Owning a retail store means you need to have the best POS for your needs. Whether its to track inventory & products look up, manage employees, reporting and more. Whether you run a stall at a local market or manage multi-store locations, we are here to help you find the most suitable retail point of sale system for your business. Here are our recommendations and customer reviews on the best retail POS systems of 2022:
Owning a retail store means you need to have the best POS for your needs. Whether its to track inventory & products look up, manage employees, reporting and more. Whether you run a stall at a local market or manage multi-store locations, we are here to help you find the most suitable retail point of sale system for your business. Here are our recommendations and customer reviews on the best retail POS systems of 2022:
Choosing the best retail POS system is crucial to the success of any small business, not only for processing orders and transactions but also helping with a multitude of back-office tasks such as inventory and sales reporting.
The retail industry is hugely important to the US economy, generating $1.14 trillion per year, which makes up 5.9% of the country’s overall GDP, with around 20% of sales occurring during the holiday season, including the likes of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which see huge amounts of people taking advantage of offers from retailers.
It’s estimated that the industry generates close to five million jobs, although many retailers are shifting their focus online, with the online segment predicted to be worth $523 billion by 2020, with mobile devices such as phones and tablets quickly becoming the preferred way to shop.
With bricks and mortar stores increasingly under threat, it’s important that retail’s small businesses evolve to give their customers the best service possible, and a high-quality POS system is at the core of this.
Whether you’re setting up a brand new retail store or are simply looking to replace your existing system, having the best POS system is absolutely crucial, not just for retail, but for any small business.
Your POS isn’t just a way for your customers to pay for their goods, but the central system of your business that everything else should run through
A good POS system can help to merge multiple aspects of your business operations and help to save time with inventory and sales reporting, which can provide you with a stream of valuable data to be used in planning future strategy and identifying areas for improvement within the business.
There’s a whole host of other features that a POS system can deliver for your business, including employee management, accounting, and customer management too, helping to further your marketing efforts.
As you can see, a specialist retail POS system can really be instrumental in the running of your retail business, so it’s important that you take the time to select the right one.
Before considering specific systems that you might want to use for your POS system in your retail store, here are a few important things to consider.
While we’ll get onto some of the more specific features that you might be interested in, take a moment to think exactly what it is that you’re going to require for a POS system.
Retail is such a large industry that each business is going to be very different, so a POS is going to serve different needs from one to the next.
Think about the challenges that your business might face, or is currently struggling with, and whether there are any features that a POS could help with.
Of course, the price is one of the most important factors when you’re making any kind of investment in your business
Retail POS systems can be fairly expensive to install, but once you’ve got that initial setup cost out of the way, the running costs are usually fairly reasonable.
However, something else that you’ll have to take into account is whether or not you’re also going to have to invest in any extra hardware too.
While some POS systems will integrate seamlessly with your existing cash drawer, barcode scanner, card reader and so on, others will require you to purchase new equipment, so this is definitely something that you’ll want to check out.
No matter how great your POS system is, if neither you or your staff can use it, it’s useless to your business.
This is why it’s so important that your chosen retail POS system has a simple and easy to use interface. Especially in a fast-paced sales environment, it’s important that your staff don’t have to constantly ask for help or refer to a manual to able to effectively serve your customers.
While any new POS system will inevitably require some extra training for your staff, it shouldn’t take too long for them to become familiar enough with the software to use it on a day to day basis. Lots of POS systems offer inbuilt training modules which are useful too, especially in an industry such as retail, which traditionally has a fairly high turnover of staff.
It can sometimes be difficult to look too far further than the present moment, but when you’re selecting a POS system, you need to remember that it’s a long-term investment and consider where your business will be in five or ten years time.
A system that is perfect for your business may not suit your needs in a few years time, especially if the business expands in that time, so you need to ensure that any POS system which you invest in now isn’t going to inhibit your business’s growth further down the line.
Most good POS systems come packed with the majority of features that you’ll need to run your retail business, but you’ll probably still need it to work in tandem with some of your existing systems too.
It’s important to keep everything as streamlined as possible, and integrating as much of your processes together as possible will not only save you and your staff valuable time, but it helps to keep all of your data is kept centrally on one system, whether it be customer contact details, stock levels or accounting figures.
While you hopefully won’t run into any issues with your new POS system, it’s good to know that if you do, there’s a comprehensive level of customer support available to you.
As we’ve mentioned, your POS should be a long-term investment, so it’s very important that you know that support will be on hand.
Ideally, your systems will have 24/7 support either over the phone or via email or live chat, because if disaster strikes and your POS goes down, every second that passes is costing the business time and money.
If your business operates outside of the traditional nine to five working hours, 24/7 support is even more important.
Now we’re going to take a look at some of the key features that you may be looking for when it comes to selecting a POS system for your retail business, starting with software.
Of course, the primary function of a POS system is to allow your customers to pay for their goods and it’s important that you carefully consider the payment processing solutions which different solutions offer.
While many customers do still pay with cash, it’s vital that a modern POS system allows you to accept debit or credit card payments, or even via a mobile app.
Your POS system should be compatible with as many card providers as possible, as well as the ability to easily split payment between cash and card if the customer would prefer to do so.
