What Restaurant Owners Should Know Before Choosing a POS

Choosing a point-of-sale system is a decision you will live with for years, and switching later means retraining staff, re-entering the menu and renegotiating card processing. This guide is for owners buying a first POS or replacing one, and it is deliberately vendor-neutral. By the end you will have a checklist to run every demo against, and a clear picture of one question most buyers forget to ask: whether the POS will let your other software connect to it.

What a POS actually does

At its core, a POS records sales. Everything else is built on that:

• Takes orders at the counter, at the table or from a tablet
• Processes payments through card readers and, increasingly, QR and wallet payments
• Prints or displays kitchen tickets
• Tracks what sold, when, and at what price
• Holds the menu with its modifiers, so a large latte with oat milk rings up correctly
• Manages staff logins, shifts and permissions

What a POS does not do, by default, is take online orders. Most vendors sell an online ordering module or rely on third-party ordering systems that push orders in. How well that connection works depends on decisions the vendor made about access, and that is the part worth understanding before you sign.

The checklist

Payments and hardware

Ask who processes the card payments and at what rate. Some POS vendors require you to use their processing; others let you bring your own. Ask what hardware is required, whether you can buy it elsewhere, and what happens to the hardware if you leave.

Offline mode

Internet goes down. Ask what the POS does when it does: can it still take orders, store card payments for later submission, and print tickets? Test this in the demo by pulling the cable.

Menu structure

Modifiers are where restaurant POS systems differ most. Can an item have nested modifiers (size, then crust, then toppings)? Can a modifier change the price? Can items be hidden by time of day? If your menu has half-and-half pizzas or build-your-own bowls, bring that exact item to the demo.

Reporting

You want sales by hour, by item and by channel, exportable to a spreadsheet. Ask whether reports are included or sold as an add-on.

Contract, fees and exit

Monthly fee per terminal or per location, contract length, early termination cost, and whether software fees rise after the first year. Ask for the full price list in writing.

Data export

Can you export your sales history, menu and customer records in a standard format if you leave? If the answer is vague, assume no.

The question most buyers skip: who can connect to it

Every modern POS has an API. That does not mean your online ordering provider, delivery partner or accounting tool can use it. Vendors differ widely in who they let in, and the rules affect what integrations you can have.

The table below summarises what each vendor’s public documentation said when checked on 29 October 2026. Programmes change; verify with the vendor before relying on any of it.

POS	Who gets API access	Notes
Toast (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia)	Third parties must apply to the Toast Partner Integrations programme, sign a partnership agreement and pass certification before production access	Write access to orders and menus is generally limited to partner and custom integrations; a read-only “standard API access” option is sold separately
Square	Any developer can create a free developer account; APIs cover catalog, orders, inventory and payments	Payment processing through Square is supported in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US
Clover	Developers build in a sandbox first; Clover reviews and approves each production developer account and lists apps in its App Market	Operates in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and Singapore
Lightspeed Restaurant (K Series)	API access is reserved for Lightspeed partners and approved merchants; others apply through the partner programme	API covers order creation, menus, items and webhooks
Petpooja (India)	Public API documentation exists for online ordering partners; staging and production credentials are issued by the Petpooja team, not self-served	Supports menu push, order save with accept or reject, order status updates and item stock on and off
Restroworks, formerly Posist (India and international)	A technology integration programme with REST API and sandbox; vendors quote six to ten weeks to go live and a one-time implementation fee with terms set during discovery	Marketplace orders from Swiggy and Zomato flow directly into the system

Sources: the developer documentation of each vendor, checked 29 October 2026; the full reference list is on Tuckly’s integrations directory.

The practical consequence: if a POS only grants write access to approved partners, your online ordering provider must already be a partner, or must become one, before orders can flow into the POS automatically. That can take weeks or months and may never happen for a small provider. Ask the POS vendor for the list of approved ordering integrations, and ask your ordering provider which POS systems they actually support today, with a status for each rather than a logo.

What “integrated” should mean

“Integrates with your POS” can describe very different things. When a vendor says it, ask which of these it covers:

1. Orders in. Online orders appear in the POS and on kitchen tickets without retyping.
2. Menu sync. Items, prices and modifiers maintained once and pushed to the ordering site.
3. Availability. Marking an item sold out in one place marks it sold out everywhere.
4. Status back. Accepting or completing an order in the POS updates the customer’s order page.
5. Reconciliation. Online payments show up in POS reports alongside counter sales.

Few integrations do all five. Tuckly’s integration pages list each capability with a status, so you can see which workflow is supported for a given POS before you decide. The order management page explains how orders are handled when there is no POS connection at all, which is a perfectly workable setup for many single-site restaurants.

Questions to ask in the demo

• Show me a modifier that changes price and a modifier nested inside another.
• Pull the internet cable. What happens to the order I am taking?
• Which online ordering systems can push orders into this POS today? Who approved them?
• If I leave, how do I export my sales history, menu and customer list?
• What is the total monthly cost for two terminals, including processing, support and every add-on I would need for online ordering and reporting?
• What is the early termination fee?

Write the answers down. Vendors are generally honest in demos, but memory is not.

Do you need a POS at all?

A single-site café taking cash and card at the counter, with online orders handled on a separate order screen, can run for a long time without a formal POS. The cost of that approach is some retyping and separate reports. If you are at that stage, it is often better to launch online ordering first, see what volume looks like, and choose a POS later with real data on what you need. The practical guide for small restaurants covers that sequence.

What to do next

Run the checklist against two or three systems with your own menu, and ask each about third-party access in the terms above. Then check the integrations directory, which lists the POS systems Tuckly connects to with a plain status for each: available, in development, or talk to us first.