QuickBooks Point Of Sale (POS)

Running a retail store involves a broad spectrum of sales tasks. Those tasks consume much of your precious time if you do things manually. This is not all. There are several other things that you can not even do manually. These include personalized savings and rewards, on-the-spot price checks, live single-point inventory tracking, generating and printing receipts, etc.

It is where retailers and shopkeepers need something capable enough to help them ease these tasks and make their business convenient and profitable. QuickBooks Point of Sale software is the solution to all such requirements.

What is QuickBooks Point Of Sale?

QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS) is one of the most loved Point of Sale software programs developed by Intuit. It comes with a range of super convenient features that helps retailers and shopkeepers perform functions like updating and tracking inventory, maintaining cash registers, putting together daily, monthly, and annual sales reports, receiving payments, generating receipts, storing customer information, and tracking customers buying behavior on the site so that they can determine their marketing strategies, etc.

Top Features and Usability of QuickBooks POS

QB POS comes with a number of awesome features and usability that are all about automating your retail sales process that saves you time and money and also boosting your sales productivity. Let's dive a little deeper to understand the features and the usages of the POS program in a better way.

Interactive Dashboard

In the recent versions of QB POS, you get an interactive and easy-to-handle dashboard. In the dashboard, you can directly check the category-wise sales summary at any point in time. The benefit of this feature is that you can easily analyze which of your products have higher sales at any specific time, sales over time, and sales graphs.

Physical Inventory Scanner

Intuit has now restored the functionality of the physical inventory scanner that was previously discontinued.

With the comeback of the physical inventory scanner function to the QB POS version, CipherLab 8000 and CipherLab 8001 have been added back to the list of POS-compatible scanners. Due to its plug-and-play mechanism, users get improved accessibility and increased usability.

Real-time Inventory Management

QB POS has a special feature of inventory management that offers you the ability to manage your inventory on a real-time basis. It gives you total freedom from the hassles of maintaining inventory manually, as the inventory automatically updates with every transaction.

This feature of the software also includes inventory forecasting, customer orders, backorders, and price tag customization. If you talk about the Multi-store version of the software, there is a master inventory management feature with this. This feature ensures the master inventory of all the stores gets updated automatically on a real-time basis. The regularly updating master inventory, in turn, gives your customers the power and freedom to quickly receive what they want to purchase.

In addition, not only does it allow you to set reorder points (a certain level at which you need to replenish your stock), but it also gives you an insight into the current trends, such as what customers are buying right now and what they are expected to buy next. When creating discounts or other offers for customers, QB POS gives you a highly perceptive insight that helps you determine whether the offer is going to be profitable or if you are simply giving away inventory items.

Easy and Secure Payment Processing

Quickbooks POS is capable of processing all cash, credit, and debit card payments smoothly. The software supports and accepts all major debit and credit cards, including Master Cards, RuPay Cards, Visa, Discover, American Express, etc.

The entire payment process through cards is closely integrated with the monitor, allowing you to keep tabs on every transaction and avoid mistakes. It also supports EMV and almost all other payment technologies for secure payments, making the process of using credit and debit cards more secure for you and your customers alike.

It seamlessly integrates with Intuit's QuickBooks accounting software to reconcile transactions, report accurate sales, and update inventory accordingly.

Effective Employee Management

QB POS Pro and Multi-store versions have eased the payroll management. Both of these versions of QB POS allow managers the capability to keep track of their staff's working hours, performance, commissions, etc. They can further send such data to other linked software programs like QuickBooks accounting or Payroll software.

Moreover, its advanced and secured employee management features enable managers to add or remove access for a specific employee based on their role and hierarchy.

Efficient Customer Management

While running your retail business with QB POS, you, as an owner, can track and analyze your sales by customer's names, birthdays, phone numbers, email addresses, business, hobbies, etc. The tracking feature of the POS helps you formulate and launch targeted marketing campaigns or promotions. It provides you with real-time information on what customers are actually purchasing and at what time, and which type of customers or products are generating the most sales.

Based on these purchase habits, you can reap maximum benefits of reaching your existing as well as potential customers by making exciting announcements, sending new product launch announcement emails, running successful marketing campaigns, etc.

Loyalty, Rewards, and Refunds Program Management

With QB POS Pro, the customer center provides you with various necessary tools that facilitate your interaction with customers in order to fully utilize the customer data. This in turn helps you collect customer demographic information for creating large-scale marketing campaigns as well as tracking reward points to offer your loyal and frequent customers customized discounts, coupons, free, or complimentary merchandise, limited offer receipts, and so on.

