The POS buying checklist: 40 questions, printed and taken with you

Print this. Take it into every demo. Write the answers down — not because you will forget, but because a vendor answering in writing answers differently.

Cost (protects you from: paying more than you think)

1. What is the monthly price, per site or per user?
2. What does the price become in year two and year three?
3. What is the one-time hardware cost, per terminal?
4. If hardware is free, what is its retail value and what do I owe if I leave in month 14?
5. What are the payment processing rates — mada, credit, and the cap?
6. Who does the payment settle to — me, or you?
7. Is training included? Is implementation?
8. What costs extra that is not on the price page?

Hardware (protects you from: a dead terminal on a busy night)

9. Which exact devices are supported, by model?
10. Can I buy them from someone other than you?
11. Does the software run in a browser, on Windows, on macOS?
12. If a terminal fails on a Thursday evening, what do I do that evening?
13. How long do you support a device model after it is discontinued?
14. Which printers, scanners, drawers and scales are supported?

ZATCA (protects you from: penalties)

15. Do you produce UBL 2.1 XML with the previous-invoice hash?
16. Does signing happen on the device or on your server?
17. Can I onboard a new terminal myself? Show me, now.
18. Where do I see accepted, warned and rejected invoices?
19. What happens 30 days before a device certificate expires?
20. Do you handle credit and debit notes referencing the original invoice?
21. Can a cashier mark a sale as B2B and capture the buyer's VAT number?

Offline (protects you from: lost sales)

22. Unplug the router now. Complete a sale.
23. Take a card payment while disconnected.
24. Print the invoice — does the QR scan?
25. Ring up nine more, then reconnect. Did all ten arrive, once each?
26. How long can it stay offline?
27. Does the browser cashier work offline too?

Inventory (protects you from: stock you cannot account for)

28. Import my real product file, now, in this demo.
29. Do variants work as one product with children?
30. Can I buy by carton and sell by piece?
31. Can I raise a purchase order and receive against it partially?
32. Run a stock count and show me the variance report.
33. Can I transfer stock between branches with an audit trail?

Staff controls (protects you from: the most common internal loss)

34. Can I stop a specific cashier from issuing refunds and credit notes?
35. Can I see voids, discounts and credit notes by staff member?
36. Does a shift close produce expected-versus-counted cash?
37. Can a manager approve an override without sharing their password?

Support and exit (protects you from: being stuck)

38. What are your support hours, in Saudi time, and on Friday?
39. What is the data export format for products, customers, sales and invoices — and is it included?
40. How long do you retain my data after I leave, and can I get it then?

How to score it

Do not total the yeses. Instead, mark each answer as one of three:

• Demonstrated — you watched it happen
• Stated — they said yes
• Deflected — "that's on the roadmap", "let me check", or a different question answered

Questions 17, 22–25 and 28 must bedemonstrated. Everything in the ZATCA and exit sections should bein writing. A vendor with more than three deflections in forty questions is telling you something, and it is usually accurate.

The one question that matters most

Number 12:if a terminal fails on a Thursday evening, what do I do that evening?

The answer reveals the vendor's real service model, their hardware philosophy and their honesty, all at once. Everything else on this list is detail by comparison.

Our own answers are on thefeatures,pricing,hardware andZATCA pages, and thecomparison page lists what we do not have.