GS805 guides · troubleshooting · written by an operator who runs one

GS805 troubleshooting: what each problem is, and what to do

What we have seen on our own GS805 and in other operators' data, written for the owner standing in front of the machine. Each problem says what you see, whether it is mechanical, supplies, the card reader, the network or the software on the screen, what to do now, and what VendCaptain can detect or fix. For repairs, the maker's manual and your supplier still come first.

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The customer paid, and no drink came out

Payment reader and machine · the most common GS805 complaint

What you see: A charge on the customer's card, no cup, and often a second charge a minute later because they tried again. The factory cloud shows the sale as still "making" or as a timeout. Nothing tells you unless the customer does.
Why it happens: On a GS805 with a Nayax reader the money is taken when the tap is approved, before the drink is made. If the machine then cannot make the drink (a cup left in the chamber, no cups, no water, a pour that never finishes), the charge stays unless the software on the screen tells the reader to reverse it. The older factory app never did: on our machine, six approved-then-cancelled sessions in June 2026 all settled at full price. The updated factory app sends a reversal (Nayax logs it as event 811). In one operator's 25 machines, 150 card payments took the money and made no drink, 462 euros, only 8 refunded.
What to do now: Refund the customer in your Nayax account, using the time and amount. If one machine keeps doing it, stop it selling: on the factory app that means taking its drinks off sale; on VendCaptain Run it is the maintenance switch. Then find the mechanical cause below. Never cut the power to end a failed sale: an interrupted card session can wedge the reader.
What VendCaptain does: On Connect, every card payment is paired with the drink on the same machine at the same price within a few minutes, and each failed vend gets one state: refunded by the machine, reversed at Nayax, refunded by a person, still charged, or not found. A machine that fails three times in thirty minutes, or twice in a row, triggers an email and a crew task, and one click takes its drinks off sale. On Run, the sale is marked failed at once, the screen tells the customer to ask staff for a refund rather than try again, and you get an email within the hour with the amount. The full story is on GS805 and Nayax.

"Declined", or nothing happens when they tap

Card reader

What you see: The screen says the payment was declined, or waits and then gives up. The customer insists the card works everywhere else.
Why it happens: The reader processes the card on its own, over its own modem, and only tells the machine approved or declined. The screen cannot tell a declined card from a card that was never tapped or could not be read, so it shows the same message for all three. Some cards are not accepted at all: on our machine Discover is not accepted in Spain, and American Express needs its own merchant agreement before Nayax enables it. A declined authorisation charges nothing; it shows in Nayax Core as declined at authorisation.
What to do now: Try another card. If every card fails on one machine, check the reader's own screen and signal, and call your Nayax support. If the reader stays wedged after an interrupted session, a power cycle of the machine between customers recovers it.
What VendCaptain does: A reader fault alone never blocks the machine on Run; the machine stays in service for free drinks and codes. A run of declines shows up in your Nayax data on the Card Loyalty page, so a reader that has gone bad is a line you can see rather than a complaint you hear a week later.

The drink never finishes, or a cup is stuck in the chamber

Mechanical

What you see: A make that goes on past two minutes and ends with nothing, or a cup left in the delivery chamber by the last customer, after which the machine accepts an order and does nothing.
Why it happens: With a cup left in the chamber, the GS805 acknowledges a new make but never runs it. The factory app waits the full timeout before giving up, and the customer has already paid. There is no software emergency stop on this machine: each pump and auger runs for its recipe time and stops on its own, and the only real stop is the power switch.
What to do now: Take the cup out. Make one normal drink to confirm the customer path works again. If a pour runs long or spills, cut the power at the wall, clean, and call the technician if it repeats.
What VendCaptain does: On Run, a leftover cup is a fault the kiosk sees within about 30 seconds: the machine goes out of service by itself and comes back when the cup is taken, and an order placed with a cup inside fails within about two seconds with a message, instead of a two-minute hang on a paid customer. A make that does not finish is marked failed and listed for refund. In the factory cloud, an order still "making" five minutes after it started is what VendCaptain counts as charged with no cup.

