A cash register is a drawer for money with a keypad on top. It adds up a sale, prints a receipt and keeps a running total for the day. An EPOS system does the same job on a screen, then goes further: it takes card payments, sends orders to the kitchen and keeps every sale for reports you can read from anywhere.
Plenty of small cafés, market stalls and village pubs still run on a cash register, and for some of them it is the right choice. Here is how to tell which one you need.
What a cash register does well
- It is cheap to buy and has no monthly fee.
- It works without the internet or any account to sign in to.
- It is quick to learn. Staff press the product key, take the money and close the drawer.
- It keeps going for years if nobody spills a latte on it.
If you sell a handful of products, mostly for cash, from one counter, a cash register can do everything you need.
Where a cash register falls short
The limits show up as soon as the business gets busier or more varied:
- Card payments are separate. You take the card on a stand-alone machine and the register never knows about it, so card and cash takings are added up by hand at the end of the day.
- No kitchen link. Orders are shouted, written on paper or keyed in twice.
- Changing prices is fiddly. Reprogramming product keys often means the manual, and every register in the building needs the same change.
- Reports are thin. You get a daily total (the Z read) and perhaps sales by department, but not which items sold, at what time, or how this Tuesday compares with last.
- No table service, tabs or online orders. Each of those needs another system.
- Little control over staff. Anyone at the till can usually void a sale or give a discount.
What an EPOS system adds
An EPOS system replaces the keypad with a touchscreen, often a tablet, and keeps the sales in software rather than on a paper roll. For a café or pub that usually means:
- Every item on the screen with its sizes and options, so a flat white with oat milk is one tap, not a note on the side.
- Card payments recorded with the sale, and on some systems the amount sent straight to the card reader.
- Orders sent to a kitchen printer or kitchen screen as soon as they are rung up.
- Tabs and table numbers for table service.
- Staff logins, with refunds and discounts limited to managers.
- Sales reports by item, hour, staff member and payment type, and a cash-up that tells you what should be in the drawer.
A modern cloud EPOS also takes orders from other places, such as QR codes on the tables or your own online order page, and puts them through the same kitchen and the same takings.
Cost: closer than it looks
A cash register is cheaper on the day you buy it. Over a year, the gap is smaller than it seems, because a register still needs a card machine, and the time spent adding up two sets of takings, re-keying kitchen orders and reprogramming prices is time your staff are not serving.
A cloud EPOS that runs on a tablet you already own costs a monthly fee rather than a large upfront price. Look at the whole cost before deciding: the monthly fee, any hardware, the card processing rate, any commission per order, and how long the contract runs. Our guide to what a café POS costs in the UK goes through each.
Which one you need
A cash register is still enough if most of these are true:
- You sell a small range, mostly for cash.
- There is no kitchen, or the kitchen is the person at the till.
- One or two people run the counter and you trust them with the drawer.
- You do not want table service, tabs or online orders.
An EPOS system pays for itself once you take more card than cash, send food to a kitchen, want to know what sells, or have staff you need to give different permissions to.
Where Café QR fits
Café QR is a cloud EPOS that runs in a web browser on a tablet, phone or laptop. The till takes cash and card, the kitchen display system shows orders as they are rung up, and cash-up and reports count the drawer and show what sold. If the internet drops, the till keeps taking cash and your own payment types and uploads those sales when it is back.
It does not open a cash drawer by itself, so keep a drawer you open by hand or with a key. The POS plan is £39 per venue a month, the first month is free with no card needed, and you can see the cheapest way to start.