Guides · Reliability
Load-shedding does not get a vote on Sunday.
Power cuts are a planning fact in South Africa. Your generator handles the lights and the sound desk; this guide is about the other half, the systems that hold your people, your kids' safety and your offering, and how software should behave when the venue goes dark.
The failure points
What actually breaks when the power goes.
01
The venue connection
The router dies with the plug it is in. If check-in needs a live connection for every tap, the queue at the kids' door grows at exactly the moment families arrive.
02
The label printer
Pickup security that depends on one printer and one cable is a single point of failure standing between a parent and their child.
03
The office computer
If the membership list, the giving spreadsheet or the attendance register lives on a PC at the building, a power cut at the building takes your records with it.
The design answer
How Church Flow keeps Sunday moving.
01
Your records live off-site
Everything is stored in a cloud data centre in South Africa, not on a computer in the church office. A power cut at the building touches nothing.
02
Check-in rides through drops
When the venue connection drops, kiosk check-ins queue on the device and send automatically the moment the connection returns. The queue is visible on screen, never silent.
03
Labels have a plan B
If the label printer is unreachable, kids' security labels can be emailed as a PDF instead, so pickup security does not depend on one cable.
04
Runs on phone data
The staff portal is mobile-first and works in any phone browser, so a venue with no wifi still runs check-in, people lookups and giving from a phone.
The drill
Five things to sort out before the next dark Sunday.
- Check the outage schedule for your suburb when you plan the service, the same way you check the weather.
- Keep one charged phone or tablet per door. The kiosk queue does the remembering; the battery does the working.
- Nominate a phone hotspot as the venue's backup connection and make sure the door team knows whose it is.
- If printed labels matter to your kids' ministry, test the emailed-PDF fallback on an ordinary Sunday first.
- Brief the team once: queued check-ins send by themselves when the connection returns. Nobody re-enters anything.
Print this page and stick it in the sound desk drawer.
Common questions.
No. When the venue connection drops, kiosk check-ins queue on the device and send automatically the moment the connection returns. The queue is visible on screen, never silent, so the door team always knows exactly where they stand.
If the label printer is unreachable, kids' security labels can be emailed as a PDF instead, so pickup security does not depend on one cable.
No. Your records live in a cloud data centre in South Africa, not on a computer in the church office, so a power cut at the building touches nothing. The staff portal is mobile-first and works in any phone browser, so a venue with no wifi still runs check-in, people lookups and giving from a phone.
Built for South African Sundays.
Church Flow assumes the power and the wifi will not always be there, and keeps Sunday moving anyway.
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