Purchase Order Management Simplified

Purchasing inventory has now become so simple thanks to QuickBooks POS's cutting-edge integrated order functionality. You can just scan item barcodes and further print or email to populate standard fields in purchase orders automatically.

Assuming the arriving order is complete and flawless, accepting purchase orders as well as adding them to the most recent stock takes only a few minutes. In case the received order is inaccurate, you can partially open the Purchase Order section for the orders that are still incomplete by just clicking the “select items received” button.

QuickBooks POS Pro also has the feature of automating the process of creating emails concerning purchase orders and sending them to the desired recipients. Aside from that, there is a feature for tracking the package status.

Compatibility With Tablets

The recent versions of QB POS are compatible with phablets and tablets. This gives POS increased mobility and efficiency. This feature allows the employees to directly approach the customer's table for collecting payments from them instead of keeping them waiting in the queue.

Auto-syncing with QuickBooks Accounting Software

If you use QuickBooks POS along with any version of QuickBooks Accounting Software, your transactions will automatically sync with the accounting software.

It further helps you avoid erratic or duplicate entries that may possibly happen due to human errors. You can also generate reports whenever you want without any hassles. Eventually, it will save you a lot of productive time.

Increased Hardware Compatibility

QB POS is compatible with almost all hardware devices like barcode scanners, tag printers, receipt printers, cash drawers, Microsoft Surface Pro, etc.

The new version of QB POS software has an auto-sync feature with tablets and smartphones. This auto-sync feature gives you the ability to keep an eye on sales, current inventory, and purchase stock from anywhere at any time.

It also provides you with the flexibility to walk around your store with the device to process sales. With this, you can keep your customers from standing long in a queue which ultimately gives your customers a more pleasing experience of shopping.

Enhanced Customer Support

Intuit provides both their new and existing customers with great technical support by an expert tech team through all modern support channels, i.e. email, chat, and call. They also provide some additional support mechanisms in the form of articles, video tutorials, and instruction manuals.

What's new in quickbooks POS 2022?

As Intuit is known worldwide for its technological expertise, it has put all its effort into making the QB POS an all-in-one POS. To you, as a customer, it means that it gives you the utmost freedom and flexibility to keep in touch with your customers, manage your inventory more effectively and accept payments through the newest payment methods. Let's have a look at these newly updated features for a better understanding.

Advantages of Using QuickBooks POS

The QB POS software program makes a substantial difference when it comes to employee performance as well as customer satisfaction. The main problem is slow systems exasperate users while performing tasks and also limit their productivity. QuickBooks POS eliminates all such issues. It is a fast system that prepares retailers for rapid sales. It also provides the features busy businesses require to manage shifting demands.

The QB POS system can multitask and perfectly integrate with other software programs and handle fresh challenges. We will discuss its features in detail later in this post.

QuickBooks POS Pricing Options:

Intuit offers three plans for QB POS, i.e. Point of Sale Basic, Pro, and Multi-Store. You can choose any of the POS plans that best fits your needs and budget to run your retail business profitably. And you never need to pay a monthly fee. Here are the details of the plans that we have tried to present in a simple tabular form:

Apart from the above one-time charge that you pay for the POS systems, you will need to pay a little charge in the form of POS Payments fees. There are two simple payment plans for the same.

For a customized payment plan or getting detailed information on volume discount rates for your established business, you can call Intuit on 877-282-0782.

How to Install, Set up and Use the QuickBooks POS?

We also aspire to make your downloading and installation processes as easy and comfortable as possible. We are going to put forward some steps for the same that will make the process of downloading and installation an absolute breeze for you.

Once you're done with the installation, you can set up your hardware later on.

Installing QuickBooks Desktop Point of Sale

Step 1: Check the system requirements

Please take notice that, to install Point of Sale successfully on your computer, you will need to ensure that your computer meets the system requirements for the version of the software you want to use. This will save you from running into any possible compatibility issues.

• QuickBooks Point of Sale 19.0 System Requirements
• QuickBooks Point of Sale 18.0 System Requirements

We always recommend you install the latest version of the QB POS software (as long as your system hardware supports the same) for the smooth running of the software and its maximum performance.

And, if you need to check which version of the Windows operating system you are running, here's how to get your system info for Windows.

