Best Point of Sale Systems for Every Business

Having a reliable, efficient point-of-sale (POS) system can save your small business many headaches down the road. A POS system is ultimately a hardware/software combination that digitally tracks individual sales and overall sales reports, making data accumulation easier than ever and keeping track of your business exchanges all in one place.

Some software comes free of charge, but other packages can cost a few hundred dollars a month. That’s why your business needs to select the right system to maximize efficiency and minimize monthly business costs based upon your business model and POS requirements.

No matter what type of business you run, this POS review can help every entrepreneur select the system that will find the right balance.

Square

Square is an excellent choice for a POS system no matter the size or niche of your small business. It’s a cloud-based system, so you can receive and track payments anywhere. Originating as a mobile system, you can easily track your business even when giving exercise classes in a local park.

Square has expanded from its original roots, but that doesn’t mean the platform has forgotten its origins. Not to be left behind in the marketplace, Square has begun offering more grounded hardware for brick-and-mortar establishments, meaning that you won’t have to bring your phone along to accept payments at your start-up cafe or corner retail store.

Square offers a paid option for its services, and the Square Plus version offers profit margin reporting and 24/7 phone support. For growing businesses with multiple employees, this might be a worthy expense for only $60 per month.

Toast

Toast is one of the market leaders in restaurant POS systems. Toast can accommodate entrepreneurs who want to accept orders both through a hardware system in the store, to applications that customers can download and order through in the comfort of their own home.

Toast can both process and distribute funds, but there will be a management fee taken off of your revenue. Toast’s integrated system can easily pay for itself in convenience, as its hardware can also be linked to your kitchen’s order display, meaning that orders will be seamlessly transferred from your server/customer interface to the sous chef’s exposition station.

After purchasing the basic hardware, Toast offers its software, 24/7 customer service, and general analytics for free. The “Essentials” and “Growth” subscription plans start at $165 and $272 per month, respectively. The premium packages offer several benefits including gift card processing and mobile-application hosting for customers, meaning that your POS capabilities can expand within Toast as your business grows. You’ll never have to jump around from different POS providers if you go with Toast!

Shopify

Just as Toast is made specifically for restaurants, Shopify is designed for retail. It is praised for its ease of use and convenient setup process.

With a range of plans from “Shopify Lite” to the “Advanced” option, retailers can pay anywhere from $9 to $299 per month depending on their needs. Regardless of which subscription option you choose, Shopify is known for its accessibility for even the most technologically inexperienced.

Shopify also offers an application for online retailers that can use it as a stand-alone service or sync their online shopping with their brick-and-mortar setups, so entrepreneurs can easily sync their Shopify online store with the POS service.

Both the software and hardware are available on both Apple and Android products, so there is no barrier to entry depending on the platform you side with.

Shopify serves as an easily accessible register that you can use on a tablet for more professional appearances or a smartphone for the sake of mobility. This information can then be immediately updated to Shopify’s accounting services.

Store registry can be tracked by providing each employee a unique PIN, tracking sales made, hours worked and orders logged. All of these features make Shopify a great all-in-one solution for retailers who want to operate entirely online or want to open a small to medium-sized business that employs a handful of workers.

Whatever your business model entails, you can rest assured that there is a POS system out there for you. No matter your ambitions, know that Corporate Business Solutions Consultants can always offer advice with your entrepreneurial goals.

 

 

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