How to choose a POS for an independent supermarket in Australia
7 min read · by the BetterRetailer team
Updated
The short answer
Choose a POS that keeps selling offline, loads your buying group's host files, reads scale barcodes, prints compliant shelf labels, cuts invoice typing, tracks stock and expiry, gives you a clear all-inclusive price, lets you export your data, and lets you run it beside your current system before you switch.
1. Will it keep selling when the internet drops?
Cloud POS is convenient until the NBN drops on a Saturday morning. Ask whether the till keeps a full copy of your products and prices and can take cash and card with no connection, and how sales catch up afterwards. A till that only shows a 'reconnecting' spinner costs you sales.
2. Does it load your buying group's host files?
Independent supermarkets live on weekly host files from New Sunrise, Metcash or SPAR. A good POS loads them in one go, shows you every cost and price change before applying it, and keeps the prices you've set yourself. Products should link to suppliers by barcode, so changing buying group doesn't mean rebuilding your product file.
3. Fresh produce, deli and scales
Check that the till reads price-embedded barcodes from your deli and produce scales, sells loose fruit and veg by weight, and can send item lists to the scale. Ask to see a weighed sale on a real scale label.
4. Shelf labels that match the till
Every price change should queue a shelf label automatically, with unit pricing calculated for the Unit Pricing Code. Look for A4 and Zebra printing, your own label designs, and support for electronic shelf labels if you plan to use them.
5. How much typing does it save?
Local supplier invoices (bread, milk, drinks, ice) often take hours a week to key in. Modern systems read a photo of the invoice with AI, match each line to your products and flag cost rises. Ask how mismatches are handled and whether you approve before anything is saved.
6. Stock, stocktakes and expiry
You should be able to count stock on handhelds aisle by aisle while trading, run small daily cycle counts, record use-by dates per batch, get alerts before stock expires, and see a shrink report. Many older systems don't track expiry at all.
7. Who owns your data?
Ask whether you can export every product, sale and customer at any time without a fee, whether there's an API on your plan, and what happens to your data if you leave. If the answer is 'call us', treat it as a no.
8. What does it really cost?
Compare the total over three years: upfront fees, monthly fees per till and per store, add-ons (labels, handhelds, API, multi-store, AI), support and hardware. Ask for a written quote with everything included, and prefer vendors who don't lock you into long contracts.
9. How risky is the switch?
The biggest cost of a new POS is a bad cutover. Ask whether you can run the new system on one till next to your current one, how your products are imported, and whether your existing scanners, printers and scales will work.