6 Best POS Systems for Small Business 2024

All retailers need a point-of-sale (POS) system to accept customer payments and track sales.

But the best POS system for a furniture store with 50 established locations won’t be the same as the best POS for a small jewelry business running its first pop-up shop.

When deciding on the best POS system for your small business, it’s important to think about which features match your current needs and future goals.

This post is designed to help you find out what features a POS system for small business should have and how to choose the right point-of-sale for your store.

6 best POS systems for small businesses

1. Shopify POS: Best overall small business POS
2. Square: POS retail solution
3. Lightspeed: POS for inventory management
4. Toast: Best for the foodservice industry
5. Clover: Best industry-specific POS
6. Revel: Best for the hospitality industry

1. Shopify POS

Best small business POS for online and in-person sales

Shopify POS on counter in retail store.

With devices to fit small businesses of all kinds, Shopify POS lets you sell everywhere your customers are. The POS system integrates seamlessly with Shopify’s ecommerce platform, so retailers can manage online and in-person sales from one intuitive place.

Shopify’s POS Go is perfect for pop-ups, markets, events, or employees on the sales floor. Look up inventory, check customer profiles, and create tailored shopping experiences while interacting with customers.

Shopify POS helps you run up to 1,000 physical stores alongside your ecommerce store, so you can understand where products are by location and availability when making a sale.

Screen showing inventory availability on Shopify Mobile POS.

Features:

• Omnichannel sales
• Smart inventory management
• Customer profiles
• Reports and analytics
• Staff management
• Intuitive checkout
• Shopify Payments
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Marketing tools
• Hardware options
• Contactless payments
• Mobile selling

Payment processing fees: See pricing.

Monthly fee: Shopify plan required.

2. Square

Retail solution for small businesses

Square POS demo

Square offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features for small businesses. As a free POS system, Square offers basic sales tracking and reporting, plus the ability to accept payments without Wi-Fi. Services like payroll also integrate with the POS system.

Features:

• Customer accounts
• Third-party integrations
• Inventory management
• Mobile access
• Shift scheduling
• Loyalty program
• Employee management
• Electronic payments

Payment processing fee: 2.6% plus 10¢ per in-person transaction. 2.9% plus 30¢ for sales through Square Online Checkout.

Monthly fee: $0.

Learn more about how Shopify and Square compare.

3. Lightspeed

Inventory management for retailers

Lightspeed’s Retail POS dashboard

Lightspeed’s POS for retailers has a number of inventory management features, which make it an option for brands with multiple locations to manage. Lightspeed Retail offers one-on-one onboarding and an account manager with every plan.

Features:

• Inventory management
• Multi-store capabilities
• Sales reporting and analytics
• Employee management
• Ecommerce integration
• Point of sale (POS)
• Loyalty program
• Purchase order management
• Hardware integration
• Payment processing

Payment processing fee: 2.6% plus 10¢ per in-person transaction. 2.9% plus 30¢ per online transaction.

Monthly fee: From $69 per month.

Learn more about how Shopify and Lightspeed compare.

4. Toast

For the foodservice industry

Toast POS

Toast is a POS system designed for the foodservice industry, with features like menu management, tableside ordering, and kitchen display systems. It’s popular with small restaurants and cafés.

Toast offers sales management across multiple locations, so you can publish different menus and set different prices at each location. Features like online ordering and customer loyalty programs may be paid add-ons depending on the plan you choose.

Features:

• Online ordering
• Inventory management
• Kitchen display system (KDS)
• Reporting and analytics
• Digital menu boards
• Gift cards management
• Employee management
• Delivery tracking
• Tableside ordering
• Loyalty programs
• Mobile ordering
• Multi-location management

Payment processing fee: 2.49% plus 15¢ per in-person transaction. 3.50% plus 15¢ per online transaction.

Monthly fee: From $0.

5. Clover

POS system with industry-specific solutions

Clover POS

Clover POS provides tailored solutions for inventory tracking, customer management, and payment processing according to industry. It’s a versatile option for small businesses.

On the back end, Fiserv, which owns Clover, processes payments. But you can also choose your own service provider.

Features:

• Mobile payments
• Employee management
• Inventory management
• Order tracking
• Online ordering
• CRM integration
• Multi-location support
• Security and fraud protection
• Real-time reporting
• Ecommerce integration
• 24/7 customer support
• Barcode scanning
• Table layout and management
• Digital menu board
• API access

Payment processing fee: From 2.3% plus 10¢ per transaction.

Monthly fee: From $14.95 per month.

