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    By Julie Kanaan

    Best Australian Point of Sale Software Solutions for 2017 2016 has seen the emergence, and possibly the increase, in popularity of tablet point of sale solutions. In this blog, we will compare the top POS solutions for both traditional and tablet systems in Australia for 2017.

    What is the difference between traditional and tablet pos


    A traditional POS (short for point of sale) is a combination of a touchscreen computer, receipt printer and a cash drawer. The traditional look refers to the touchscreen computer, they are big and bulky and quite often 15” inch (size). It is what you see when you visit a McDonald's store.

    A tablet POS is a tablet (usually iPad), a receipt printer and a cash drawer. Most tablet solutions use a cloud based approach for storing information (data). Most tablets are between 9 and 12 inch in size.

    What's better: tablet of traditional?


    In short, tablets are becoming more popular because they are more affordable, whereas traditional systems use local storage, making them much faster than tablets. Price difference is huge between the 2 technologies; tablets are cheap to buy upfront but they come with an ongoing fee (usually for cloud hosting). On the other hand, bulky traditional POS are more expensive to purchase upfront and have 0 or little ongoing fees.

    Price difference


    You can purchase an iPad POS for around $900 upfront and around $55 p/month ongoing. Traditional POS are around $4,000 upfront with very little/if any ongoing fees.

    Best Tablet POS System


    In Australia, there are 3 most popular tablet solutions, most of which sell iPads as their main point of sale. These companies are: Revel, VendHQ and Kounta.

    Having tried all 3 software solutions, I would probably set Kounta as the best tablet solution, mainly for being Australian developed/designed and have the lowest ongoing charges out of the 3.

    Best Traditional POS System


    We've seen a rise in popularity for Australian developed and supported POS systems, this is a result of customers wanting Australian support and not a call centre off-shore. The top 3 software companies are Micros, SASSCO and RedCat.

    I certainly recommend SASSCO as the best POS system solution for 2017. The software is extremely easy to use and come with no ongoing fees. The company is Australian and the support call centre is based in North Sydney.

    Summary


    It's difficult to compare the 2 different solutions but it's fair to say that it comes down to cost. If you can afford a traditional POS system, I would highly recommend it.

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