Vend is among the top iPad POS platforms in the market today. A perfect POS solution for retail businesses, it is widely used in handling customer, sales, and inventory management tasks. Flexible and reasonably priced, this app can be personalized to suit your preferences. It offers data entry options using either keyboard and mouse or touchscreen, as well as customizing your POS screen to allow access to your most used items or features.
Vend has acquired new features with its integration with ecommerce tool WooCommerce, offering online sellers numerous benefits. The tool now provides users both in-store and online sales that are tailored to their individual needs. It suits inventory-based retailers, customizing the way they conduct ecommerce. With the software, you get to manage your sales centrally with the platform syncing customers, sales, inventory, and products between the apps. It also accommodates Instagram and Facebook users, making them potential paying customers.
What is unique about Vend?
- Compatible across devices. This platform can be used online, with PC or iOS. You can synchronize your data using any of these operating systems in the cloud.
- Scalable and configurable. Vend works with numerous business applications, and you can integrate new functionalities as your business requirements expand.
- Works offline. Even if you go offline, this platform will instantly synchronize all your transactions once your connection is restored.
- Integrated online store. Easily and quickly set up a completely customizable online shop on your own without any training necessary. With a single click, you can put your products online.
- Multi-task management. Users can utilize numerous features for managing customer information, dashboards and reports, promotions and pricing, main product catalog, orders, inventory, and cash.
Detailed Vend Review
7. Sapaad
POS platform Sapaad is a powerful solution that is popular among restaurant owners. This easy-to-use software has become the go-to tool for restaurant owners in Dubai, owing to its numerous features and regular updates. It is a cloud-deployed system that is flexible enough to cater to not only large establishments but small cafes as well. What’s good about the app is its ability to better organize kitchens, which results in better sales and client loyalty.
Restaurants that take online, walk-in, dine-in, delivery, and take-away orders can greatly benefit from using the product. This intuitive solution is both easy to set up and use as everything is done automatically. What’s even better is that Sapaad does not require servers or costly IT teams to maintain, allowing your business to grow. Its flexible pricing makes it ideal for small businesses, along with the fact that it does not come with setup costs, hidden fees, or expensive licenses.
What is unique about Sapaad?
- It has an offline mode. You don’t have to worry if you get disconnected from the Internet. The software makes sure your operation does not get disrupted in the absence of connectivity.
- It has a call center module. The software makes phone ordering simple while tracking deliveries. It also maintains a comprehensive database of customers, which includes data like order history, customer addresses, and preferences.
- Inventory and back-office management. Powerful inventory management features allow you to minimize food costs, receive inventory, and send purchase orders. Stock cost and movement can likewise be tracked in real-time.
Detailed Sapaad Review
8. Clover
Clover is a POS system designed to support easier online payments and efficient inventory management. Through this system, businesses can accept a wide variety of payment methods aside from cash, including NFC payments, mobile wallets, credit and debit cards, and gift cards. The system also supports online payments and contactless payments, enabling safer transactions.
Clover is also a good choice for retail businesses that need more efficient inventory management processes. With Clover, users can easily create SKUs and variants for easier product tracking. The system also sends low-stock alerts so retailers can avoid out-of-stock scenarios.
What is unique about Clover?
- Versatile payment processing. Clover can support businesses in accepting multiple payment methods, including cash, checks, swipe cards, and mobile wallets. The system can also provide digital receipts to customers.
- Efficient inventory management. The system sends low-stock alerts, so retailers can restock popular items before they run out. Clover also works with a barcode scanner to make it easier for users to add items to inventory.
- Customer engagement tools. Through Clover, retailers can send promotions and offers to customers via email or text. The software also helps shop owners offer digital and physical gift cards.
Detailed Clover Review
9. Revel Systems POS
Revel Systems POS helps small businesses improve their daily operations by integrating inventory management, employee management, and sales reporting into a single, intuitive POS platform. It is an iPad-based solution perfect for restaurants, bars, and retail stores. It uses a powerful POS technology that allows you to track your inventory in real-time and offer your customers a more flexible payment processing.
The system helps you deliver an end-to-end customer experience. With it, you can easily split bills, hold bar tabs, and accept various payment types. Plus, Revel Systems has an intelligent reporting tool that lets you keep track of your inventory levels and identify your best-selling items. You can also draw insights from its accurate analytics and see how your products and operations affect your bottom line. The vendor offers a free trial to help learn more about Revel Systems POS features at no cost.
