 24 words. Write them on paper and keep them safe. They are the only way back into your data if the device is lost, damaged or reset.

Starter products

Prices are rough shelf prices to edit. Stock and cost start at zero, so add real cost when you receive stock or profit will look too high. Repeating a pack is safe, because items you already have are skipped.

Five tabs: Sell, Products, Customers, Reports and More. You only see what your role allows, so a cashier not seeing reports is by design.

• Choose your name and enter your PIN. Five wrong PINs lock that person out for 30 seconds, doubling each time up to 15 minutes.
• The app locks after 5 minutes idle on the till and 15 minutes elsewhere.

1. Find the item: tap, search by name or SKU, or scan. A USB or Bluetooth scanner works like a keyboard. Press F1 to focus the search box.
2. Set the quantity. Items sold by weight or volume open a decimal keypad.
3. Tap a line to change its quantity, price or discount.
4. Tap Pay, choose the method and confirm.
5. Print or share the receipt.

Payment

• Cash shows change due.
• Transfer, card and mobile money record the method for reports.
• Split payment: add one method, then another for the rest.
• Credit puts the amount on a customer's account and respects their credit limit.

Voids and refunds

A void cancels a sale that should not have happened. A refund returns money on a sale that did happen. Both need a reason and permission, and both are logged. Discounts, shipping and price changes also need permission.

Holding a sale

Hold parks a basket so you can serve someone else.

Go to Products > Add a product. Name and selling price are essential. Add cost to see profit, a category, barcodes, a unit and a low stock level.

For sizes or colours, add variants. Each has its own price, barcode and stock.

Stock only changes through recorded movements: opening, receive, sale or refund, adjust or count, and loss. Profit uses the average cost from what you paid at each receipt.

Add a customer with a name and optional phone, email and credit limit. The Customers tab shows Owed to you and You owe. Open a customer to see history, record a payment or adjust their balance. Anyone past their limit is flagged Over limit.

Raise a purchase order, then receive it when goods arrive. Stock goes up at the cost you enter, and the supplier's balance goes up if you have not paid. Record payments from the supplier's page.

More > Expenses > + Expense. Choose amount, category, how it was paid and who to. If a shift is open and you paid cash, mark it as taken from the till so the drawer count stays right.

1. Open with the cash in the drawer.
2. Sell as normal. Cash sales, refunds, till expenses and pay-ins and pay-outs move the expected cash.
3. Close by counting the drawer. Counterbook shows the expected amount and the difference.

Shortages and overages are recorded, not hidden.

Turn on invoices in Settings to create quotes and invoices with terms and due dates, record payments against them and share a PDF. Open balances appear in Reports.

Pick a period from today to 90 days. You get revenue, gross profit and net profit with the change against the previous period, a chart of sales by hour or by day, stock value, what customers owe, open invoices, discounts, refunds and tax, plus rankings for products, categories, payment methods, expenses and staff. Profit figures need the profit permission.

More > Staff. Give each person a name, a role and their own PIN. Never share one PIN. Deactivate people who leave rather than deleting them.

For owners, managers and accountants: More > Activity log.

• Watch list: voids, refunds, big discounts, price changes, stock losses, no-sale drawer opens, repeated wrong PINs and reprints.
• By person: who did how much of what.
• Log: every entry, filterable by period, action, person and text.
• Integrity check: entries are chained, so changing or deleting an old one is detected.

Entries cannot be edited or deleted in the app.

More > Import brings in products, customers, suppliers or stock counts from CSV or Excel. You match columns, read a dry run, then confirm.

More > Export data writes Excel, CSV (zipped with a checksum manifest) or JSON for a date range. Cells starting with =, +, - or @ are neutralised.

• Web till: turn on sharing and any phone, tablet or computer on the same Wi-Fi can open the address or scan the QR code and sell from a browser.
• Join a business: install Counterbook on a second device, choose Join a business on this network and enter the hub's address and pairing code.

Devices catch up when they reconnect, and offline changes are merged with the latest edit of each field winning. A device restored from a backup stops syncing and has to join again.

More > Settings holds business details, tax, receipts, invoice terms, low stock defaults, hardware and appearance. Choose Light, Dark or System and a colour for your business. The colour is kept on each device.

Counterbook is free and shows one small labelled promotion at the foot of More, never on the till. Show house ads turns it off.

Three things to understand

• Recovery phrase: 24 words shown at setup. It unlocks your data and any phrase-protected backup.
• Backup file (.cbbak): an encrypted copy of everything, including staff and their PIN logins.
• Backup password: an alternative you choose when backing up, so the file opens on any device without the phrase.

Elevven11 holds no copy of your data or keys, and there is no reset link.

Set up once (15 minutes)

1. Write the 24 words on paper and have someone read them back. Do not photograph them.
2. Keep the paper away from the device.
3. Open More > Backup and export > Back up now and pick phrase or password protection.
4. Save a copy to a USB drive.
5. Turn on Automatic backup: every 6 hours, daily or weekly. It runs while the app is open and always uses the phrase.
6. Optional: connect Google Drive for an off-site copy.

Keep three copies, on two kinds of storage, with one away from the shop.

Google Drive

Backups upload to a Counterbook backups folder in your own Drive. Counterbook asks only for the drive.file permission, so it sees just the files it created. Files are encrypted on your device first, so Google holds only ciphertext.

Restoring

• Same device: Backup and export > Backups on this device > Restore. A safety backup of current data is made first.
• New or reset device: install Counterbook, choose Restore from backup, pick the file, enter the password or phrase, then sign in with a staff PIN.

Moving to a new device

Make a password-protected backup, restore it on the new device, check a few sales and logins, then stop using the old one. Do not run both as separate copies. To use two devices together, use the web till or Join a business.

Test your backups

Once a month, restore the latest backup on a spare device and confirm sales, stock and staff logins are present.

If something goes wrong

Void the sale if it should not have happened, or refund part of it, then ring it up again. Both need permission and a reason.

That depends on your settings. Stock can go negative and shows as low until you receive more.

The owner or a manager sets a new one in Staff. If the owner forgets theirs there is no reset today.

Five wrong PINs lock that person out for 30 seconds, then longer. Wait, then enter it carefully.

Check the activity log watch list and filter by person. The log shows what happened, not why, so ask before you accuse.

If the device still works, the owner can view it again in settings. Write it down now.

They are now two separate copies. Keep one, or pair them with Join a business.

Expected, because the certificate is made on your device. Compare the fingerprint with the Web till and devices screen, then continue.

Check both are on the same Wi-Fi, guest or isolated Wi-Fi is off, and the Windows firewall allowed Counterbook on private networks.

Keep Counterbook in the foreground notification, exclude it from battery saving and keep the phone plugged in.

Update Counterbook on this device.

Make a backup first, note what you did and saw, then contact support from More > Support Counterbook.