A cash register is far from a simple place to store your money from the time it leaves your customers hands until it is deposited into your bank account. The right Cash Register will save you time with good reports, make you more money by thwarting theft, move customers through a line quickly. Don't forget that all of the reurn from the investment you have made in your business is coming back via the cash register.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Do it Yourself (DIY) Cash Register System

For the do-it-yourselfer there is The Cash Register Guys website. Here you can choose from retail or restaurant Cash Registers. All the registers at The Cash Register Guys are commercial grade name brand registers. DIY is not for everyone, but thousands of start up and existing companies can save 25% or more when you do some of the work.

I recommend: Sharp Cash Registers for overall value. Sharp makes cash registers for both retail and restaurant applications. You can see the commercial grade Sharp Cash Registers here You do need to decide on several different important items before choosing a Cash Register. Don't buy to small a Cash Register if you you think you may want your system to grow in the future. Consider or rule out features like Kitchen Printers, Bar Code Scanning, computer interface, credit card interface and more before deciding which register is for you.

Should I use a Barcode Scanner on my Cash Register

If you are a retail store selling more then a few different items then the answer is YES you should be scanning.

I recommend: Bar code scanning for many different reasons. First and foremost is price control. Using a scanner will give you control of pricing at the point of sale. You program the price for each barcoded item, which means you control the price. This stops clerks from entering the wrong price by mistake or on purpose. Scanning speeds up customer lines, gives you great reports of sales by items. Depending on how busy your store is you also should think about multi-line vs. single line scanners. As an example most all grocery stores use multi-line scanners for speed. And please don't pay any attention to news reports that scanners price items wrong etc. The bar code simply reads a number which the cash register or POS system matches to a product in your product database. The database controls the price, not the scanner. If a scanner registers the wrong price it is rarely the scanner it is the the price in the database that was entered wrong.

Should you interface Credit Cards Payments to your Cash Register?

Yes, yes, and yes. This is a no brainer. You must close this gaping hole in your cash control

I recommend: using integrated credit card payments in your cash register whenever possible. Yes it is more expensive but you will find every penny spent will give you a huge return.

There are many problems with using a standalone credit terminal next to the cash register. The first being that cashiers must make double enteries for every credit sale opening the door for massive errors. It is very easy to enter $14.99 as $1.49 when you are busy, or when you are just stealing.

Intergrating credit card payments to the cash register will eliminate the double entry that leaves you wide open to errors and fraud, and most often speeds customer lines as well.

Do yourself a favor and audit your transactions.

We like Datacap for integrating cash register and credit card payments.

The Cash Register Guys have a package price for Cash Registers Bundled with Integrated Credit Card Terminals and services. They offer a large discount for these packages when you process with Gravity Payment Systems.

Is it important to interface my Cash Register System to Quick Books?

Don't waste your time trying to interface your cash register to your QB accounting software. You most often will spend more time and money setting it up then you will save.

I recommend: interfacing a cash register to QB or any accounting package very rarely. Unless you are trying to keep inventory of items you have programmed in your cash register or you have house charge accounts you need to transfer from your register to QB then you would be wasting your time. You are far better of to take the cash register reports and enter them into your accounting. In most cases you will just be entering a handful of sales.

There are cash register to computer packages that do interface to QB should you still decide you need to. Check out our favorite PC Poll

Connecting Cash Registers Together

A mid priced cash register will have a feature called IRC or Inter-Register Communications. IRC can save you time and money. Don't skip it if you need two or more Cash Registers

I recommend: Cash Registers with IRC when ever you will be needing two or more cash registers. The IRC feature will allow you to download programming from one machine and consolidate sales from all of the cash registers. This saves hours of your time when adding new items in your cash register system, and with the end of day and end of month reports. Do not skip this feature. Here is an example of a mid range SAM4s Cash Register with IRC

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  For the DIY make sure you have enough time and resources to program your cash register system.
• •  To save money instead of paying for a complete turnkey system, just pay for the help you need. The bulk of the cost of setting up a cash register system is the keying in of products.
• •  If you are not 100% comfortable setting up a system by yourself with limited help don't try. It is very normal for a cash register dealer to charge $500.00 to $3000.00 to set up a system because there is real time consuming work that has to be done.