What is unique about Revel Systems POS?
- Multi-location management. Revel Systems gives you total freedom on your menu options from single or multiple locations and lets you track inventory levels in real-time.
- Gain data-driven insights. The software provides analytics and reports on your sales performance. It also has its own Insights application, allowing you to keep an eye on your business even on the go.
- Error-free operations. Mobile order takers and kitchen display screens allow your staff seamless communication, preventing mistakes in your order completion.
- Effective employee management. Revel Systems has built-in timecards that let you track your employees’ hours accurately.
Detailed Revel Systems POS Review
10. Upserve
Upserve is an all-in-one restaurant management solution that combines payment processing, point of sale, inventory management, and reservation systems. It has a flexible POS system that adapts well to the unique needs of restaurants and customer demands, covering guest counts, menu inventory, and food and bar sales. In one intuitive and user-friendly interface, Upserve keeps track of all your operations, from the back of the kitchen right up to the front desk for customer requests.
The software also allows your servers to search menu items and take orders as fast as possible. By combining the data from your POS and payment processing systems, you gain insights into your best-selling products and which items to push back. Plus, Upserve has an offline mode that lets you serve customers, accept credit card payments, and print receipts even when you lose your Internet connection. Should you want to investigate the platform firsthand, you can easily leverage the Upserve free demo.
Moreover, Upserve equips your growing restaurant with a full suite of reliable hardware, like its purpose-built tableside, standalone EMV readers, and POS terminals. Also, it can easily be integrated with other industry-standard hardware, including EPSON printers for receipt printing, kitchen display systems, and Meraki Networking routers and extenders.
What is unique about Upserve?
- Training mode for new hires. In the training mode, your new staff can practice using the system without disrupting your daily operations.
- Straightforward visuals for analytics and reports. Upserve’s analytics and reporting tools give you a clear view of trends, sales performance, labor costs, scheduling, and employee productivity.
- Split checks and items. In just a few clicks, your servers can easily split between card and cash payments. The system accurately does the math for you so that you can rely on error-free computations.
Detailed Upserve Review
11. CAKE
CAKE is an intuitive, cost-friendly solution that accelerates order processing with its easy-to-use POS system. It streamlines workflows and helps you build on-the-fly menu and table adjustments. Built to handle simple and complex operations, CAKE provides a flexible order management feature in one simple, intuitive dashboard.
Using advanced technology called Projective Capacitive Touch, CAKE’s hardware allows you to have a seamless touchscreen experience, no matter if you’re using a stylus, have flour-covered hands, or wearing food prep gloves. It has a customer-facing display, so your customers can easily review order details, enroll in loyalty programs, and sign up for e-receipts. You can take advantage of the CAKE free trial and get to know the features firsthand at no cost and without commitment.
What is unique about CAKE?
- Master the system in minutes. CAKE has a simple and easy-to-use interface so that you can adapt to the system faster. For instance, you can quickly send menu items to multiple prep stations in a breeze or requiring approvals for comps.
- Best-in-class integrations. You can connect the POS system with most-used business applications and payment systems, like Paypal, Xero, and Quickbooks.
- Effectively manage employees. By using CAKE’s employee management and basic timecards, you can clock in employees, track their breaks, and monitor overtime.
Detailed CAKE Review
12. Cybersys POS
A full-featured POS solution, Cybersys POS is designed to cater to SMBs of any type, from restaurants and jewelry stores to coffee shops and sporting goods shops. It is a flexible tool that can be customized to meet your company’s requirements. The system is accompanied by powerful hardware, including credit card readers, receipt printers, barcode scanners, cash drawers, and label printers, to name a few. The software has become a staple for many small businesses requiring a fully functional POS that does not break the bank.
Cybersys POS can boost corporate communication, both internal and external. This results in faster delivery of your products/services. Goals and targets can be analyzed and set using system-generated reports as a basis. You can come up with two types of loyalty programs to encourage repeat customers. Inventories can also be managed using the system, which automatically sends inventory alerts so that you get updated on the status of your inventory. The platform supports any currency, while shipments can be tracked and recorded with each transaction. You can make the most of Cybersys POS demo to learn more about the product’s features.
What is unique about Cybersys POS?
- Inexpensive yet powerful POS tool. Despite Cybersys POS’s low pricing, it comes with all the features of your standard POS systems like ecommerce integration, reporting, inventory management, and employee access management. All these are available at affordable packages, resulting in huge savings.