It stopped selling: no cups, no water, no powder

Supplies

What you see: The machine refuses to serve, or serves water with a dusting of powder, or a drink is greyed out. The factory cloud reports stock levels only when the machine does, and the GS805 has no level sensors: no load cells on the containers, no float in the water tank.
Why it happens: Cups run out and the machine refuses to serve. Water runs out and it stops, and running the pump dry can burn it out. Powder runs out and the machine keeps pouring the recipe with nothing in the container, because nothing measures it. Stock on a GS805 is an estimate, anchored on the last refill somebody wrote down.
What to do now: Refill, and log the refill somewhere you will look at again. One container on our machine was refilled and never logged, and the estimate sat 47 days stale while the container was 85 percent full. Count cups: a dispenser holds about 100. The tank is about 40 litres, two 20-litre jugs. Refill amounts, lots and the weighing routine are in the owner's guide.
What VendCaptain does: On Connect, a run-out forecast per machine from the last refill or level check plus the last 14 days of sales, and a refill log the crew fills in on their phone during the service checklist. On Run, exact stock after every drink from the machine itself: a drink is shown sold out on the menu before payment when a pour would leave fewer than two servings, with a warning at ten; water stops at half a litre with a warning at two litres; one cup is counted per drink and the kiosk alerts on low cups. Refills and level checks are logged at the machine behind the service PIN.

The waste water smells, or the machine keeps pouring into a full bucket

Hygiene

What you see: A smell near the machine, water on the floor, or a rinse that overflows. Nothing on the machine warns you: the GS805 has no sensor in the waste bucket.
Why it happens: Every drink sends rinse water to the bucket, roughly 40 to 50 drinks fill it, and the machine keeps pouring into a full one until somebody notices.
What to do now: Empty and clean it, every visit, and note the drink count at which it was full on your machine. Cleaning, step by step: the owner's guide.
What VendCaptain does: On Connect, the bucket is counted up from the last emptying you logged, amber at 30 drinks and red at the top, and it is on the run-out forecast and the service checklist. On Run, the kiosk counts every drink: it warns at 30, stops selling at 38 (a drink being made always finishes first), and the operator screen says how many it holds and asks for "Bucket emptied and cleaned" before it sells again.

Drinks come out weak or strong, or a recipe is refused

Calibration

What you see: The same recipe tastes different week to week, a new powder is noticeably weaker, or a drink will not pour at all after a product change.
Why it happens: The GS805 doses powder by running an auger for a time, and every powder flows differently: density, humidity and auger wear all change how many grams come out per second. The factory figure is close to 4 grams per second, but your powder is not the factory's. A recipe written in seconds is a guess; a recipe written in grams needs the machine to know its own rate.
What to do now: Weigh it. Run each container for a fixed time into a cup on a 0.1 gram scale, and write the grams per second next to the container. Do it again whenever a container changes powder. A container holds about a kilogram.
What VendCaptain does: On Run, calibration is a button on the operator screen: press the container's number, the machine runs it for exactly ten seconds and drops a cup, you weigh it and type the grams. Up to three weighings; a set more than ten percent apart is refused. Recipes are then in grams, and a recipe is only poured when every container it uses is calibrated, so a new drink cannot be served wrong by accident. The creatine add-on from container 7 is offered only once that container is calibrated on the machine.

The screen is frozen, restarting, or says "Out of service"

Software on the screen

What you see: A black or frozen screen, an app that closes and reopens, or an out-of-service message after a power cut.
Why it happens: The screen is an Android panel and the seller is an app on it. Apps crash, and after a power cut something has to start the app again. On the factory app, the launcher does that. On VendCaptain Run, the kiosk is the home app and reopens itself.
What to do now: Restart the machine at the wall. Do not "reset" the app by clearing its data or uninstalling it: on Run that deletes unsynced sales, the calibration and the pairing. If the screen says the app closed several times in ten minutes, press "Retry" once; if it loops again, the previous version goes back on.
What VendCaptain does: Run comes back by itself after a power cut or a crash. If the app crashes more than three times in ten minutes, it stops arming the card reader, shows an out-of-service screen that says so, keeps uploading its records and offers Retry, instead of charging customers in a loop. Crash reports reach the portal on their own, and you can request the machine's logs from the portal; they arrive within a couple of minutes.