Step 2: Download QuickBooks Point of Sale

Visit our Downloads & Updates page to download your version of QuickBooks Point of Sale. For more details, learn about downloading Point of Sale.

Step 3: Install Point of Sale

Once Point of Sale completes downloading, then follow these steps:

• First open the QuickBooks installation file on your computer desktop. In case you get a prompt to overwrite the existing extracted files, please select Yes to All.
• Then, select Next on the wizard to start the installation.
• Read the License Agreement there. If you agree (this is what you generally agree with), select I accept the terms in the license agreement. Then select Next.
• Then enter your license and product number there and select Next.
• Choose the type of installation:
  • Only this computer: You need to choose this option for if you have a single user.
  • Two or more computers: need to choose this option if you have multiple users
• If you want to install POS on two or more computers, then select the type of workstation that this computer will be. Here are the two options:
  • Server workstation: This workstation creates and holds the record of your company data.
  • Client workstation: This workstation is usually the cash register that's used to help customers in their daily sales and has access to the program.
• Now, select Install to begin the installation.
  Please note that QuickBooks Point of Sale can only be installed in this file path:
  C:\Program Files (x86)\Intuit\QuickBooks Desktop Point of Sale (version).
• After the installation finishes, just activate QuickBooks Point of Sale and you're all set. Only one thing may be required here. Maybe you need to restart your computer and reopen QuickBooks to get started.

If you get into any trouble with installation, you can easily figure that out to resolve QuickBooks Point of Sale installation errors.

Next steps

Once you're done with the installation part of the Point of Sale software, you can set up your hardware and start using it to process and take payments.

Mentioning one more thing here would be very important and helpful for you. However, there is no cloud-based QB POS available for the time being, but the developer offers QB POS apps for mobiles and tablets for making your retail business even more effortless and smoother. After installing the app on your device, you can walk with the QB POS to any corner of your store and make sales then and there. You won't need to reach your fixed POS system every time you need to make sales transactions.

What Are QB POS Hardware Components?

There is a wide range of QB POS hardware components designed and built to help you manage your entire retail store—all in one compact and sleek system that works with more tablets than ever. The great thing about these hardware components is that they are small enough to fit into lesser space. You can get them both as a bundle or separately whatever is perfect for you to accept all types of payments. We will put the list of the hardware components here for your reference.

The QB POS hardware includes cash registers, credit and debit card readers, wired and wireless barcode scanners, universal tablet stand, PIN pad, receipt printer, and tag printer. These are available in different colors and expanded tablet compatibility.

What Makes QuickBooks Point Of Sale a Good POS Software?

QuickBooks Point Of Sale has a wealth of important features that make it a good POS software program. The usability and agility that it attains are vital for businesses across industries. And at the same time, it offers a functionally modern, technically robust, and secure business solution.

If you consider its capability of seamless integration with your existing setup, smoother functionality, ease of use, data security, hardware durability, flexibility in pricing, the actionable insights the system provides, and quality of customer service, all have made this POS software immensely popular among businesses.

Who Are the Typical Users of QB POS?

You must be wondering whom QuickBooks POS is for or who the typical users of QB POS are.

QuickBooks POS is a point-of-sale system both for traditional retail stores and online SMBs. It is easy to use and comes with all the tools and features you'll need to manage your store. And, the best part is all that comes at a reasonable price.

It might also be a good fit for small businesses that want to automate their ledger and payment processing.

Top Add-ons For QuickBooks POS

Despite having a variety of powerful features, there are some additional requirements that no standalone POS can fulfill. And so is the QB POS. This is where you need some additional tools and applications to streamline your retail operations to the next level. These additional applications are known as add-ons or third-party applications.

Thus, to fulfill such requirements and enhance customer experience, some custom third-party applications are integrated with QB POS to automate CRM maintenance, information processing, and market products which eventually saves both time and money.

We will try to introduce some of them that are most useful and popular:

HandiFox

It is the highest-rated inventory control and sales management software solution. Perfectly integrating with QuickBooks POS, it gives SMBs the power to automate their sales, streamline supply chain management without errors, and improve their time management. Its intuitive interface offers a rich customer experience by providing them with an easy-to-handle mobile application with a scanner.

When integrated with QuickBooks, it enables all the inventory transactions such as sales orders, purchase orders, invoices, and transfers to be sent directly to HandiFox software that is running on mobile devices every time it synchronizes.

