Price
What a POS system really costs: five lines you should never add up blind
The price a software vendor advertises covers only one of the five lines on the bill. The other four come later, and that is where the surprises hide.
A POS system is not paid for in one line. It is paid for in five, which do not share an issuer, a billing cycle or a lifespan. Adding them up without separating them is comparing a rent to a purchase.
1. The licence: the first price is not the only one
It is the figure everyone remembers, because it is the one vendors advertise. Lightspeed Restaurant, for instance, publishes three plans — Basic €89, Core €159, Pro €249 per month — and charges extra for every additional till (vendor's prices, recorded in September 2026).
The gap between the three is not cosmetic: stock management starts at the middle plan, online ordering and delivery at the top one. Choosing the entry level because it is the first price, then finding it lacks precisely the feature that justified the change, is the most common scenario we see during an audit.
The question to ask: is what you have just shown me included in the plan you are offering me? In writing.
2. The hardware: an object, not a subscription
A touchscreen till, a cash drawer, a receipt printer, a barcode scanner: these are pieces of equipment, bought once and used for five to seven years. Comparing them to a monthly subscription only makes sense if both are brought back to the same period.
Two honest remarks. A lot of existing equipment can be kept: a printer, a drawer and a scanner in good order have no reason to be replaced because the software changes. And leasing exists, for the cases where cash flow matters more than total cost.
3. Payment fees: the invisible line
This is the percentage taken on every card payment. It is charged by your bank or by the payment provider, not by the POS vendor — and that is exactly why it appears on no POS quotation.
In a business where card dominates, it is often the heaviest of the five lines over twelve months. It can be negotiated, it can be compared, and it changes depending on whether the terminal comes from the bank or from the vendor's provider. Put it in your calculation even if nobody presents it to you: without it, the total you are comparing is not yours.
4. The vendor's options
Loyalty, advanced stock, online ordering, kitchen display, booking: depending on the vendor, these building blocks are included, or charged per module per month. A demo shows them all; a quotation contains only some.
5. Installation, training, support
The audit, setting up the catalogue, connecting the peripherals, training the team, then support when something goes down. This is our part, and it is priced line by line after the audit: a single-till counter and a three-room restaurant do not call for the same work.
We do not advertise a flat rate for this line. It would be a wrong figure in both directions: too high for some, impossible to hold for others.
“€22 a month”: what that means
Figures like this circulate, and they can be perfectly accurate. It is the price of an entry-level licence from a vendor selling its own software — no hardware, no connection work, no training, nobody travelling out. It is not a lie: it is one line out of five.
Compare it with the equivalent line elsewhere, not with their total. And if you are shown a total in which the five lines are not distinguished, ask for the breakdown before signing: a quotation that refuses to be split always has a reason.
The only comparison worth making
The cost over three years, all five lines together, for a scope written down in black and white: how many tills, which features, what support, what response time on site.
Three years, because that is below the life of the hardware and above the period in which a first-year discount distorts the sum. Done this way, the table fits on one page, and gaps that looked enormous often turn out to be slim — or the other way round.
A quotation that splits into five lines?
It is the only way to compare two proposals without comparing the wrong totals.