The machine is offline, or the portal shows nothing new

Network and cloud

What you see: No new sales in the portal for hours, or a machine whose last contact is old. Sometimes the whole portal and site are unreachable from your phone while a colleague abroad sees them fine.
Why it happens: The GS805 sells without the cloud: card payment runs locally through the reader, and sales queue and upload later. So a network outage costs you sync delay, not sales, with one exception: anything that needs the cloud at the moment of sale (a discount code check, a loyalty redeem) fails. A special case we lived through in 2026: Spanish ISPs blocked shared Cloudflare addresses during LaLiga broadcasts, so on match afternoons the portal and our site vanished for anyone on those ISPs and came back by themselves. Monitors outside Spain stayed green.
What to do now: Check whether it is the machine or you: open the portal from another network, a phone hotspot for instance. If it is the machine, check its Wi-Fi or SIM and power. Write down the time, the error text and which network you were on; nobody did the first time it happened to us, and it cost weeks.
What VendCaptain does: On Connect, the factory cloud reports no connection time for a machine, so the online column reads "unknown" and VendCaptain says so rather than guessing; it emails you when new sales have stopped arriving for more than three hours. On Run, each machine's last contact is shown with a dot, and an email goes out when a machine has not talked to the cloud for more than two hours. Prices, promos and screen content are frozen at the last pull until it is back, and the kiosk keeps selling from its cached menu.

Prices or menu changes do not reach the machine

Factory cloud and Run

What you see: You changed a price or a product in the portal and the machine still shows the old one, or a drink is on sale on one machine and not another.
Why it happens: In the factory cloud a price belongs to a machine's shelf, not to the product: editing the product changes nothing on any machine, and a price change is really "take off sale, put back on sale at the new price". If the second half fails, the drink is off sale on that machine. On Run, the kiosk picks up its menu on a schedule and applies screen changes only when nobody is buying.
What to do now: On the factory app, check each machine's shelf, not the product list. On Run, press "Sync now" on the kiosk or in the portal.
What VendCaptain does: On Connect, prices and availability are written per machine from one spreadsheet, every write is read back, and a failed re-list is shown as "off sale on machine X" with a button to run it again, never silently. On Run, "Sync now", the maintenance switch and a log request reach the kiosk within about 20 seconds; the menu refreshes on its own every 15 minutes, and a machine with no active drink shows "No menu yet" with a line for the operator rather than six greyed tiles. Promotional prices and happy hours, which go through the same mechanism, are on GS805 loyalty and promotions.

Two of your products never sell

The factory menu · our own experience

What you see: You have more products than fit on the factory app's menu screen. On our machine the factory app showed ten product cards. We sell six drinks, and because the factory app has no idea of an add-on, each drink with creatine had to be a separate product: twelve in all. The last two never appeared on the screen, so they never sold, and the only way to know was to notice that two products had no sales.
Why it happens: The factory menu is a fixed grid of product cards, and every variant of a drink is a whole product with its own picture, price and slot on that grid.
What to do now: Count your products against the cards your app shows, and either drop variants or accept that some never sell. Watch for products with zero sales over a month: that is the symptom.
What VendCaptain does: Run shows every drink on one screen and treats creatine as an add-on, a toggle on the drink's own page with its own price, rather than a second product. Six drinks with creatine are six cards, not twelve, and there is no second page. On Connect, a product with no sales for a month is flagged on the overview, so a hidden card does not stay hidden. What else Run changes on the machine is on GS805 integrations.

Nobody buys: a machine that is idle

Not a fault, and the most expensive problem of all

What you see: A machine that sells a few cups a day, or none. In one operator's 25 machines, 9 were idle on the day they connected to VendCaptain, and nobody had seen it, because the factory cloud lists sales and never silence.
Why it happens: The gym closed a room, moved the machine behind a door, changed its hours, or the price went up: in the same data a 40 percent price rise had halved the cups sold. Or the machine was broken for a week and recovered on its own, and nobody counted the week.
What to do now: Look at cups per day per machine, not revenue per month per fleet. Visit the ones that fell. Ask the venue what changed.
What VendCaptain does: A digest of quiet machines (five times their usual gap between sales and at least three days silent) and dormant ones (two weeks or more), a comparison of machines, gyms and chains, what every price change did to cups and income, and the history of each machine's moves with cups per day before and after. On Run, price and menu tests on the same machine, assigned per customer, so a price rise is measured before it is rolled out. What a 40 percent rise did to one fleet, and what a price test looks like, is on the operator case study.

