How to choose a point of sale for your shop.

First: "retail" is not just a word in the ad

Three different things are all called point of sale, and they are shaped differently on the inside:

1. A restaurant till — built around a menu and a kitchen: item modifiers, sending to the pass, tables. Excellent in its place, and not the shape of a shop.
2. Accounting software with a sell screen — the screen exists because an invoice has to originate somewhere. Selling is not the product, and it shows in the depth.
3. A retail till — built around a counter, a drawer and stock: scales, batches, serials, units, variants, and returns inside a policy.

Seven questions to ask any vendor

Print these and take them with you. Each one reveals something the price does not:

1. When the line drops, does the shop keep selling? Ask to see it, not hear it — cut the network, finish a sale, print, close a shift.
2. When it comes back, do invoices land in the order they happened? Order is not a detail: it is the difference between correct stock and stock fixed by hand.
3. Where does a shortage in the drawer go? If the answer is "it appears in a report", there is no action, and the money stays gone.
4. Is the drawer counted with the expected figure shown or hidden? If it is shown, nobody is counting — they are copying.
5. Can a customer pay one invoice with cash, card, points and more than one currency? Ask for exactly that sale in the demo.
6. If one central machine fails, how many branches stop? If the answer is "all of them", that is not a multi-branch system — it is one branch repeated.
7. Where is a sale actually recorded — on the till, or somewhere the cashier cannot reach? And can a till talk to your cloud directly? If a machine stolen off the counter has a route to your books, that is a hole nobody mentions in the demo.

What breaks in year two

Any system looks fine in year one. The problems arrive when the business grows a little:

A second branch opens, and you find prices are maintained per branch. An employee leaves, and you find there is no way to know what they actually sold. A product is recalled, and you find you cannot say which batch went to whom. A customer returns a phone, and you find there is no serial to tell you whether it was ever sold by you.

Pricing traps

The advertised price is rarely the final one. The recurring traps:

1. Priced per terminal — a supermarket with six tills pays six times. Ask: does the price follow the branch or the number of counters?
2. Priced per user — starts cheap and turns into a tax on your growth every time you hire.
3. Paid modules — inventory is extra, accounting is extra, loyalty is extra. Add them up first, then compare.
4. Vendor-locked hardware — a printer or drawer that works only with their system, so leaving costs twice.
5. Setup and training — remembered after signing. Ask for the number from a real installation, not an estimate.

The hardware you actually need

Most shops overbuy. The essentials are short: a machine for the counter, a thermal printer, a cash drawer that opens from the printer, and a barcode scanner. A scale if you sell by weight. And one small machine in the office if the system runs the branch locally.

Red flags in a demo

1. They will not cut the line in front of you, or they say "that gets configured during setup".
2. They show prepared screens with prepared data and will not let you click.
3. They talk about features and never ask about your business — how many branches, what you sell, how many tills.
4. No clear answer on drawer shortages, or the answer is "we do not get shortages".
5. Every hard question is answered with "that is in the next release".
6. They compare themselves to a competitor using numbers with no source.

A checklist before you sign

1. You watched selling work with the line cut, with your own eyes.
2. You know what happens to a shortage in the drawer, and who approves it.
3. You know the three-year cost, not the monthly one.
4. You know how your data leaves if you do.
5. You tested your own awkward items — by weight, by batch, by serial, by more than one unit.
6. You spoke to a current customer of theirs at your size, not one they picked for you.

And where we fit

We built Managely’s point of sale around the answers above: every branch has a small machine that runs it, so selling does not stop when the line does; a shortage in the drawer becomes a named debt with an action; one invoice takes cash, card, points and more than one currency; and scales, batches, serials and units are read rather than typed. Point of sale comes with the package — it is not priced per counter.

And we will not tell you we suit every case. If you are a single-location restaurant, there are tools built for exactly that. This guide will still serve you with them.