Four different things come back, and they are not alternatives
It is worth knowing which one you are looking at before you install anything, because they fail in completely different ways.
- A native app in the Play Store. Installs as an APK, updates through the store, and has to be installed on every phone that will use it. Fine until you need a fix out quickly, at which point you are waiting on a store review and on every member of staff updating.
- A web app that installs to the home screen. Opens from an icon, full screen, no store involved. Updates arrive when the page loads. This is what PumpDesk is.
- A desktop program with a mobile view. Usually a website wrapped around software that assumes a keyboard and an office. It renders on a phone; it was not designed to be used standing at a dispenser.
- A lead form. The download is a phone call. Covered in what free petrol pump software really costs.
Why the forecourt is a phone problem
A meter reading exists at the dispenser and nowhere else. If the system that records it lives in the office, the reading gets written on paper first and typed in later — and everything that goes wrong with daily records goes wrong in that gap.
It is not mainly a transcription error problem, though those happen. It is a timing problem. A figure typed up at the end of the week cannot be questioned on the day it was taken, the shift it belongs to has gone home, and a variance that would have been one conversation becomes an unexplained number in a monthly total.
That is the whole case for entry from a phone, and it is worth being clear that it is about *when* the number is captured rather than about the device being modern.
What installing to the home screen actually gets you
Open the site in Chrome on Android or Safari on iPhone and choose Add to Home Screen. After that it opens from an icon, full screen, with no browser bar — the same as any app on the phone.
There is no APK to distribute, nothing to sideload, and no store listing to wait on. The same link works on an iPhone, which matters more than it sounds when one person on the forecourt has one.
- No Play Store download, and nothing to update by hand — a fix is live the next time the page loads.
- Works on any current browser, so the requirement is the browser rather than a particular handset.
- Each person signs in as themselves, which is what makes a shift attributable to a named operator rather than to a shared password.
It does not work offline, and that matters here
An entry needs a connection. With no network you get an offline screen rather than a queue that syncs later, so do not plan around recording a shift with the signal down. This is stated plainly because a forecourt is exactly where a connection drops, and offline entry is the one thing people assume an installed app must do.
What to check before you commit staff to it
Whatever you choose, these are the things that decide whether it survives contact with a busy forecourt.
- Can a reading be entered one-handed, standing at the dispenser, without pinching to zoom?
- Does it reject an impossible reading at entry rather than accepting it and reporting a strange number later? A closing reading below the opening one should be refused on the spot.
- Does each operator have their own login? A shared password makes every entry anonymous, which removes most of the reason to record per shift at all.
- What happens on a bad connection — does it tell you the entry did not save, or does it look saved and quietly lose it?
- Can the owner see yesterday from somewhere else, without asking anyone to send anything?
Frequently asked questions
Is there a PumpDesk app on the Play Store?
No, and that is deliberate rather than pending. It is a web app that installs to the home screen, so there is no APK to push to every phone, no store review sitting between a fix and the person who needs it, and the same link works on an iPhone. What you get on the home screen is an icon that opens full screen, which is the part most people mean when they ask for an app.
Does it work without internet?
No. An entry needs a connection, and with no network you get an offline screen rather than a queue that syncs later. It is worth being blunt about because a forecourt is exactly where signal drops, and offline entry is the thing people assume an installed app must do. If working through an outage is a hard requirement for you, this is the wrong tool today.
Will it run on a cheap Android phone?
It runs in the browser, so the requirement is a current browser rather than a particular handset. There is no installation to fill up storage and no background service running when you are not using it. A phone that can open a modern website can use it.
Do staff need their own logins, or can they share one?
Their own. Roles decide what each person can see and change, and a shift can only be attributed to a named operator if that operator signed in as themselves. A shared password makes every entry anonymous, which quietly removes most of the point of recording per shift.
Can I use it on a tablet or the office computer as well?
Yes — it is the same application in any browser, on the same data. In practice most outlets end up entering from a phone at the dispenser and reading reports on a larger screen, which is what it is built for.