Quickbooks Point of Sale

Pros

I love how this point of sale is fully customizable to the customers needs. It offers everything you could want in a point of sale system. From sale orders to layaways, with QuickBooks point-of-sale you’ll be ready to sell within hours of super simple setup.

Cons

QuickBooks point-of-sale was quite costly to purchase all at once. But you only have to pay once.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Quickbooks Point of Sale

Pros

1) They release a new product upgrade every other year so there is no need to update your computer software every year. The upgrades are not necessary, but upgrades to provide more features.
2) Everything is backed up to a single database file on the computer; so in the event of a computer crash as long as you're backing up the QBPOS db, you can re-install the software, re-point the db file and get going again.
3) It's easy to use and navigate.
4) Does not require internet connection if the internet goes down
5) Great reports
6) A great company, with solid reputation, with a good name brand product

Cons

1) Customer support is great, but you have to pay for it. I learned to reach out to 3rd party companies for Support. that seemed more eager and
2) Does not integrate with an online store presence. For our online store each time someone purchased something online we had to update our instore inventory; and vica-versa.
3) The software upgrade is a little pricey for 1 upgrade. I remember it was affordable for an upgrade for me; and we only had 1 POS computer & 1 seat. If we had 2 computers it would have been more expensive.
4) Constantly trying to add new inventory and remove old inventory was kind of a hassle. If your business had fixed assets then ideally this would be a good solution.
5) If your computer crashed or you need to get a new computer, you would have to setup the new computer and reinstall the software on the new computer along with the help of QB POS Tech Support. While this in itself wasn't bad it was trying to schedule a time that they were open and the store wasn't open so I could fix this.

Pros

Very easy to use. It generates bar codes to corresponding with individual or grouped items and then displays the price, merchandiser, and all vital information in the same place for me to find. I liked to be able to track when, where, and by whom an item was brought in and then sold.

Cons

Quick-Books was prone to glitches and to dumping, data on inventory entered. I lost over 2,000 records on new merchandise brought in for our annual holiday sale. Overnight there was no record I had ever entered, sold, or updated anything over a two-week period, the most pivotal two-week period of our year. Luckily my accountant and I had already paid the artists for their sold works, but it took hours for me to put the inventory back in and update the records. My sales records for those two weeks were also unaccounted for, and suddenly my sales were down by thousands compared with the last year. I was purchasing running shoes from another local business down the street a few weeks later and the saleswoman was having a field day trying to sell anything as overnight, same as what happened to me, Quick-books had dumped all her inventory and it had to be entered in again.

Pros

Seamless integration with Quickbooks and fairly simple setup as well as fairly inexpensive software are the best features.

Cons

Poor search features in make a sale and goofy differences between make a sale and sales order screens make it obvious that this is somewhat of an afterthought for QuickBooks.

Pros

This product has allowed me to be more organized with my small business. I am able to keep track of my customers and the orders that they place. Also, my inventory is neatly organized and allows me to see exactly what items I have in stock and what items I need to order. I particularly like the "quick find" search option which I can use to quickly search for a specific item/client/or receipt. This option also searches through item descriptions which allows me to find exactly what I'm looking for with a few keywords. By far though, I really like how well and organized my previous sales are presented to me. I am able to see how my business is doing through various methods such as a pie chart or a graph, and using my own parameters to analyze my sales.

Cons

It does take a bit of a learning curve to fully grasp all that this POS system has to offer. It does have a tutorial and video guide to walk you step by step through all the features but you need to dedicate quite a bit of time just to learn everything. There are a lot options and a lot of ways to do each part of the POS system such as "make a sale", so it can take a while to figure out which method works best for you. Once you have learned everything, it takes a bit of practice in order to be able to do a function quickly enough to not keep clients waiting.