The category, explained
What a POS system is, and how to choose one
A point of sale system is what replaces the cash register. The register totalled a sale and opened a drawer; a POS system does that and then writes down what happened — which items left the shelf, at what price, to whom, paid by what method, at what margin.
That second half is the entire reason to buy one. The till interface is the visible part, and every product on the market handles it competently. What separates them is the record underneath: how honestly it tracks stock, whether it knows your costs, whether it reaches your online sales, and whether what comes out the other end is something you can file as accounts.
This page is the plain version of the category — what a system includes, what the pieces are called, what it costs, and the questions that actually decide the choice. It is written to be useful whether or not you end up buying ours.
What you get
What this gives you
The till
Ringing up multi-item sales, applying discounts, holding and resuming a sale, splitting payment across methods, taking returns and exchanges, printing or sending a receipt.
The stock ledger
Every sale, return, delivery, transfer and write-off adjusting a quantity, so the number on screen is the number on the shelf without anyone retyping it.
The product catalogue
Products with variants, pack sizes, barcodes, cost prices and sell prices — the thing everything else in the system reads from.
The money side
Payment methods, cash-drawer counts that have to balance, and ideally the accounting entries that turn a day's trading into a P&L rather than a number you copy into a spreadsheet.
The people side
Staff accounts with permissions, so a cashier can sell without seeing margins and a supervisor can void a sale and leave a trace that says who did it.
The reporting
What sold, what made money, what is not moving, what needs reordering — the questions you bought the system to be able to answer without counting.
Five questions that actually decide the choice
Feature checklists are close to useless here because the lists converge — everything takes a card, everything scans a barcode, everything prints a receipt. The differences that matter show up in five places, and they are worth asking about explicitly on a demo call.
First: where does stock live? If the POS tracks stock but your online store tracks it separately, you have bought half a system and a permanent reconciliation job. Second: does it know your cost prices? Without them the system reports revenue, and revenue is not the number you run a business on.
Third: what happens offline? A till that cannot sell without a connection is a till that closes when the line does. Fourth: what does a second location cost — is it a plan step, a per-terminal licence, or a separate installation? Fifth: how do you get your data out? The answer tells you how confident the vendor is that you will want to stay.
- Is stock one figure across every channel you sell on?
- Does it hold cost prices, and report margin rather than only revenue?
- Can the counter keep trading with no internet, and reconcile afterwards?
- What does adding a till, a location or a staff member actually cost?
- Can you export products, customers and transactions without asking permission?
The words vendors use, translated
Cloud POS means the software runs on somebody else's servers and you reach it over the internet — no server in the back office, updates arrive on their own, and you can see your numbers from home. On-premise means the opposite, and is now rare outside large or heavily regulated operations.
Mobile POS means the till runs on a phone or tablet rather than a fixed terminal. It matters more than it sounds: it is the difference between one queue at one counter and staff selling from anywhere on the shop floor, at a market, or on a delivery round.
Omnichannel means every channel you sell through shares one inventory, one customer record and one set of books. Unified commerce is the same idea stated more strongly — not integrated systems, but one system. Integration means two systems and a connector, which is a weaker claim wearing similar words.
SKU is a stock keeping unit: one distinct thing you sell, so a shirt in three sizes and two colours is six SKUs, not one. Reorder level is the quantity at which the system should tell you to buy more. Shrinkage is stock you owned and can no longer account for, which is a number you can only know if the system was tracking movements properly.
What a POS system costs
There are three cost shapes in this market and they are not comparable at face value. Subscription pricing is a monthly fee per location or per terminal. Transaction pricing takes a percentage of what you sell, usually bundled with payment processing. Licence pricing is a large one-off plus an annual maintenance fee, typically with hardware attached.
The one to model carefully is transaction pricing, because it scales with your success rather than with your usage of the software. A percentage that looks small against a single sale is a meaningful share of a year's gross profit, and unlike a subscription it never plateaus.