Learn more about how Shopify and Clover compare.

6. Revel

POS system for the hospitality industry

Revel POS

Revel Systems is a POS system that offers functionalities like CRM, loyalty programs, and online ordering. It’s suitable for small businesses in the hospitality industry, including restaurants, bars, and cafés.

Revel POS offers a digital outdoor display for drive-thrus plus delivery tools like driver tracking and text message updates.

Features:

• Cloud-based point of sale (POS)
• Quick service POS
• Self-service kiosk
• Inventory management
• Real-time reporting
• Enterprise management
• Loyalty programs
• Payment processing
• Offline mode
• API integration
• Accounting integrations
• Labor management
• Hardware solutions
• Tableside ordering
• Split-bill functionality
• Customizable user permissions
• Ecommerce integration

Payment processing fee: 2.49% plus 15¢ per transaction.

Monthly fee: From $99.

What features should a POS for small businesses have?

• Accept multiple types of payments
• Inventory tracking
• Customer profiles
• Sales reports
• Staff management

A solid POS system for small business lets you process payments securely and comes with software to help you handle administrative tasks more easily.

The kind of business you manage and the types of sales you make will help you determine which features your POS system needs to have. For example, a small business POS system that works well for a brick-and-mortar florist may not work so well for an online beauty retailer running their first physical pop-up shop.

Here are the top five POS system features you should consider.

Accept multiple types of payments

Statista projects that by 2024, digital and mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay will surpass card and cash payments—taking nearly 35% of payments market share.

Graph showing leading POS payment methods worldwide.

With diverse payment types having become mainstream in the years since the pandemic, customers want the convenience of choosing from multiple payment options.

Your POS system should make accepting in-person and online payments simple. Most modern POS systems let you accept popular payment types, like:

• Contactless payments: These can include mobile wallet payments using Apple Pay or Google Pay and chip cards.
• Cash: Which you deposit into your cash register.
• Chip cards: Credit or debit cards with a near-field communication (NFC) chip to allow tap to pay.
• Magstripe cards: Which let customers swipe their card in your card reader.
• Card not present transactions: When a shopper pays with their card without the card being physically present. These payments usually take place when a customer makes a purchase over the phone.
• Gift cards: Digital or physical cards that can be redeemed for online or in-person purchases.
• Amazon and Facebook pay options: This allows customers to pay using their Amazon or Facebook accounts.

Shopify Payments is the fastest way to start accepting payments in-person, online, and on-the-go. It’s included in all Shopify POS plans, so you can skip lengthy third-party activations and go from setup to selling faster.

Inventory tracking

Many POS systems for small businesses help manage in-store inventory—but the best POS systems let retailers track inventory across multiple channels like their online store, physical locations, and storage units.

US retailers are sitting on around $1.35 in inventory for every dollar of sales they make. Tracking and managing inventory with a POS can help lower these costs and ensure you’re not tying up too much capital.

💡 Set reorder points in Shopify admin to get low stock notifications and ensure you have enough lead time to replenish inventory before quantities reach zero.

Maggie Owens, owner of the party supply and gifts shop Presley Paige, uses a POS system that seamlessly communicates between her online store and physical location. This helps her know exactly how much stock she has, so she can help customers find the product they’re looking for in-store.

“Offering store pickup for online purchases and managing them through our POS has been extremely helpful,” says Maggie. “Being able to track inventory in-store and send saved carts to customers who call in and want to put something on hold is useful too. This allows our in-store team to send customers items they didn’t purchase in-store, but mentioned wanting to purchase at a later date.”

Customer profiles

According to a recent study, 60% of consumers say they will become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a retailer. By personalizing your offering to customers, you can improve brand loyalty and revenue.

A POS system that’s connected to your online store will help you gather, track, and manage customer data more easily.

For example, with Shopify POS, you can create customer profiles and view their entire purchase history, including details like:

• Everything they’ve bought at your store or online
• How much they’ve spent to date
• The number of times they’ve ordered
• How long they’ve been a customer

All of this customer data updates in real time and is located in one place. This helps customers, since your staff has more context and can serve them better. You can also use data to segment customer profiles and build email lists to keep customers engaged and increase repeat purchases.

💡 Encourage store staff to send the carts they save by email at the end of their shift. This is an accessible way to recover abandoned store sales and attribute more revenue to your store—even if the transaction happened online.

Sales reports

Look for a POS system for small business that compiles sales reports from data collected at both your physical locations and online. That way, you get a complete picture of how your business is performing.