- Custom pricing plans. The vendor can create custom pricing models for individual users, who can choose all the features that they need from such a system. This ability to scale the product means that businesses get to pay only for the features that they need.
- It’s a flexible system. The tool, being mobile-optimized, can be accessed from any device. This means that it can be used whenever and wherever it is needed.
Detailed Cybersys POS Review
13. Square
If you’re searching for a universal POS platform to address your business needs, then Square is an excellent choice. This user-friendly tool is free and enables businesses to accept and process payments both in-store and even on-the-go, for both iOS or Android gadgets. Aside from an integrated magstripe reader for debit and credit card payment processing, Square also offers other functionalities such as inventory and sales tracking in real-time as well as item management.
Aside from those mentioned, Square is also capable of splitting single bill items into multiple tickets. To help you cut down staff error and accelerate checkout by limiting staff view of tickets and tips to only those assigned to them. Ticket ownership is transferable, allowing for correct reporting of tips and sales. Authorization slips are no longer required to be reprinted for customers to add tips and sign. This promotes a paperless environment, which reduces your establishment’s carbon footprint. Square offers an excellent free trial for 30 days, so you can readily know if this solution is the POS you’re looking for.
What is unique about Square
- Square is free. You can download it at no cost from GooglePlay and App Store, install in either Android or iOS devices, and use it in-store or on-the-go.
- With a Square magstripe reader. This tool enables the app to receive and handle payments using credit or debit cards, straight from your mobile gadget.
- It offers added functionalities. Square also works as an item management app as well as a real-time inventory and sales tracker.
- It has analytics and reporting. It provides valuable business insights from its smart analytics and intelligence reports, which help businesses arrive at sound business decisions.
- It is updated regularly. The team behind Square works to constantly come up with new updates that are automatically applied to the platform. This means continued efficiency for your business.
Detailed Square Review
14. Oracle Food and Beverage
POS platform Oracle Food and Beverage caters to all types and sizes of restaurants, sports and entertainment businesses, and hotels. This tool comes with a robust feature set that is meant to increase productivity, boost service, and enhance efficiency. With the system, all relevant users, customers included, get to enjoy richer experiences, which is accomplished using technologies, such as mobile optimization and analytics. Prominent features include omnichannel delivery, integrated POS, cost control, kiosks, and yes, even kitchen management. Using the solution is quite easy and does not require a steep learning curve. It centralizes the management of your establishment while being able to easily work with any opportunity or concept.
What’s Unique About Oracle Food and Beverage?
- It’s a fully integrated POS. As it is a fully-integrated POS platform, Oracle Food and Beverage can accelerate transactions, making sure that they are all accurately conducted. It is also able to provide a richer user experience while reducing costs by providing reporting and back-office functionalities.
- Improves kitchen operations. The solution comes with a Kitchen system that effectively simplifies your kitchen processes. It boosts kitchen service and food quality while decreasing room for errors.
- Reporting and analytics. Oracle Food and Beverage is not your average POS. It comes with powerful analytics and reporting tools that keep tabs on your restaurant’s performance. This provides clear visibility into your operations, which lets you make sound decisions.
Detailed Oracle Food and Beverage Review
15. Lavu
Lavu is a cloud-based POS solution built to run on iPads. Built for restaurants and bars of different sizes, this solution supports touch screen ordering, prints kitchen tickets automatically, and processes payments tableside. Furthermore, the platform has layout customization options and total menu management features so that you can have all the information about your operations in one place.
In addition, Lavu comes with back-office tools like employee management and inventory tracking as well. It even has custom reporting features so you can gain insights into your sales, inventory levels, as well as employee performance.
What is unique about Lavu?
- Comprehensive restaurant management tools. This platform does not only process transactions. It can also handle menu customization and restaurant layout customization. It even has a happy hour feature which lets you handle discounts easily.
- Accept various payment types. With Lavu, you can accept most payment types, including magnetic strip cards, chip cards, and contactless payment methods like Apple Pay.
- Detailed, real-time business reports. The platform gives users real-time reports on sales figures. It also has custom reporting options that will allow you to track your preferred metrics, allowing you to take the guesswork out of business decision-making.
- Back-office functionalities. Lavu offers inventory tracking tools to help you prevent overstocking and understocking. Moreover, it has a labor management module that lets you track their performance.
Detailed Lavu Review
Where is POS software headed?