SmartSCan

It is a third-party application that is developed given its usability for QuickBooks users. It allows them to print barcode labels directly from the transactions or the item list. It eliminates the need to export product information to spreadsheets. SmartScan directly connects to QuickBooks POS and retrieves the bar code information from there. The best part is it gives you the freedom to print labels in a single print run.

Agiliron

It's an omnichannel business suite for wholesale, retail, and eCommerce businesses, which integrates the different methods of shopping available to consumers (e.g. online, in a brick-and-mortar store, or by phone). It gives businesses the ability to sell their products across various online platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, and other B2C websites. However, they can manage their sales as well as inventory from only one place.

When you integrate this software with QuickBooks, it starts syncing automatically with the QuickBooks accounting files, items lists, customer purchases, orders, sales receipts, sales returns, sales tax, invoices, credits, and other organizational information.

WooCommerce

It's one of the most customizable eCommerce platforms that particularly helps businesses start an online business. It allows you to sync all your sales channels with QB POS on a real-time basis. It's completely an open-source platform with which you are free from the limitation of users or products. It means there is no limit of users allowed to work and no limit on products you can sell there.

When paired with QuickBooks POS, WooCommerce also offers a very easy two-way syncing feature. Additionally, it supports all QuickBooks versions. They also offer dedicated 24*7 customer support through various support channels like email, chat, and support tickets.

Shopify

Shopify is a tool developed by Connex for QuickBooks POS. It automates your accounting, inventory management, and order processing and that is from all sales channels.

Once you integrate this software with QuickBooks POS, the need for double entries is eliminated. Plus, some common inventory problems, i.e. missing items, overselling, etc are prevented.

More importantly, it provides you with some built-in tools that help you create as well as execute various social media campaigns on social websites like Google and Facebook. It also offers you a single dashboard from where you can manage all your eCommerce channels in one place.

Method:CRM

This is one of the best CRM software programs in the market specially developed for QB and QB POS users. Users find it the most customizable CRM platform. With its perfect integration with QB POS, it's capable of providing exceptional solutions to almost all your individual business needs.

Whether you need more accurate activity tracking and estimating, easier contact management, turning more leads into customers and further helping keep them coming back, or something else entirely, Method:CRM has a solution for every workflow you wish to streamline.

With this tool, your customers and leads are consolidated in a shared contact list. It considerably expedites all your sales processes as it enables your sales team to quickly receive estimates without them needing access to QuickBooks accounting software.

InvoiceTracker

It's an add-on software developed by eBility for your POS and accounting software. It helps you automate email reminders and follow-ups on unpaid invoices and eliminates your need of sending those manually.

As and when you integrate InvoiceTracker with QuickBooks POS, it directly links with your accounts in only a couple of clicks. As soon as a payment is received, the email reminders automatically cease as it syncs transactions every few moments.

Making efficient business decisions is made easier through improved cash flow as well as real-time tracking. Moreover, the software permits customizing email templates for client reminders as a way to add a human touch as well as maintain customer relationships with the help of legitimate messages.

TimeTracker

This is also a simple yet efficient employee time tracking and attendance software developed by the same developer, eBility. It helps you accurately track employee time and efficiently manage productivity, billing, and payroll.

The tool eliminates the need for data entries into spreadsheets and eventually saves your time and money. It offers the feature of tracking all employees deployed in all different locations whether they are online or offline.

Its “Notifications and Alerts” feature helps you automate repetitive tasks. It means it eliminates all the hassles of having to frequently remind your employees of submitting their time. Once set up, it sends automated reminders to your employees to track their clock-in and clock-out times as well as submit their productive time for payroll purposes. With the help of your Time Tracker account, you can effortlessly manage your employees' time-off requests, both paid and unpaid.

Its live and editable reports help you evaluate the efficiency of your employees, clients, processes, and projects.

Circulus (earlier known as XTBills)

It's a software solution for administering expenses and bill payments wherein retailers can not only schedule bill processing dates but also decide to pay through the check or the ACH.

The tool is based on a 'work from anywhere' model. That offers your developing business the necessary tools and technologies that your business needs to streamline your accounts payable processes. It enhances your business performance with its Intelligent automation, Robust Cloud Platform, Smart Offshoring, and many more features. That ultimately gives you the freedom to focus on your core business.

