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Register Troubleshooting

Register screen is frozen or not responding

  1. Move the mouse or press any key — this dismisses the screensaver if that is the cause
  2. If truly frozen, refresh the browser page (F5 or Cmd+R on Mac)
  3. After refresh the register reloads — any unsaved in-progress sale may be lost
  4. If the page does not load at all, check the network connection and try again
  5. If issues persist after refresh, contact VMX support at help@vmxllc.com
  • Check spelling and try a shorter or more generic search term
  • The item may be out of stock — add a space and 0 after your search to include out-of-stock items (e.g., BOXWOOD 0)
  • Use D: to narrow by department (e.g., D: TREES MAPLE)
  • The item may not be in inventory yet — it would need to be added in the inventory admin area first

Buttons are grayed out / features not available

All register features require an employee login for the session. Enter your employee number in the search bar and press the - key (or click Emp #). If you do not know your employee number, ask your manager.

Register showing the wrong employee

Press the - key or click Emp # and enter your own employee number to switch the active employee.

Credit card reader not responding

  1. Check that the card reader is plugged in and powered on
  2. Ask the customer to try inserting or tapping the card again
  3. If the reader is consistently unresponsive, manually enter the card number using the Credit Card button
  4. Contact VMX support if the reader is failing on every transaction

Receipt printer not printing

  1. Check that the printer is on and has paper loaded
  2. Try printing a test receipt using Reprint Receipt on a completed sale
  3. If the printer is connected via the Printer Bridge, check the bridge status in Admin → Hardware
  4. See the Printer Bridge page for setup and connection help

Cash drawer not opening

  • The drawer opens automatically on Cash and Check tenders
  • To open without a transaction, click No Sale (requires permission from your manager)
  • If the drawer does not open automatically, check the cable between the drawer and the receipt printer — most drawers connect through the printer

Scale not reading a weight

If Read Scale Weight does nothing, reports a failure, or an item marked Weighed Item? rings up without reading the scale:

  1. Go to Admin → Registers, open the Scales tab, and click Test on the row for that register. This reads the scale the same way the register does and tells you far more than trying again at the lane.
  2. If Test shows a red message and no raw response, nothing came back from the scale — check that the Printer Bridge is running on that register's PC, that the correct bridge is selected, and that the COM port is right.
  3. If Test shows a raw response but still reports a failure, the scale answered but the settings do not match it — check Scale Type first, then Parity and Data Bits.
  4. If the register says No scale defined for register., that register has no enabled scale on the Scales tab.

See Scales & Selling by Weight for the full troubleshooting list, including "Scale reported no weight" and quantities ringing up as the wrong number.

X/Z report — what each option does

  • Click X/Z → then Cancel — prints the X tape (shows current totals without clearing)
  • Click X/Z → then OK — runs the Z tape (clears the register totals)
  • The register must be in a completed state (no sale in progress) to run X/Z
  • See Opening and Z-ing Registers for the full process

Login issues — employee number not accepted

  • Employee numbers are set in Admin → Users
  • The employee account must be Active and have register access enabled
  • Contact your manager or VMX support if you cannot log in

"Not enough permissions" error

Some register actions (No Sale, voids, manual prices, etc.) require elevated permissions. Contact your manager to adjust permissions in Admin → Users.

Sale posted to wrong customer

Contact VMX support at help@vmxllc.com — correcting a posted transaction's customer association requires backend access.

Register acting oddly after an update — hard refresh

If a register starts erroring on actions that worked yesterday — buttons that do nothing, an alert reading "An error occured. The developer has been notified.", or an error mentioning something "is not a function" — the browser is usually holding a stale, half-updated copy of the register after a VMX software update.

  1. Do a hard refresh: Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+R (Mac). A normal F5 sometimes isn't enough — the hard refresh forces the browser to fetch everything fresh.
  2. Or simply close the register tab and open it again.
  3. Registers also refresh themselves automatically early each morning, so machines left open overnight pick updates up on their own — the stale window is the same day an update lands.

If the same error returns after a hard refresh, it isn't a stale page — contact help@vmxllc.com with the exact error text.

House-charge signatures stopped prompting / extra "MERCHANT COPY" receipts print

If house-charge sales stop asking for a signature on the pad and instead print an extra paper copy headed MERCHANT COPY, the computer has lost its register identity — VMX no longer recognizes that browser as its assigned register. This most often happens after a Chrome update or when the browser extension that identifies the machine is removed or disabled. Other signs of the same problem:

  • The Register Configuration page lists every register in a dropdown instead of showing the one this machine is assigned to.
  • Staff get asked to pick a register when opening the register page, or drawer loads land on the wrong register.

The fix is re-running the identity setup on that machine: go to Admin → Access, find the register's row, and click Set up — it walks through re-installing the browser rule step by step, using that register's own ID. Afterward, ring a house charge to confirm the signature pad prompts again; the row's Last Use column should also update to just now. The full walkthrough is on Setting Up a New Register.

Scanner rings up the wrong item, or says the barcode isn't found

Three common causes, each with a different fix:

  • A stale or reprinted shelf tag. If a scanned house tag pulls up the wrong item, the tag itself may predate an item change — reprint the tag from the item page and scan the fresh one.
  • Two barcodes read as one. On products with two barcodes printed close together (books with an ISBN plus a small price barcode are the classic case), some scanners read both and combine them into one long number that matches nothing — often surfacing as "The barcode is too long." or a not-found error. Cover the second barcode with a thumb while scanning, and tell help@vmxllc.com the product type — the scanner or VMX can usually be configured to handle it.
  • The barcode collides with a special format. Certain number patterns are reserved (coupons, scale labels, and similar). If one product consistently misbehaves, open Notepad and scan into it to capture exactly what the scanner sends, and email that string with the item's PLU to help@vmxllc.com.

Still stuck?

Ask VMXpert to compose a support email, or contact help@vmxllc.com directly. Include: - What you were trying to do - What happened instead - Any error message text - The register number and your name