POS software has indeed benefited small businesses, from brick-and-mortar stores to online sellers, revolutionizing the way these companies manage their sales transactions. By giving users the gift of automation, these platforms have gotten rid of the need to spend hours on redundant sales processes, allowing users to focus on more important matters. POS systems have also been taking over processes that have traditionally been the turf of third-party applications. But most importantly, POS software has been helping customers by accelerating the sales process and contributing to customer experience, whose benefits go both ways. In this regard, Toast continues to lead the pack with its robust features and unparalleled benefits. You can find out more about its features if you sign up for Toast free demo.
With all these benefits now at your fingertips, one can’t help but wonder what’s in store for these systems in the near future. For restaurants, POS software is seen to continue to harness the power of the cloud as doing so makes them accessible anytime, anywhere. It is also seen as the preferred deployment method of many businesses owing to the low price tags that come with cloud-based tools. And then there is the projected increase in the use of self-service kiosks, not only by restaurants but among retailers as well. These benefits and more make these products very appealing to SMBs, helping them on their path to profitability and growth. So it’s no wonder that these tools continue to gain traction in this niche market.
You may also want to check out our guide to restaurant management system to find out more about its features and benefits.
Good post. i think this is quite informative and does cover quite a few good options for those looking for POS systems and software. Vend is quite a good choice and one that I have some good experience with. It also integrates rather well with Xero, so perfect if you're already using Xero for payroll, etc. Thanks for sharing your views and advice!
We went with Lightspeed POS and we have been pretty happy with this, there is one REALLY big drawback for small retailers. Lightspeed will automatically add quantities of inventory to your "out of stock" inventory. This becomes a problem when selling your items on Ebay or Amazon Lightspeed will continue to sell items that you no longer have. This will force you to cancel orders and of course Ebay and Amazon are very unhappy with Seller who cancel orders repeatedly. We have been told that development is working towards a fix that will allow users to turn off this feature, great right? but it could take up to 6 months before it is rolled out. By that time Amazon and Ebay may have closed us down. No one there seems to understand the urgency of this issue. Very frustrated and disappointed.
I know TouchBistro, got some excellent recommendations on it, but unfortunately can’t afford it at this point of time. I’m still looking for a solution, but I’m not sure how smart it would be to invest in a custom POS just because it is cheaper. I’d certainly get a restaurant-exclusive one, as long as it fits my budget. Any suggestions in mind?
TouchBistro is certainly a good place to look, as it compiles all vital functions of a smart restaurant POS. Their pricing starts at $69/month for a single license (SOLO plan), and you can use it to manage all POS operations excluding support for multiple terminals. Another restriction is that TouchBistro is devoted only to iPad users. A restaurant-friendly POS on this list that works on all devices is Toast POS, but keep in mind that pricing begins at $100/month.
No need to worry, though. The good news is you can always find a different restaurant POS solution, either as a standalone product, or bundled within a larger venue management kit with multiple attractive functionalities. For more information, please visit our Best Restaurant Management Software page, and you will certainly find a product that works for you.
An option is also to try a more affordable ‘one-size-fits-all’ POS and customize it to your needs. Looking up the list, we’d draw your attention particularly to Square Register (flexible and free to use) and QuickBooks POS (starts at $19.95 a month; integrates easily with your accounting system). For more ideas, check our Best POS Software list.
I gave Vend a look, you mentioned that it can be used both online and offline. I’m not exactly sure how that works, can you also tell me if it applies to the free plan as well? If not, are there other services on this list I should consider? Much appreciated!
Vend is an excellent alternative - it is beautifully crafted, easy to use, painless to connect - and foremost - it works in Offline Mode! What this means is that You will be able to process sales even if your internet connection goes down. Two minutes after the connection has dropped, you will get a dedicated Offline Mode banner with instructions how to proceed, and all the work you’ve done prior to it will be successfully saved. Note that this will only happen when you’re logged into the system with a valid account, and in case you’ve completed the initial sync.
Using Vend in Offline Mode, you will have access to your current sales (cash, layby, and on-account); you will be able to add customers, accept orders, and view product information. The Offline Mode will not let you process integrated payments, edit & remove current customer profiles, or to discard and park sales. Once your Internet connection is back on, you may get an ‘Errored sales’ status, but you can solve this problem easily by clicking on ‘Retry errored sales’, and syncing the work you completed offline.
Similar solutions you should consider are Webnexs POS, Retail POS, and Merchant Maverick.
Leave a comment!