Last updated: Mar 12, 2026, 11:27 AM
Learn how to prepare your business to operate in Offline Mode during an outage or service disruption.
Offline Mode kicks in automatically when your Toast devices lose connection to the internet, local network, or our cloud servers. Our built-in offline resilience provides the invisible support needed to keep the kitchen firing and payments secure, regardless of network interruptions. After 40 seconds offline, you'll see a banner at the top of your screen explaining what's happening and what you can still do.
This article covers some setup and configurations you can review beforehand to ensure your payment processing and order taking workflows function the way you want when your device is operating offline.
To check the status of all Toast systems and subscribe to real-time SMS or email alerts, see status.toasttab.com.
For general information about what you can expect during an outage, see Use Toast in Offline Mode.
To learn more about what you can do once your POS is back online, see Recover and Get Back Online After an Outage or Disruption.
There are two options for managing credit and debit card payments during an outage or disruption:
Toast highly recommends leaving background card payments enabled to keep your business operational in the event that you enter Offline Mode. Follow the instructions below to review your setup (this requires the 6.3 Payments Setup permission).
| For businesses located in Canada, Ireland, or the UK: Background payment processing for offline payments are enabled by default. To make changes to this setting or request a transaction limit for individual offline payments, contact Toast Customer Care by phone:
For more information, see . |
Note: You must enable background processing for card payments while your POS is fully operational. You cannot adjust this setting while your device is in Offline Mode.
Watch a walkthrough of enabling background credit card processing for Offline Mode functionality.
The 1.15 Offline/Background Credit Card Processing permission allows users to take offline credit and debit card payments that exceed the transaction limit set in Toast Web. We recommend assigning this permission to any job (generally, managers) that involves taking payments or managing other employees who take payments.
If necessary, you can add or remove this permission for a specific individual by navigating to that employee’s profile and selecting Override for 1.15 Offline/Background Credit Card Processing (learn more: ).
There are risks associated with taking payments during an outage or disruption because the payments can’t be authorized until the network connection is restored. This means that it’s possible for a payment taken during a disruption to be denied when your system goes back online.
If this is a concern for you, you can set a transaction limit for payments taken while offline, or disable card authorizations during payment disruptions altogether.
Review the settings and setup recommendations below to reduce the chance of a disruption to your network or internet connection:
Toast provides you with the flexibility to configure custom dining options and adjust how they behave and what customer information they collect on your Toast device. This option can come in handy in Offline Mode, as you have the ability to collect customer contact information you may need in the event of a service disruption.
For example, you can configure a new dining option called, “Dine In - Offline Mode”, and choose the Delivery behavior (to collect name and phone number) or the Takeout behavior (to collect name, phone number, and address). Then, you can choose this dining option when your restaurant is in Offline Mode to obtain customer information and contact them in the event that their credit card denies the payment when the system comes back online. To learn more, see .
If your business uses Toast Self-Ordering Kiosks, creating a “Kiosk Server” user profile will allow for the device to automatically log back in and pick up where it left off in the event that your kiosk goes offline. You will not need to manually log back in to the kiosk should it experience a system crash or lose connection. The kiosk will assign all checks and kiosk-specific audit operations to this user.
Note: If you use the Toast Kitchen Display System (KDS), your kiosk terminal should be on the same network as your KDS devices. This will allow your kiosk to continue sending tickets to the KDS in the event that your devices enter Offline Mode during an outage or service disruption.
If your restaurant has tipping enabled and you've configured kiosk authorization using the steps above, there is no need to perform a shift review for this kiosk-specific user.