How to Hold a Receipt in QuickBooks Point of Sale

Why you would hold a sale

A customer forgets an item and goes back for it. Someone is waiting on a colleague to approve a purchase. A card will not go through and they step outside to call the bank. Meanwhile there is a queue behind them.

Holding the sale parks it so the till is free for the next customer, without losing anything already scanned.

Putting a sale on hold

With the sale open on the screen, choose Hold. QuickBooks Desktop Point of Sale saves the items, quantities and any discounts already applied, and clears the screen for the next transaction.

If your version prompts for a reference, use something you will recognise in two minutes under pressure - the customer name beats a number every time.

Bringing it back

Choose Retrieve or open the held transactions list, find the sale, and select it. It returns exactly as you left it, and you carry on to payment as normal.

What holding does not do

A held sale is not a completed sale. It does not reduce inventory, it does not count towards your day''s takings, and it will not appear in sales reports until it is actually tendered.

That matters at end of day. Held sales left on the system are the usual reason a drawer count and a sales report disagree - the items look gone from the shelf but nothing was ever rung up. Clear held sales before you close.

If you are still running QuickBooks Desktop Point of Sale

Intuit stopped selling and supporting it in October 2023. It still runs, but there are no updates and no support line to call.

Every modern till handles held sales, so you will not lose the habit by moving. If you want to see how it works on a current system, our point of sale systems page covers it, or talk to us about what you are running now.