Then there is the hardware question. A system that requires proprietary terminals sets a floor on what a second till costs and on what a replacement costs when one fails. A system that runs on ordinary devices lets you add a till for the price of a tablet, and use commodity 80mm thermal printers and scanners.
Do you need one yet?
If you have a handful of products, one person selling and no online channel, a cash drawer and a notebook genuinely work and there is no shame in that. The threshold is usually crossed by one of three events rather than by revenue: a second person selling, a second location, or a second channel.
Each of those turns the informal system into a coordination problem. Two people cannot both hold the stock figure in their heads. Two locations cannot share a notebook. Two channels cannot share a shelf without someone reconciling them. That is the moment a POS system stops being overhead and starts paying for itself.
Questions
POS systems explained — questions
What does POS stand for?
Point of sale — literally the place where a sale is completed. It is used for both the physical station (the till, the screen, the printer) and the software running it, which is occasionally confusing on vendor websites where 'POS' means the hardware bundle in one paragraph and the software subscription in the next.
What is the difference between a POS system and a cash register?
A register totals a sale and stores cash. A POS system records the sale as data — which items, which customer, which payment method, against which stock — and uses that record to keep inventory, produce reports and feed accounts. The register answers 'how much?'. The POS answers 'what do I now have, and did I make anything on it?'.
Can I use a POS system without a barcode scanner?
Yes. Products can be found by name, browsed in categories, or pinned to a quick-pick grid, and a phone camera reads barcodes if you want scanning without buying a scanner. A dedicated handheld reader is faster once you are past roughly fifty items a day, which is when most shops buy one.
Is free POS software worth using?
Sometimes, with the trade understood. Genuinely free tiers are usually funded by payment processing, which means the cost has moved into a percentage of every sale rather than disappearing — do the arithmetic at your actual volume before deciding it is cheaper. Others are free but single-location, or free without inventory. There is no free tier here, which we would rather state plainly than advertise around.
Does a POS system replace accounting software?
It can, and the answer determines how much duplicate work you do. Most POS products export to accounting software, which means a monthly reconciliation and two systems. Some, including sell.ke from the Growth plan, keep real double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — so trading and accounts are the same records rather than two versions of them.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
What hardware do I need?
None to start. sell.ke runs in a browser and as an Android app, so a phone, tablet or laptop you already own is a working till on day one — the phone camera reads barcodes. When volume justifies it, add an 80mm thermal receipt printer (Bluetooth or USB), a handheld scanner and a cash drawer the printer opens. There is no proprietary terminal to buy and no per-terminal licence, so a second till on a busy Saturday costs nothing.
Does it keep working when the internet drops?
The counter does. Offline mode keeps taking sales, printing receipts and reserving stock while the connection is down, then reconciles everything when it returns — so a bad afternoon costs you connectivity, not revenue or a gap in the record. The parts that are inherently online stay online: card and mobile-money authorisation, tax-authority submission, and the storefront itself all need a live link.
Which countries does sell.ke work in?
The software is not geographically limited — the counter, inventory, the storefront, reporting and accounting work anywhere, in multiple currencies. What is market-specific is two things: the payment rails available to you, and your country's tax-invoicing rules. We currently run with merchants in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria, and the deepest local payment and compliance integrations are in Kenya. If you are outside those markets, ask before you sign up and we will tell you precisely what would and would not be connected for you.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
Best POS for a small business
How to judge one honestly, and the trap that catches most first-time buyers.
All-in-one POS, inventory & online store
One system for the counter, the stock and the website — not three that sync.
Mobile POS
A full till on a phone or tablet — on the shop floor, at a market, on a round.
Cloud POS
One copy of your data, reachable from anywhere, with no server in the back office.
POS hardware
Receipt printer, scanner, drawer — what you need, what you don't, and in what order.
Inventory management software
Stock that updates itself as it moves, instead of a spreadsheet you maintain.
Go deeper on a feature
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Setup, growth and the plumbing
Trial, product import, opening stock, eTIMS enrolment and a custom domain — in the order they matter.
See it for your trade
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.