Buying your first real POS system feels like a bigger decision than it should be. There are dozens of options, each with its own pricing structure, hardware requirements, and feature set. And most of the comparison articles you'll find online are written by the platforms themselves or by affiliate sites that get paid when you sign up.
This isn't one of those articles. If you sell handmade goods, run a small retail shop, or work craft fairs and markets, here's what actually matters when you're choosing a POS, and what you can safely ignore.
Start With What You Sell
Not every POS handles every type of product the same way. If you sell physical goods, you need solid inventory tracking with variants (size, color, material), barcode support, and the ability to manage stock across multiple locations or channels. If you sell digital products like patterns, designs, or printables, you need a system that can deliver those files after purchase without requiring a separate e-commerce plugin. If you offer services like custom embroidery, alterations, or classes, you need quoting, invoicing, and possibly appointment or project tracking.
Most small makers and retailers end up selling some combination of all three. A POS that only handles one type well will leave you duct-taping the rest together with spreadsheets and workarounds. Before you look at any feature list, make sure the system can handle every type of sale you do today, plus the ones you're planning for next year.
In-Person Selling Is Not an Afterthought
A lot of POS software started as online-first platforms that added in-person selling later. You can tell, because the in-person experience feels bolted on. Slow checkout, clunky interfaces, limited hardware support, no offline mode.
If you sell at craft fairs, farmers markets, pop-ups, or from a physical store, the POS screen is where you live during business hours. It needs to be fast. It needs to handle barcode scanning, quick-add buttons, split payments, and suspended transactions (for when a customer says "hold on, let me grab one more thing"). It needs a training mode so new employees don't accidentally void real sales while learning the system. And it needs to work when the Wi-Fi at the fairgrounds inevitably drops out.
Test the actual checkout flow before you commit to anything. Click through a few sample transactions. If it takes more than a few taps to ring up a sale, you'll feel it during a Saturday rush.
Inventory Management That Actually Works
Basic inventory tracking (product in, product out) is table stakes. What separates a real inventory system from a basic one is how it handles the messy stuff.
Can it manage bundles and kits, where one SKU is made up of multiple components? Can it track purchase orders from vendors and update stock automatically when shipments arrive? Does it support barcode import so you're not manually entering every item? Can you set low-stock alerts and reorder points? If you sell on multiple channels (your own store, Etsy, Amazon, a physical location), does inventory sync across all of them in real time?
If you're still small, some of this might seem like overkill. But inventory problems don't announce themselves gradually. They show up all at once, usually during your busiest season, when you oversell a product that's already out of stock on another channel. Pick a system that can handle complexity before you desperately need it to.
Reporting You'll Actually Use
Every POS claims to have "powerful reporting." In practice, that can mean anything from a basic sales summary to dozens of detailed breakdowns covering tax liability, employee performance, inventory turnover, and profit margins by product category.
At minimum, you need sales by date range, sales by product, sales by employee, tax summaries for filing, and inventory valuation. Beyond that, the reports that matter most depend on your business. Consignment shops need consignor payout reports. Multi-location retailers need location comparison reports. Businesses with employees need commission tracking and hours worked.
If the POS only gives you a handful of basic reports and charges extra for "advanced analytics," that's a sign the platform isn't really built for growing businesses.
Consignment: The Feature Most Platforms Skip
If you run a consignment shop, or if you're even considering adding consignment to your business, this one matters a lot. Most POS systems don't have consignment management at all. The ones that do usually handle it through a third-party app or plugin, which means separate data, separate reports, and a workflow that never quite feels integrated.
A proper consignment system tracks which items belong to which consignor, calculates payouts based on agreed-upon splits, generates consignor-specific reports, and handles it all within the same system you use for everything else. If consignment is part of your model, don't compromise on this. Bolted-on solutions create more bookkeeping problems than they solve.
Pricing: Look at the Total, Not the Sticker
POS pricing is designed to look simple and be complicated. A $29/month plan sounds great until you add payment processing fees, per-register charges, app subscriptions for features that should be included, premium support tiers, and hardware lease costs.
When you're comparing options, add up the real monthly cost for your specific situation. How many registers do you need? How many employees? Which features require paid add-ons? What are the transaction fees with your preferred payment processor? Is there a penalty for using a third-party gateway?
Some platforms, Monveri included, build all features into every plan so the price you see is the price you pay. Others keep the headline number low and make up the difference in add-ons. Neither approach is inherently wrong, but you need to compare totals, not tiers.
A Quick Reference
When you're evaluating a POS, run through this list:
- Does it handle physical, digital, and service-based sales?
- Is the in-person checkout fast and intuitive?
- Does inventory sync across all your sales channels in real time?
- Are marketplace integrations native or through third-party middleware?
- Does it include the reports you actually need, or are those extra?
- If you do consignment, is it built in or bolted on?
- What's the real monthly cost once you add apps, fees, and hardware?
- Who owns your data, and how easy is it to leave?
The right POS is the one that fits your business today and can grow with you tomorrow, without forcing you to start over when your needs change.
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Disclaimer: All pricing, including Monveri's, referenced in this article reflects publicly available information at the time of writing (May 2026) and is subject to change. Visit each provider's website for current pricing.