January is the quietest month in hospitality, which is why so many venues close for a refit. But the network cabling for tills, screens, cameras and Wi-Fi has to go in before the plaster and paint, so it needs planning now. Here is what needs a cable, why Wi-Fi is not enough for fixed equipment and how to brief an installer.

Black Friday falls on 27 November this year, and last year card transactions on the day ran 62% above the daily average. Yet retail sales grew just 1.4% across November as shoppers held out for deals. For independent shops, the answer is not deeper discounts. It is promotions that ring through correctly, queues that keep moving and stock figures you can trust.

HMRC has confirmed that every EPOS and mobile till in the UK will have to keep a tamper-evident record of every sale. There is no start date yet and nothing to buy today, but the detail lands in summer 2027. Here is what is changing, whether you will need a new till and what is worth checking now.

Card payments made up 64% of all UK payments last year, so card machine fees now touch most of what you take. Yet few owners can say what their real rate is. Here is what sits inside the fee, which parts you can negotiate, how to work out your effective rate and why the cheapest headline price is not always the cheapest option.

The UK's analogue phone network closes on 31 January 2027, and around 350,000 business premises were still on copper lines this summer. The phone behind the bar is the easy part. Older card machines, monitored alarms, lift lines, door entry panels and franking machines can all depend on the same old line. Here is how to find them before they go quiet.

A stamp card is not a loyalty scheme, it is a discount with extra steps. The difference is data. Here is what the CMA found about how loyalty pricing actually works, and how to build a scheme in your EPOS that changes behaviour rather than just giving away margin.