Circulus integrates perfectly with the QuickBooks Point-of-Sale software and keeps the automatic data synchronization accurate and streamlined in both accounts.

It enables users to view payments due, payment history, and supplier balances. It helps you supervise the cash inflow. Based on your business requirements, it offers you a range of features—from ordinary entering and paying to sophisticated payment processing approvals.

EasyCommission

EasyCommission, as the name suggests, is add-on software to accounting and POS software that helps you quickly and accurately calculate sales commissions.

Being an online commission management tool, it allows you as well as your sales staff direct access to the related information over the Internet at any time from anywhere. Additionally, it helps you efficiently manage commission plans for all the users

Its hassle-free integration with QB POS makes it so efficient and powerful that it takes all sales data of a sales representative, applies calculations of commission, and generates statements of commission.

Pros and Cons of QuickBooks POS?

There are many pros and cons with QB POS. Different users have different experiences. No matter how useful a specific feature is, some users may like it the most, but others may not like it the same way.

We will try to give a quick explanation of both the pros and cons that are the most important, based on the collective experience of the majority of users.

Let's have a look at these:

Pros:

Perfectly integrates with QuickBooks Desktop

QB POS, a natural choice for the businesses that are using and planning to use QuickBooks or other accounting and payroll software. This is because they find QB POS quick and easy to use with those software programs.

Users who use QuickBooks Desktop can smoothly sync all their POS transactions with their chart of accounts. They don't need to input their sales-related accounting information manually in QuickBooks. This also eliminates all possible errors that may otherwise occur when they manually key the data in QuickBooks. It eventually saves a lot of their precious time. Both software programs work exceedingly well together and keep your accounting tasks way more streamlined. Practically speaking, both QuickBooks and QuickBooks POS work together as the two wheels of a bicycle.

Robust inventory management

Apart from providing real-time inventory updates, the tool is capable of syncing inventory across multiple sites. Following that, you can track and analyze what sells most and when. You can also utilize that information to identify your employee timetable needs and deploy them accordingly.

Cons:

Need a third-party app to integrate QB POS to QuickBooks Online

Currently, QB POS integrates directly only with QuickBooks Desktop, not QuickBooks Online. And if you need this integration to work for your business, you will need to opt-in for a third-party linking app.

Expert technical support isn't free

You will be able to chat with customer service representatives for all standard queries. But the expert technical support comes at an additional cost of $ 79/month and $ 589/year. The good part is that the annual plan also offers data recovery services.

Alternatives of QuickBooks POS

QuickBooks POS is definitely not the only POS solution. So, we'll also try to explore some other options or alternatives that are in close competition with QuickBooks Point Of sale software.

Here, we will try to compile a list of 6 equivalent POS solutions that most of the users and reviewers have voted for as the best alternatives to QuickBooks Point Of sale software. So, we will take no time to dig a little deeper.

Square Point of Sale

Square Point of Sale, one of the top alternatives to QB POS, is an app for Android and iOS devices that integrates well with Quickbooks Online, WooCommerce, Xero, Zapier, etc. It's also available as a web-based solution.

All types of businesses like brick and mortar, on the go, multi-location, and occasional retailers use Square POS. You can sell where you want—online, offline, over the phone, or even out on the road.

It provides all small and medium businesses with the necessary tools they require to run and grow their business.

Furthermore, You can utilize your Squire POS's inbuilt sales and inventory reports feature to check and analyze how your business is doing at any point in time. Its customer directory offers you the ability to track customer preferences and their feedback with every sale happening in your store. Significant customer data is stored automatically in the system. With the help of this customer data, you can keep track of their purchase history and analyze and utilize that information at any time to create marketing campaigns. All this helps you keep their customers coming back for more.

The tool also comes with a chip, magstripe, and contactless card readers that give you the freedom of accepting payments through credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Square Virtual Terminal also gives you the ability to collect payments with the help of a computer that allows you to enter card details manually. This feature offers you an alternative to a card reader.

Square Point of Sale also provides merchants the power to track and manage their inventory from anywhere at any time.

Pricing Options:

There are no setup fees or monthly fees for using Square Point of Sale software. You only pay when you accept payments at a processing fee of 2.6% + 10¢ per tap, dip, or swipe.

However, they offer some customized pricing packages for the businesses that transact more than $250K in card sales having an average ticket size over $15.

