How to choose a POS system in South Africa

Work out the real monthly cost, not the advertised one

A till has up to four separate costs, and vendors quote whichever one looks smallest.

Add all four before comparing anything. A free licence with a percentage of turnover attached is not free — on R150,000 a month, one percent is R1,500, which is more than most subscriptions.

• —The software subscription, per month, per location.
• —The card machine: either a rental, or a once-off purchase.
• —The merchant fee: a percentage of every card sale, paid to whoever acquires the payment.
• —Anything taken as a share of turnover by the software itself.

Ask what happens when the power or the line goes

This is the question that separates software written for South African conditions from software translated into rand.

Find out, specifically: can a cashier still ring up a sale with no internet? Does the till keep a local record and send it later, or does it simply stop? And if it stops, what is the staff meant to do — because the answer in practice is a paper book, and a paper book means a day of retyping.

Then ask the same question about the card machine, which is a separate device with a separate connection. A till that works offline and a card machine that does not still means no card sales.

Check whether your data can leave

You will change till software at some point. The cost of that change is decided the day you sign up, not the day you leave.

Ask for an export of products, customers and sales history in a format a spreadsheet can open. If the answer is that you can view reports but not export them, you are renting your own trading history.

Count the licences you actually need

Pricing is usually per till, per user or per location, and the difference is large.

A restaurant with three waiters carrying phones and one counter till is four devices. If the software charges per device, that is four licences; if it charges per location, it is one. Neither is wrong, but only one of them matches how you trade.

Make sure it can produce a valid tax invoice

If you are VAT registered, or you expect to be within the year, the till must be able to produce a document that meets the VAT Act's requirements — not just a slip with a total on it.

A till that cannot do this costs you either your input VAT claims or your bookkeeper's time, every month, for as long as you keep it.

Try it with your worst-case sale

Every demo looks good on one item and a cash payment. Take the trial and ring up the sale you actually dread.

Split across two payment methods. A discount a manager has to approve. A return from last week. A customer who wants the slip on WhatsApp. If any of those takes more than a few taps, it will take longer on a Saturday with six people waiting.