Even if your physical store is your primary concern, it’s increasingly important to have an online store too.
If you do offer online ordering, the POS software should work in tandem with this, offering customers the option to order online and pick up in-store, or perhaps check stock levels online before they head to the store.
Having the ability to manage both your online and in-store sales channels can help save a lot of time.
Most POS systems should offer real-time inventory reporting and management, to show exactly how much of each product you have left in stock and notify you when something is close to going out of stock.
This helps you to be much more efficient with your ordering, not only speeding up the process but ensuring that you don’t end up with too much stock and only order as much as you need.
Some retail POS systems may also allow you to set up automatic ordering that you can set to order new items in when you reach a certain level.
Reporting is hugely important for any business, to see how much money you’re making, which products are selling the best and which you’re struggling to make a return on.
Suitable POS solutions should allow you to see all of this information and more, in varying degrees of detail.
Ideally, you’ll be able to identify trends in products, employees, promotions and different days and times to help you with detailed planning.
Some systems will offer much more detailed reporting than others, so be sure to find one which matches the needs and requirements of your business.
While a POS system usually consisted of a fixed terminal, there’s an increasing move towards systems which are based on mobile devices, such as iPads.
These mobile devices are usually hooked up to a card reader, which allows you to accept and process payments from anywhere in the store, so that staff don’t have to keep running back and forth to the register.
Other hardware such as barcode scanner and receipt printers can often be attached to these mobile POS devices too for added functionality and they often possess many of the functions of a terminal-based system.
It’s a very affordable POS solution and makes serving your customers a much easier process, both for your staff and the customers themselves.
While customers are increasingly choosing to pay via card, this doesn‘t mean that you can forget about cash, so you’ll still need a cash register hooked up to your POS.
As always, a cash register should be sturdy and durable for safety reasons and should be able to be safely stored under the counter too.
Most POS systems will have user permissions features so that a username and password have to be entered before anyone can gain access to the register.
You’re probably going to require a barcode scanner to pull the product information from each item to add to a customer’s checkout total, or even just for checking stock levels or to bring up product information on the POS.
Having a printer that allows you to print out your own barcodes or other labels makes it much easier to organize and track your products and inventory level.
And while many customers will prefer to receive a digital receipt, you’ll also require a receipt printer to provide them with physical proof of purchase too.
Some POS systems will offer a second screen which faces the customer, allowing them to see the transaction taking place as you scan items and tally up the total amount.
This gives greater transparency to the process for the customer and allows them to easily point out if any mistakes have been made on the order.
Our top-rated POS system for retail businesses is ShopKeep, which brings together all the features that you could want, in a clean and easy to use interface.
Based on an iPad system, the system offers up inventory and sales reports, which can be viewed anywhere and on any device via the cloud, with advanced CRM features too, including customer loyalty and gift card integration.
The iPad mobile POS is increasingly becoming the favored choice, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, due to its flexibility and efficiency.
They also have extensive 24/7 customer support on offer via phone, email and live chat too. Their pricing starts at $69 per month, with a number of different packages to choose from.
Springboard Retail is known for its comprehensive CRM and loyalty features which are included within the monthly fee.
The customer dashboard offers really in-depth insights into your customers, even down to additional information like their favorite color!
Their reporting, in general, is amongst the most in-depth on the market, including real-time foot traffic data, which isn’t present in lots of other systems and offers some unique insights.
The system starts at $99 per month, with a ‘Professional’ package available at $139, or the ‘Enterprise’ option, which you’ll need to get a custom quote for.
Revel has a strong CRM feature, allowing you to track customer’s favorite items, as well as robust sales, inventory and employee management, all with detailed reporting.
There’s also a mobile app, Revel Insights, to allow you to see all of the above while you’re out of the office.
While Revel is undoubtedly a great system, it does have a couple of downsides, the first of which is the lack of a free trial, which most other systems do offer.
In addition, you’ll probably have to purchase a lot of their own hardware to ensure compatibility, and you’ll be tied into a long contract too.
This being said, the multitude of features may make Revel the system for you, depending on the specifics of your business.
Vend’s most notable feature is its compatibility with numerous other leading third-party systems such as Xero for accounting, payment systems like PayPal and Deputy employee scheduling.
In addition to this, Vend can be run on all manner of devices, such as PCs and mobile devices such as iPads, making it a very versatile choice.
Other features include sales and inventory tracking, CRM, eCommerce integration, split payments and more.
All in all, it offers great customization to find a setup that best works for your retail business, with pricing starting at $69 for the starter package.
Harbortouch is a very easy retail POS system to get started with, with extensive support on hand, as well as free equipment to get started with, provided you’re ok signing up to a relatively long contract.
They offer a stripped back and cheaper system called Harbortouch Echo too, alongside a more advanced version too, Harbortouch Elite, all of which can be integrated with a host of other systems too, and a mobile app called HarborPay for accepting credit and debit card payments.
It also has all of the features that you expect from a quality retail POS system, such as inventory tracking, vendor management, and CRM, as well as an attribute matrix, which allows you to include different variations for each product (such as different sizes and colors).