Square for Retail

Square for Retail is a suite of web-based tools made just for retailers. It's the newest and more personalized POS system from the same developer, Block, Inc. (former Square, Inc) who has developed Square POS, too. It provides you with a rich suite of intelligent tools for advanced inventory management, sales tracking, employee management, deeper customer engagement, detailed COGS as well as profit margin reporting, and rich analytics.

Square for Retail easily integrates with both Quickbooks Online and QuickBooks Online Advanced.

If you talk about the features that Square for Retail offers, they are efficient online selling with TikTok Shopping and Google Product Listings, integrated yet simplified payment processing, a customizable item grid for the hasslefree checkout, an intuitive inventory management tool for simplified workflow. Its additional features include customizable tiles, scalable catalog, fast barcode scanning, detailed sales reports, advanced team management with the help of unlimited employee passcodes and timecard reporting, etc.

Pricing Options:

I. Free

There is a free version for businesses getting started in-person and online. No monthly fee.Processing rate per transaction - In person payments - 2.6% + 10¢, Online payments - 2.9% + 30¢

II. Plus

For expanding businesses that need in-depth retail features - $60 Per month per location. Processing rate per transaction - In person payments - 2.5% + 10¢, Online payments - 2.9% + 30¢

III. Premium

For businesses looking to scale, with everything in one place - Custom processing rates are available.

Lightspeed Retail

It is an omnichannel retail POS system that gives retailers full control over their physical as well as online business operations from anywhere. As the developer of the system claims, “You can just get ready for the next era of commerce. With an advanced eCom solution, omnichannel loyalty, and contactless payments, Lightspeed, the fully integrated retail POS is the technology for the future”.

It gives you the ability to access your in-depth sales reports in a matter of minutes, readily identify best-selling goods and utilize system-generated customer profiles to offer personalized services to every qualified customer. That helps you enhance customer loyalty and keep them coming for purchases. This unified system empowers your business for multichannel sales and better inventory management, facilitates global payments and financing, and also facilitates expansion to new locations.

Lightspeed provides seamless customer service that helps you gain ease of doing business and helps you grow your business.

Pricing Options:

They offer 4 types of pricing plans.

Lean (ideal for essential business needs) - $79/month if paid monthly and $69/month if paid annually. Plus, Lightspeed Payments Card-present rate is 2.6%+ 10c and Card-not-present rate is 2.6% + 30¢.

Standard (ideal for omnichannel businesses) - $139/month if paid monthly and $119/month if paid annually. Plus, Lightspeed Payments Card-present rate is 2.6%+ 10c and Card-not-present rate is 2.6% + 30¢.

Advanced (more tools for businesses looking to go further) - $239/month if paid monthly and $199/month if paid annually. Plus, Lightspeed Payments Card-present rate is 2.6%+ 10c and Card-not-present rate is 2.6% + 30¢.

Enterprise (High volume merchants and large businesses) - Custom rate is available on call.

Shopify POS

Shopify POS is one of the most versatile retail POS solutions for unifying your online as well as in-store sales. It is a modern POS that is built for facilitating retail business operations. It helps merchants streamline their store management, expedite sales conversions everywhere they want to sell, and help them build deeper and stronger customer relationships.

Its salient features include effective marketing, fully synced customer profiles, integrated loyalty programs, omnichannel selling, smart inventory management, effective staff management, seamless checkout, and advanced reporting and analytics.

You can seize more sales by offering your customers smooth shopping experiences with a modern POS system which gives your customers the complete freedom to shop their way, from online to checkout line. With the help of Shopify POS, your customers can now avail themselves of the facilities like browse in-store and buy online, buy online and pick up in-store, buy in-store and ship to the customer, and buy anywhere and return anywhere.

These facilities help you turn your one-time customers into lifetime fans and keep them coming back.

Pricing Options:

They offer 5 pricing plans.

I. Basic - $29/month

Plus, Online credit card rates 2.9% + 30¢ or In-person credit/debit card rates 2.7% + 0¢
Transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments 2.0%
Plus, Shopify POS Pro/per location (if opted-in) - +$89/month

II. Shopify - $79/month

Plus, Online credit card rates 2.6% + 30¢ or In-person credit/debit card rates 2.5% + 0¢
Transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments 1.0%
Plus, Shopify POS Pro/per location (if opted-in) - +$89/month

III. Advanced - $299/month

Plus, Online credit card rates 2.4% + 30¢ or In-person credit/debit card rates 2.4% + 0¢
Transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments 0.5%
Plus, Shopify POS Pro/per location (if opted-in) - +$89/month

IV. Shopify Plus - starts at $2000/month or a variable fee for higher volume businesses.

V. Shopify Lite - $9.00/month (Billed every 30 days)

Heartland Retail

Heartland Retail (formerly known as Springboard) is leading retail POS software that is designed and built for retailers by retailers based on their first-hand struggles and experiences in the retail industry. It helps you future-proof your business with modern financial technologies. It is a top-rated retail management system on the market.

