A POS is the spine of your operation, so the wrong choice is expensive to undo. Before you sign anything, run the contenders through this list.
The 10 questions to ask
- Does it work offline? Outages happen; sales should not stop.
- Is inventory built in? Or is it a costly add-on?
- How are payments handled? Check gateways and fee transparency.
- Does it scale to multiple locations?
- Are analytics included? Real insight, not just exports.
- How fast is support? Ask for response-time guarantees.
- Can staff learn it in an hour?
- Does it integrate with your accounting and apps?
- What is the true total cost after hardware and fees?
- Who owns your data? The answer should always be you.
Red flags to walk away from
Some answers should end the conversation, no matter how polished the demo:
- "You can't export your data." Your sales history is yours. If you can't take it with you, you're renting your own numbers.
- "Inventory is a separate product." Bolt-ons rarely stay in sync and quietly inflate the real price.
- "Support is email-only, business hours." When the till is down at a Friday rush, that is not support.
- Per-transaction lock-in to one payment provider with opaque fees.
Score it, don't feel it
Give each contender a number against the ten points above, weighted by what matters to your business. The winner on paper and the one with the slickest sales deck are often different systems — trust the scorecard. For businesses in Nepal, also confirm local tax and payment fit with our restaurant POS buyer's guide for Nepal.
Score each option honestly. The right system will feel less like software and more like a teammate. When you're ready, ScanSewa's AI POS checks every box above — see it in a quick demo.