How to choose a POS system for your shop

Start with how you sell, not with the software

Before you open a single demo, write down how a sale happens in your shop today. Who takes the order. How they find the product. How they take payment. What happens when stock runs out or a customer returns an item. Do the same for the sales that do not start at the counter: a customer who messages you on Instagram, a wholesale buyer who calls, a customer who orders on your website and picks up in store.

This list is your real requirement. A fashion brand with sizes and colors needs variants done well. A hardware shop with thousands of small items needs fast barcode scanning and a search that never slows down. A home and living store that sells big pieces needs delivery and partial payment handled cleanly. If a system cannot run your list from start to finish, the rest of its feature page does not matter.

The features that actually matter

Most POS systems look the same on the surface. These are the parts that separate a good one from a daily headache:

• Products with variants. Size, color, material, each with its own price, barcode and stock count.
• Live stock. When you sell at the counter, the website should know. When the website sells, the counter should know.
• Every channel in one place. Counter, website, WhatsApp, Instagram and phone orders should land in one list, on one customer record.
• Customer records by phone number. In Egypt, the phone number is the identity. One lookup should show the whole history.
• Arabic and English. Your staff work in the language they think in, and print the invoice in the language the customer reads.
• Roles. Owner, manager, staff. Cost prices visible to you only.
• An audit trail. Every price change, stock adjustment and refund tied to a person and a time.
• Multiple branches. Even if you have one today. Changing systems later is painful.

Questions to ask before you sign

Ask these in the demo and write the answers down:

• Who sets it up, and who enters my products?
• What happens when the internet drops in the shop?
• Can I see stock per branch, and can two variants share one count?
• How does a return or an exchange work, step by step?
• Who owns my data, and can I take it with me if I leave?
• Who do I call when something breaks on a Friday evening?
• What is on the roadmap, and what is actually working today?

A vendor who answers the last question honestly is a vendor you can work with. Everyone has features that are not ready yet. The problem is pretending they are.

What to bring to the demo

Walk in with three things. A list of ten real products, including your most complicated one: the dress with the most sizes, the drill with the most accessories, the sofa with fabric options. One week of real sales, with the channel each one came from. And the staff member who will use the system most. Give the vendor the list and ask them to build it live. The demo stops being a presentation and becomes a test. You learn more in that half hour than in a month of brochures.

Mistakes that cost you later

• Buying for the cashier only. The till is one screen. The business runs on orders, stock and customers. If those live somewhere else, you will be copying numbers between two systems every night.
• Skipping the variant test. Ask the vendor to create one product with three sizes and four colors in front of you. Watch how long it takes.
• Ignoring the team. The system has to be fast enough for your slowest staff member on your busiest day. Let one of them try it.
• No plan for the first week. Migration, training and a person on call. Ask what the vendor does in week one.
• Choosing by price alone. The cheapest system is the one you stop using after two months.

Where Tillo stands today

We build Tillo, so we will be straight with you. Tillo's cashier screen is coming soon. It is not live yet. What is live today: orders from every channel in one list, products with variants, stock per variant per branch with barcode scanning, customer records by phone number, invoices and packing slips in Arabic or English, team roles, and a full audit log.

Shops using Tillo today log in-store sales as orders. Staff find or add the customer by phone, add items by search or barcode, choose the payment method, and the sale is recorded against the same stock as the website and WhatsApp orders. The till screen will sit on top of this foundation when it is ready. If you need a dedicated cashier screen this month, tell us and we will say so plainly. If you need your orders, stock and customers in one place first, Tillo is ready for that.

A simple way to decide

Shortlist two or three systems. Run your written workflow through each one in a live demo, with your own products and your own staff. Ask the seven questions. Then choose the system whose team told you the truth about what is ready, and whose foundation covers orders, stock and customers, not just the till. That system will still fit when you open the second branch.