Ask a business here what their point of sale system costs and most will quote the monthly licence. It is almost never where the money went. The licence is the visible number, and the visible number is the one every supplier has already sharpened for comparison.
Here is where the rest of it actually goes, in roughly the order it surprises people.
Hardware you were told you needed
The classic is the all in one till: a screen, a drawer, a printer and a computer in one heavy unit, at a price that would buy several tablets. It is a fine machine for a supermarket. For a shop or a cafe it is usually a way of spending forty thousand rufiyaa on something a device you already own can do, and when it fails you are waiting on a part rather than walking to a shop.
Before buying hardware, run the software for a week on what you have. A week of real trading tells you what you need better than any showroom.
Setup and data entry
Somebody has to enter six hundred products, their costs, their prices, their tax settings and the opening count. That work exists whoever does it. The question is whether it is quoted, whether it is yours to do, and what a supplier charges if it is theirs. It is also the single most common reason a system is bought and then not used: the shop never got past the catalogue.
Training, and the second training
The first training happens with everybody excited. The second one is the one nobody budgets: three months later, for the person who replaced the cashier who left. Ask whether training is a one off event or something you can get again, and what it costs the second time.
The per something fees
Per user, per device, per branch, per terminal. None of these are unfair, and all of them turn a comparison upside down at the second shop or the third member of staff. Do the arithmetic for the business you expect to be in two years, not the one you are in today.
What the price does in year two
Introductory pricing is normal and it is not dishonest, but the number that matters is the renewal. Ask directly what this costs in the second year and the third, and get it in writing. The same goes for support: whether it is included after the first year, and what a call out costs when it is not.
Total cost is the licence, plus hardware, plus setup, plus training, plus the growth fees, over three years. Any supplier who will not help you build that number is telling you something.
The cost of leaving
The final line in a real comparison is the exit. If your sales history, customers and stock cannot come out in a form another system can read, the price of leaving is a year of work, and that price is charged to you at the worst possible time. We wrote about how to check that before you commit in whose numbers are they.
A reference point
RekordPOS is a free trial, then 499 MVR a month, or 449 MVR a month if you pay for the year, and every plan carries the same product including more than one branch. We publish it because a price you have to ask for is a price that varies by how much somebody thinks you will pay.
The same subject from the other side of the counter, written for the person using the till rather than choosing it, is on the product's own blog: what hardware a shop really needs.
If you are holding two quotes and cannot tell which is actually cheaper, send them to us and we will build the three year number with you, ours included.