The software is designed and developed, especially with multi-store retail business functionalities that allow merchants to service every type of customer the same way irrespective of their purchase locations—at your store, online, or on the road. No matter where and how they wish to shop.

Retailers use this POS software mainly to retrieve useful square footage to analyze the buying behaviors of customers to reach the point of marketing decisions.

Moreover, it offers all the features that retailers need most to stay competitive and agile in ever-changing market conditions. It gives merchants more power to supervise and directly control their sales and profitability. With its intuitive and user-friendly interface, APIs, easy integration, unparalleled custom reporting, inventory management, and portability across platforms and devices, Heartland Retail is a quick-to-start and easy-to-use tool that retailers all over the world love.

Pricing Options:

Heartland Retail offers 3 simple pricing plans.

I. Plus (ideal for multi-store and growing retailers) - Starts at $80 / month/per selling station

II.Professional (Ideal feature-set for growing omnichannel retailers) - Starts at $160/month/per selling station.

III. Enterprise (Tailored solution for growing multi-store retailers) Custom rate on call.

LS Retail

It's a highly scalable, flexible, and robust POS and ERP software program that includes all the features that a merchant needs to manage their retail business operations, effortlessly and efficiently. No matter whether you run only one or thousands of stores, it gives you the capability of handling them most efficiently.

LS Retail is a distinguished expert in unified commerce software solutions for several industries, for example, retail, hospitality, pharmacy, restaurants, gas stations, etc. Their POS terminals, head office, and back-office all use the same tool that in turn gives you complete control over sales across all your sales locations together with all your operational channels. Plus, it will also eliminate all possible inconsistencies in business operations. In short, you never need to spend your valuable time aligning data from various sources.

This high-quality, easy-to-configurable, and cost-effective software solution helps businesses to offer their customers a rich purchase experience. It meets your needs whatever your retail industry, location, size, target market, or sales channel.

Pricing Options:

Please note that LS Retail has not publicly announced pricing details on their website. You will need to contact them for this purpose.

Is QuickBooks Point Of Sale Cloud-Based?

The straight answer to this question is NO.

As of now, Intuit, the developer of the software, only offers the desktop version of the QuickBooks POS software, not a cloud-based one. However, if need be, you can host the desktop version on a third-party cloud platform, and then it is referred to as cloud-based QuickBooks POS software.

However, based on our long time experience, we think the one-word answer may not be enough for the majority of readers. Only a few people who have a decent level of understanding about cloud things can figure out what we mean to say with 'NO'.

So, we will try to dig a little deeper into the subject so that every single person can easily understand this.

Many people confuse the term “cloud-based” with another term “cloud-hosted” or use these two terms interchangeably. It is not only inaccurate but also confusing.

Cloud-based software, also known as cloud-native software, is designed and developed, particularly for a cloud environment. Such software is hosted on a true cloud platform or infrastructure, for example, Amazon Web Services. And it is offered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) by the software developer to the end users. And to use that type of software, end users need to pay a subscription fee (some kinds of recurring monthly or annual payments). This is because the software is made available to you, alongside other users, online via a server. That server is owned and managed by the same software developer .

In this, you don't need to install any additional hardware or software—you obtain instant access to use the system or software.

Contrary to this, cloud-hosted software is 'on-premise' software installed on your local computer that you host on a cloud hosting platform or a dedicated server managed by a third-party cloud hosting provider on your behalf. And all that comes at some additional cost. In this, you generally need to pay a one-time upfront cost to purchase the software.

Thus, to conclude the whole thing in one sentence, QuickBooks Point Of Sale is a software program you need to install on your local computer. However, if you want to take advantage of the usability of cloud technologies, you can further host it on a third-party cloud platform. And then, you can call this a cloud-hosted software program.

We hope we have clearly explained the difference between cloud-based and cloud-hosted software. And you would be able to make an informed decision whenever needed without getting confused between the two.