💡 With Shopify, it’s straightforward to track sales by channel, store location, or product over time. To get started, view Sales reports in Shopify admin.

Staff management

Your POS system should help you manage your team members as you grow and scale your business.

Look for management features like permissions and staff roles to make it easier to lead your staff. Using these features, you can set boundaries for actions that team members can do without supervisor permission, like refunding a customer or applying a discount to a product.

It’s also helpful to have visibility on staff’s performance, like their average transaction values, median units per transaction, and daily sales.

💡 With Shopify POS, you can assign different roles and permissions and set boundaries on what store staff can do in your POS system without manager approval—like changing a product’s price or applying a custom discount to a sale.

How to choose a POS system for your small business

Selecting the ideal point of sale system for your small business can be a daunting task—but it's a crucial one. A well-chosen POS system will streamline your customer experience and make inventory management much easier. Here are some key points to consider:

Compare POS providers

The first step in choosing a POS is to compare different providers. Each system has its unique strengths and weaknesses, and you need to find the one that suits your business model the best. Here are some Compare Pages to get you started:

• Shopify POS vs. Clover POS
• Shopify POS vs. Lightspeed POS
• Shopify POS vs. Square POS
• Shopify POS vs. Magento POS
• Shopify POS vs. QuickBooks POS

These comparisons will help you understand the differences in features, pricing, and usability among the most popular POS systems.

Decide which type of POS you need

Next, consider the type of POS hardware that will meet your business needs:

• Retail POS systems are designed for brick-and-mortar stores, allowing you to accept in-person payments, manage inventory, and track sales.
• Omnichannel POS systems are ideal for businesses that operate both online and offline. They provide a unified view of your sales and inventory and produce detailed reports to help you identify trends and opportunities faster.
• Mobile POS systems are portable systems that process payments on the go. They're similar to traditional retail POS systems but offer the flexibility to process payments anywhere, anytime. They're also perfect for pop-up shops, events, and markets.

Review costs

For any business, the cost of a POS system will be a determining factor. It's essential to find a system that offers the features you need within your budget. When reviewing costs, consider the following:

• POS software fees. These are usually monthly or annual fees, with different plan tiers and corresponding prices. Higher-tier plans usually come with more advanced features, like advanced reporting and analytics.
• Hardware costs. These depend on the payment types you want to accept, the number of stores and staff you have, and the overall functionality you need.
• Payment processing fees. Every time you process a sale, your payment processor charges a fee. This fee is usually charged per transaction and taken as a percentage of the overall transaction amount. The amount you pay may change depending on the type of credit card a customer uses.

Determine inventory management needs

Good POS systems have robust inventory management features. They automatically update your inventory levels as you sell, return, or exchange products in both physical and online settings. This can significantly reduce the time spent physically counting items and reconciling inventory, as well as lowering the likelihood of errors.

Choose a POS for online and in-person selling

Nearly 50% of brands say that unifying their online and in-store operations and data is their biggest challenge—so a POS system that can integrate online and in-person selling can be a game-changer.

Choose a POS with built-in omnichannel selling features. Even if you sell exclusively in online or physical settings today, you may expand your sales channels in the future.

Get started with a POS system for small business

A small business POS system helps you accept more payment methods, accurately manage inventory, run sales reports, and more.

When choosing a POS system, consider your needs as a growing small business—what might suit some retailers might not be right for you. Think about which POS system features are most important to your team, budget, and future business goals.

POS systems for small business FAQ

What should be included in a POS system?

• Point of Sale terminal: The primary device that connects to the payment processor and maintains the inventory and sales records.
• Barcode scanner: Read barcodes on items and quickly enter them into the system.
• Credit card reader: Process credit and debit card payments.
• Receipt printer: Prints customer receipts.
• Cash drawer: Store and secure cash payments.
• Inventory management software: Manage inventory and keep track of sales.
• Customer display: Show customers the items they are purchasing and their total cost.
• Security measures: Cameras, motion detectors, and other measures to protect against theft.

Do I need a POS system for my small business?

If you run a retail store, a POS system is essential for tracking sales and inventory. For service-based businesses such as a restaurant, a POS system can help you take orders and handle payments. For online businesses, a POS system may not be necessary but is still beneficial for tracking sales and managing inventory.

What is needed for a POS system?

A successful POS system needs hardware (barcode scanners, cash registers, receipt printers, payment terminals, etc.) and software for efficient transactions. Must-have features for POS systems include inventory management, sales reporting, customer relationship management, employee management, and secure payment processing.