Money doesn’t grow on trees.  This is especially true if you’re a small business owner trying to finance your latest expansion.  You need to keep growing to keep thriving, but that means that sometimes you have to take a calculated risk.  You have to decide where to put your money.  For a lot of people, this means that they have to make the conscious choice to invest their money into a cheaper, mobile POS system and invest in hardware to increase the utility of the products, or they can shell out even more money in an attempt to get a better overall product.  There’s no real evidence that one is going to be a better solution than the other, so there are some important and definite ways this can go.

Protect Your Investment with an Outer Shell

The first thing to note is that while you don’t technically need anything besides a tablet, the external hardware (card reader, receipt printer, barcode scanner) and the like, to make a mobile point of sale system work, you should definitely still invest in a hard shell case for protection.  Just like your regular cash register or large, clunky point of sale terminal, you can’t use something that’s broken.  The only difference is that a mobile point of sale system has a lot more opportunities to be banged, dropped, and spilled on.  A protective shell might seem expensive at first (especially if you get some with built in shock resistance to help in case of drops), but it’s the number one most needed accessory, according to Entrepreneur.  So for the price of an outer shell, you can make a huge improvement in the durability of your equipment and avoid unfortunate accidents that can stop your business’ functioning entirely for a period of time.

Point of Sale by Consumerist Dot Com, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Swivels Let a Customer Handle the Details

Investing in accessories also makes more sense because you can pay in stages.  While you might be making payments on a $20,000 register and point of sale computer for years, with a mobile POS system, you can save up, buy an accessory, and then save up again to buy the next one.  You can use them in the meantime and you won’t be in a lot of debt.  While a protective case is basically a must for any business owner who’s not a wild risk taker, there are other things that will greatly benefit you that you can still wait on.  An iPad stand like offered by Shopify is a great example of this; a good, solid stand allows employees and customers to both interact with the device with ease.

This is especially good because it lets your customers keep track of their credit cards themselves.  When they can swipe or tap their card with their own hands it greatly increases confidence.  They don’t have to worry about anyone else getting their hands on their credit card information.  The time when employees can steal credit card information is typically when they take it back to be rung up out of the customer’s sight.  This way, it stays in their hands the entire time.

Plus, digital tips are actually great.  If you run a soap store you might not care about this, but if your small business is a great little coffee shop you’ll be happy to know that mobile point of sale systems only increase tips.  They can rise as much as 12 percent, according to Bon Appetit, due to the fact that the service is generally much faster and it’s very easy to just hit a percentage option on the screen.  This is great news if your employees rely on tips for most of their wages.

The Cost Difference Just Can’t Be Compared

When you’re looking at long term business purchases you have to consider return on investment.  A big, heavy point of sale monster is going to take up more room, be less flexible, less modern, and you’re going to be paying it off for much, much longer.  You’re locked into using this POS system for the next many years just to break even on your investment.  A mobile point of sales system costs much less, so you will be able to pay it off and start looking for something else much sooner if that’s what you want to do.  You could be losing money on the other point of sale system for years afterwards even if you change your mind about using it later.

Get More Utility for Less Money

Fil Entrep is the first to announce that mobile point of sale systems are a boon for truly small businesses because of the flexibility.  A giant company is a lumbering dinosaur; it can’t change lanes very fast, which means that they’re going to be using traditional POS systems until they need to be replaced because it doesn’t make sense to finance a companywide shift.  Getting into this quickly puts you a step ahead of big businesses.