QuickBooks POS vs QuickBooks POS Online vs QuickBooks POS Hosting

We already learned well what QuickBooks POS is in the beginning of this post. We have already learnt that the QuickBooks POS online version is not yet available. And when it comes to QuickBooks POS Hosting, it has also been discussed well in the previous section - “Is QuickBooks Point Of Sale Cloud-Based?”.

However, for your sake, we would reiterate that there are many QuickBooks POS Hosting options available on the market. If you want to reap the benefits of maximized usability of the cloud technologies like data security, no or less expense on additional hardware, software, infrastructure, seamless integrations with add-on applications, and anytime anywhere access to the QuickBooks POS functionalities, you can host it on a third-party cloud platform of your choice.

More Payment Options

Every customer prefers fast and secure cashless payment processing. With the updated QB POS, you can receive payments through the newest payment options including mobile as well as contactless ones.

With the help of the mobile payment feature, you can operate your retail business even on the road. If you talk about the contactless payment methods, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, tap-to-pay, EMV debit and credit cards, and contactless credit cards are the available options. It means that you will be able to accept all types of payments using only one system.

Now you can securely accept payments through Visa, Discover, Mastercard, and American Express. All payments get automatically reconciled in QuickBooks financial software (if you use any) which ensures increased accuracy and saves time, too.

Intuit also offers flexible payment plans with competitive rates for this without charging any contract, setup, or termination fees.

Easy eCommerce Integration

With the easy QB POS eCommerce integration, your entire sales operation, inventory, and customer data sync up automatically. You can check both your offline and online sales data on a single dashboard. That functionality prevents an unwanted occurrence of overselling.

The latest version of the software is compatible with all top-grade online marketplaces and popular shopping carts. Whether you need to expand your sales channels or add a new web store to benefit from the online sales opportunities, you can do them from one place. You can keep track of where and what your customers shop at any point in time. This allows you to expand and maximize the sales opportunities online. Your growth in business has never been that easy.

What is the difference between QuickBooks and QuickBooks Point of Sale?

QuickBooks is basically an accounting software program that CPAs, bookkeepers, and other accounting professionals use to maintain account books both online and on a local computer. It performs all accounting tasks—from basic accounting to advanced accounting operations to real-time financial processing and reporting. Depending on the need, it also helps them manage their budget, perform accounting tasks in multiple currencies, manage payroll, manage customer relationships, and prepare financial reports.

However, QuickBooks Point of Sale is a multi-purpose system that retail merchants—online and in-store— can use for managing their sales, inventory, bills, processing credit payments, tracking time, and tracking as well as managing employees. It also includes a specific feature like End of Day procedures to help them close out, count cash drawers, and run reports.

And, the QuickBooks POS system is remarkably a combination of both hardware and software that helps enable retail transactions. The hardware can include barcode scanners, receipt printers, display monitors, etc.

How to Get QB POS Support?

Intuit has created several modern and dynamic support channels. Apart from live call, chat support and contact form, they have also developed many other help forums and channels.

Link for live support: https://www.intuit.com/company/contact/

For your convenience, their customer support phone number is 1-800-4INTUIT (1-800-446-8848).

Other support channels are:

Video Tutorials - Whenever you need to learn about a specific feature, exploring their online library of how-to videos can help you be an expert. The library is regularly updated with videos on the latest issues, technologies, updates, troubleshooting, etc.

Webinars - For start-up and growing business owners, there are a plethora of tools, advice, news, and entertaining articles that are very useful and helpful.

Resources - For the people who love to dig deeper into various subjects, there are numerous comprehensive articles available on recent changes, improvements, and fixes that can make them a QuickBooks expert.

Community - They have a community of users for users. Whenever you get a question and you want someone to answer, you can interact with your fellow QuickBooks users just by posting a question and getting started.

Become a QuickBooks Pro - Becoming a QuickBooks Pro is a fun and easy way to learn QuickBooks things. You can join the virtual classroom and learn at your own pace and convenience.

QuickBooks Blog - If you love to explore things by reading, blogs would be your true companion.

Afterthought

We have made every effort to give a clear and lucid account of QuickBooks POS, its features and usability, typical users, the most useful add-ons, close competitors, its downloading and installation processes, etc. that can make this post most comprehensive and useful for you.

However, if you still have any questions related to the QB POS that we missed answering in the post, please do contact us to get required assistance. Our experts are always ready to help you.

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