Which POS system to choose?

Attention, managers of all companies that use cash registers in their business! During five years of operation, our clients have asked us countless times which POS system is the best suitable. Indeed, the choice in the market is quite wide, but we have prepared our recommendations from the accounting side, which you can consider before making a final decision.

What is the difference between cash registers? Well, the answer to the question is usually – they can be smart or not. Unequivocally, we recommend for all new companies to choose only smart cash registers. We will discuss their advantages soon, but there is one important legal aspect as well – regular cash registers will soon be unusable. For large businesses with an annual turnover of more than 300 thousand euros - as early as 2023, and for small ones - from 2025. There seems to be no way back. And really, why should you choose such an old and inefficient solution? Given the overall bureaucratic burden and accounting inefficiencies, the financial reason is no longer so important.

When considering which POS system to choose, several aspects should be considered:

• Will it be used in shops or in cafes?
• How many points of sale do you have or plan to have?
• How do you want to keep stock records - in total or in quantity (read more about this)?

All RoboLabs integrations with POS systems and supported solutions can be found here.However, if you have decided to entrust accounting to RoboLabs, and you do not see the POS system you have chosen for your business in the list of integrations, we can develop the integration individually for you. However, not only does it cost, but it also takes time. The integration of total inventory accounting takes 1-2 months, and quantitative - longer. Of course, anything is possible and our team is open to new challenges.

Here are our recommendations:

	For cafes	For shops

And here are our reasons:

• Raso is perfect for shops, especially those with more than one point of sale. Through direct integration, both fixed and temporarily different prices or discounts for the same product at different points of sale can be set directly from the Robo system. Also it is possible to set discounts to a group of goods. Raso only supports a quantitative warehouse accounting, as the cash register itself does not have a warehouse management model – it was done purposefully, as a separate central system should be used to manage the warehouse.
• IIKO cash register system only supports total warehouse accounting and is suitable for use exclusively in cafes. It differs from all other systems in that it is an international system, so if a company has cafes in several countries, it can use the same cash registers.
• N_soft cash register system supports both quantitative and total warehouse accounting. This system is chosen by both cafes and shops. However, from experience, we recommend it less to companies that have more than one point of sale or an extremely wide product range. For cafes that have especially chosen to keep stock records in total, this system is perfect.
• R_keeper cash register system is used exclusively in cafes. It supports both total and quantitative warehouse accounting, but we have not implemented total accounting integration (if the need arises, we would implement it). After selecting the quantitative warehouse accounting module, the warehouse management moves to the Robo system - recipe management, as well as document processing in lines. The quantitative warehouse accounting module is usually chosen by larger cafe networks due to higher automation costs. In addition, there are additional requirements for suppliers, whose invoices must also show the codes of the products purchased. Undoubtedly, this is the highest level of financial control, highly accurate and automated product accounting, which leaves no room for manual work and many other functionalities in the Robo system. We say that such a choice "pays off" owning at least 2 cafes.

Well, if you still decide to work with a regular cash register - you will not have to go to the accountant with the cash register book (all you have to do is take photos and send them to us from any smart device in a convenient way). The advantage of such a cash register is only one - the price. But real-time accounting will have to be forgotten for a while, and human errors in filling in and entering the cash book will probably not be avoided 100% either. Moreover, from the point of view of business control, you will not be able to follow the movement of goods and services because you will not see values in the system, but only the movement of money. So our proposal is to choose only smart cash registers.

And at the very end, as promised, we will briefly review the difference between total and quantitative warehouse accounting. Total warehouse accounting means that companies themselves track the stocks of goods physically and make an inventory count at least once a year, informing the accountant about the actual stock, so that he could make changes in the system. Financial control in this case depends on the company itself, i.e. whether it will use warehouse management software outside the Robo system. When managing a warehouse in a quantitative way, the system shows the exact balances, and their values are calculated by the accounting system using one of the selected methods. Financial control in Robo system is high, reporting accuracy - as well.

Another, no less important criterion, the cost of accounting. Total warehouse accounting is a much cheaper service than quantitative warehouse accounting due to simpler processes. It is important to mention that not all accounting firms keep quantitative warehouse accounting. The RoboLabs team has accepted this challenge and provides quantitative warehouse accounting services.