What’s new in Stem
Every software company says it is always improving. This is the version you can check: a dated record of what actually reached production, what is being switched on store by store, and what is still being built, including the places where we do not yet do what you might assume.
- TillShipped
One mistyped date can no longer strand a shop’s sales
A delivery date typed in a format Stem could not read used to stop the till syncing altogether — and because sales upload in the order they were made, everything behind it waited too. One shop had five days of takings sitting on the counter machine before we found it. An unreadable expiry date is now simply recorded as no expiry, and any single upload that keeps failing is set aside after six hours so the rest of the queue moves. Nothing is thrown away: what was set aside is listed in Sync errors for you to look at.
- MoneyShipped
A sale the customer already paid for is never deleted
If you changed a price between an offline sale and the moment it reached us, Stem used to reject that sale outright — the money was never booked and the stock never came off, for a sale that had genuinely happened. The difference is now raised for you to settle and the sale survives. A live sale that is genuinely underpaid is still refused, because in that case nobody has handed over anything.
- MoneyShipped
Sales held up by a problem can now be settled
Sales stopped by a conflict could be listed but never closed, so they sat there with nothing you could do about them. From Sync errors you can now run one again, book it at what the customer actually paid, or write it off — and whoever decided is recorded. Stem only offers “what the customer paid” when it can prove the amount from the receipt that was printed at the time; if there is any doubt it says so rather than booking a guess.
- TillShipped
Record what you paid when you add a product at the counter
A product created on the till carried no cost price at all, so everything it sold reported as pure profit and quietly overstated the day. Add opening stock and you can now enter what you paid for it, with the profit per unit and the margin shown as you type. Editing an existing product deliberately does not offer this — later stock arrives at whatever the purchase order says it cost, and retyping a cost afterwards would rewrite margins you have already reported on.
- TillShipped
The payment keypad stays where it is
The payment method, keypad and totals only appeared once the first item was scanned, so the one part of the till screen that should never move was rebuilding itself on every single sale. It is now on screen from the moment the till opens, and tells you to scan or pick an item to start.
- PlatformShipped
An admin can change their own PIN
An admin PIN was set once at signup with no way to change it, so forgetting it locked you out of every admin action on the till and there was no route back. You can now change your own from the Users screen. Changing someone else’s role, deactivating them or resetting a password you do not know stay off your own account on purpose — those are the doors an intruder would reach for.
- Tech StoreIn development
Phone and computer shops get a mode of their own
A fourth way to run a shop, built for dealers selling phones, laptops and computers. Every handset is tracked by its IMEI rather than as a quantity: scanned in at delivery (including the second IMEI on dual-SIM phones), sold as a specific device, and named on the receipt inside its signature so a warranty claim months later has proof. Warranty is answered by scanning the phone. A repeated IMEI arriving in a delivery is flagged with where it was seen before. Devices left for repair are held in your custody and cannot be sold by mistake, trade-ins come back to the shelf at what they truly cost after refurbishment, and a stock-take is done by scanning the shelf rather than counting it. A till only offers the handsets that are in its own branch, so a phone sitting at another shop is never promised to a customer standing in front of you, and a delivery can be scanned in at the counter with no internet at all. Not available yet — it is being finished and tested, and we will say here when it is switched on.
- TillRolling out
Video library: the whole catalogue, and drives that behave
For shops selling film and music copies, the library list showed only the first 80 titles with no way to reach the rest — it now shows the entire catalogue and tells you how much of it you are looking at. Customer USB hard drives can be chosen as the copy target (previously only flash drives and memory cards appeared), unplugging a library drive takes its titles off the shelf until it is plugged back in, and the list keeps itself up to date instead of needing the app closed and reopened. Films stored as VCD .DAT, .MPG or .AVI now have their running time read properly, so length-based prices apply to them instead of falling through to a cheaper rule.
- PlatformShipped
Published our prices
Every plan and what it costs is now on the pricing page, in shillings, without registering first. Withholding prices until signup wastes the time of shops we are not right for.
- PlatformShipped
Corrected what we said about EFRIS
Our site and the app previously implied sales were being filed with URA. They were not. The settings exist, but live submission is still being built. Every one of those claims has been corrected and a warning added. If you relied on Stem for EFRIS filing, please keep filing the way you did before.
- RestaurantShipped
Recipes deduct ingredients as dishes sell
Tell Stem what a dish is made from and selling it takes those ingredients out of stock automatically, converting units as it goes. Food cost per plate is measured against what the ingredients actually cost.
- RestaurantShipped
A Kitchen section for ingredients and production
Ingredients are managed separately from menu items, with counts and adjustments of their own, and items you cook ahead deduct their ingredients when you record production rather than at the moment of sale.
- TillShipped
Windows till 1.5.4 installs on a clean PC with nothing else to download
The installer now carries everything the till needs, so a fresh Windows machine no longer has to fetch extra components first. Tills already on a recent version update themselves shortly after the next launch.
- RestaurantShipped
Restaurant mode: tables, kitchen tickets and split bills
Open tabs by table, send rounds to up to five kitchen and bar printers, split a bill across guests, and close the business day after midnight rather than at the calendar change.
- ReportsShipped
Reports follow the business day, not the calendar day
A sale is counted on the trading day it happened, even when the shift runs past midnight or the sale was made offline and synced later. Late trade no longer leaks into the next morning.
- MoneyShipped
Refunds can no longer corrupt a closed drawer
A refund processed against an already-closed shift used to distort that shift. It no longer can. Switching branch also no longer merges two branches’ shifts together, which was quietly losing sales.
- MoneyShipped
Returns and exchanges settle honestly
An exchange now refunds the cash actually paid rather than the gross, the credit half of a split payment can no longer be taken back as cash, and a crash mid-exchange can no longer swallow the refund.
- StockShipped
Verified transfers between branches
Stock moving between shops is dispatched at one end and counted in at the other. If the count is short the difference waits as an open variance for an admin to rule on. Nothing is written off on its own.
- MoneyIn development
Filing sales to URA through EFRIS
The settings, fiscal-device fields and surrounding structure are in place, but sales are not yet transmitted to URA and no fiscal number comes back. We will say plainly on this page the day that changes. Until then, do not rely on Stem for EFRIS compliance.
- TillIn development
Tills for macOS and Android tablets
The till’s hardware layer (receipt printing, cash drawer and scanner) is built behind one platform-neutral interface, with the Windows implementation shipping today. That groundwork is what makes other platforms possible, but there is no macOS or Android build yet. The web till already runs on a Mac, an Android tablet or an iPad in any browser, on the same store and the same data.
Questions about updates
›How often is Stem updated?
Continuously. This page lists changes reaching production through July 2026, most weeks carrying several. The Windows till updates itself shortly after launch, so a counter running a recent version picks up improvements without anyone downloading anything.
›What does “rolling out” mean on this page?
The change is deployed and running in production, but it is being switched on for stores individually, either because it needs a setting turned on for your shop or because it is included with particular plans. It is not yet true to say every store has it, so we do not say that.
›Do I have to do anything to get updates?
No. The Windows till checks for a new version shortly after it launches and installs it in the background, and the web till is always current. Changes marked “rolling out” are the exception; ask us and we will enable them for your store.
Want something on this list?
Most of what ships here started as a shopkeeper telling us what did not work. If something about your counter is harder than it should be, say so.
Page updated 27 July 2026