Point of sale
A till that balances at closing time
A POS system is not a computer on a counter. It is the end of “roughly” — roughly what sold, roughly what is on the shelf, roughly what the boy at the till took. Here is what one complete counter is made of and what each part costs, so you can compare any quote against it, including ours.
One counter, itemised
| Item | Typical PKR | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| POS terminal | 45,000 – 85,000 | A dedicated touch terminal, or a desktop PC doing the same job for less |
| Thermal receipt printer | 12,000 – 25,000 | 80mm, with auto-cut. The part that runs hardest — buy the better one |
| Barcode scanner | 6,000 – 18,000 | Wired for a fixed counter; wireless if you also scan shelves |
| Cash drawer | 8,000 – 15,000 | Fires open from the printer on each sale — no separate key habit |
| Customer display | 9,000 – 20,000 | The customer sees each line as it scans. Disputes at the till drop noticeably |
| Label printer | 18,000 – 35,000 | Only if you stock loose or local goods that need your own barcodes |
| Billing & inventory software | one-time or monthly | Off-the-shelf where it fits; ours where your trade needs it |
A working basic counter — terminal, printer, scanner, drawer and software — typically lands between PKR 80,000 and 150,000 installed. A pharmacy running batch and expiry tracking sits at the upper end. Every item is a separate line on our quote, so you can start without the customer display and add it later rather than buying everything on day one.
The machines are day one. The stock is the week.
Hardware sellers hand over the boxes and leave. The part that decides whether the system sticks is the week after: loading your actual stock, with your actual prices, into the software. We sit with you through the first stock count, set up label printing for the loose items, connect the printer to the drawer so it fires on every sale, and run the first end-of-day closing together. A till that balanced on its first Friday is a till that stays in use.
For pharmacies we switch on batch numbers and expiry dates from the first entry, because retrofitting them after six months of loose data is a job nobody ever does. It is more typing on day one and it is the difference between a stock report and a guess.
Three things the software must do here
Bill without internet
Load-shedding takes the router with it. Billing runs locally and syncs later — a counter that stops when the fiber does is not a system for this district.
Track what walks out the back
Stock in, stock sold, stock on shelf. When those three stop agreeing, the report says so the same day — which is the polite version of catching it.
Export for the accountant
Sales summaries your accountant can import, in the format they already use. The till should end arguments, not start one with your bookkeeper.
Point-of-sale questions
- Does the till keep working when the internet goes?
- Yes, if it is set up properly. Billing runs locally and syncs when the connection returns, so a fiber cut does not stop your counter. Cloud-only systems that freeze without internet are the single thing we most often get called to replace.
- Can it work with the accounting software my accountant uses?
- In most cases yes. We export sales and stock in formats the common packages import, and if your trade needs something specific we build it — that work is described on our software page.
- How long does it take staff to learn?
- Scanning and billing, one afternoon. Stock receiving and end-of-day closing, a few days of doing it with us on the phone. We train on your stock during the handover, not on a demo database, and we leave a printed quick-guide at the counter.
- My stock has no barcodes. Is that a problem?
- It is the normal starting point here. Packaged goods mostly carry manufacturer barcodes already; for loose and local items we set up label printing so you print your own. The first stock count is the real work of going digital — the machines are the easy part.