The factory cloud connection broke (Connect)

Connect only

What you see: The portal says the connection to your machine account has stopped, and new sales stop arriving. Everything already imported is still there.
Why it happens: Connect uses the account you already have, and that access is the maker's to change. The connection renews itself every hour, so it only breaks if the renewals stop for a week or the maker changes something on its side.
What to do now: Repeat the connection steps in Settings, a few minutes. You get an email when the connection has less than three days left, and a notice in the portal at three days, one day and expired.
What VendCaptain does: Warns before it breaks, keeps your history, and keeps the pages that read from it working on the data already imported. The pages that read the factory cloud live (the catalogue, the shelf, the machine list) say "could not reach the factory cloud" rather than pretending. Run is the path that does not depend on the maker's cloud at all; see GS805 integrations.

What VendCaptain detects by itself, and what it cannot see

Detected and reported

A machine charging without pouring: three failures in thirty minutes, or two in a row with nothing poured between, checked every hour over the last day. An email, a crew task, and one click to take its drinks off sale.
Every failed vend's refund state, from your Nayax export or feed, rechecked for 30 days.
A charge with no drink on Run, as an email within the hour with the amount, and a task.
A machine that stopped talking to the cloud for more than two hours (Run), and new sales that stopped arriving for more than three hours (Connect).
The factory connection about to expire, three days ahead.
Your Nayax feed gone stale for more than a day.
Quiet and dormant machines, in a digest.
When each machine runs out, and when its waste bucket is due.
Service overdue after seven days, red at fourteen; powder lots expired or expiring within 30 days; a crew checklist completed under 80 percent.

Not visible on Connect, and why

Whether a machine is online. The factory cloud reports no connection time, so the column reads "unknown".
Real powder, water and cup levels. The machine has no sensors; levels are estimates anchored on your refill log. Exact stock needs Run.
The waste bucket. No sensor; a count from the last emptying you logged.
Why a vend failed. The factory cloud records only a timeout for these machines. Run names the fault.
Refunds made at Nayax, unless your Nayax export or feed is connected.
Anything live. Connect is hourly.

The monitoring side, page by page, is on GS805 remote monitoring.

Questions owners ask

Does the GS805 have error codes?

Not that an owner can read on the factory app or in the factory cloud, which records a failed vend only as a timeout. On VendCaptain Run, the operator screen lists each fault by name and says whether it clears itself (no cups, no water, a leftover cup) or needs "Re-arm" after a check (an emergency stop, a part that ran too long, a cup lost mid-pour, a failed self-check).

How long should a drink take?

About 85 seconds from the tap to the drink in the customer's hand, on our machine. A make that has not finished within about two minutes is treated as failed.

Is there an emergency stop?

Not in software. Each pump and auger runs for its recipe time and stops on its own; the factory app sends no stop on a failure. The real emergency stop is the power switch. After any test, make one normal drink to confirm the customer path works.

What if the door is open?

The GS805 does not report its door to the software on the screen, so neither the factory app nor VendCaptain enforces a door interlock; the machine's own firmware may refuse to dispense with the door open. Treat door-open dispensing as something only a technician does.

How do I stop a machine that is taking money incorrectly?

Least disruptive first: put it in maintenance mode (Run) or take its drinks off sale (Connect), let it upload its sales, then switch it off if you must. Refund any leftover charges in Nayax. A machine that keeps failing while charging cards is the one urgent case in this whole guide.

Can I fix any of this without changing software?

Most of it, by hand: refunds in Nayax, a refill log, a bucket count, a scale for calibration. VendCaptain Connect does those checks for you from the account you already have, without touching the machine, and Run is what makes the machine itself behave: fail fast, say so, come back by itself.

More GS805 guides

GS805 integrationsConnect, Run, where Nayax fits, and which APIs and SDKs are not offered.
GS805 and NayaxHow the payment and the drink are connected, and what happens to the money after a failed vend.
GS805 remote monitoringFactory telemetry against VendCaptain Connect and Run, and which data exists at all.
GS805 owner's guideSoftware, payments, setup, calibration and cleaning, with the official manuals linked.
GS805 loyalty and promotionsDiscount windows and codes in the factory software, and the stamp card and happy hours VendCaptain adds.
Running a GS805 in a gymOne machine in a Madrid studio since May 2026: what we found, and what changes when our software becomes the seller.

All GS805 resources, by topic

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Daniel Escobar escobar@vendcaptain.com +34 623 345 790 Email, WhatsApp or phone