In the demo every point-of-sale system looks good. They sell, they print, they show a pretty report. The differences do not appear there: they appear on Saturday at eight, with a full house.
These five questions separate a lot more than any feature comparison.
1. Does it keep selling without internet?
This is the first and the most important.
If the system needs a connection to take payment, the day the internet drops you stop selling. It is not hypothetical: it happens. And it always happens at the worst moment, because the worst moment is when there are the most people.
A serious point of sale stores the sale locally and syncs when signal returns. Ask it in those words and see whether the answer is direct.
2. Will the printer you already own work?
80 and 58 millimetre thermal printers are the standard. If the system only works with one specific model you have to buy, that is part of the price even if it is not on the list.
Ask about the connection too: USB, network and Bluetooth cover almost every real case.
3. What does "free" mean?
Read carefully here, because "free" is used for three very different things:
- A thirty-day trial. That is not free, that is later.
- Free with a cap. A hundred sales a month, one user, one product. It works until the business does well, which is exactly when you do not want to migrate.
- Genuinely free. The complete system, no expiry, and you pay only for what someone who has already grown adds on.
None is bad in itself. What matters is knowing which one you are being offered before you load your inventory.
4. Is it in your country's currency?
It sounds basic and it is a common problem in systems built for a single market. The currency, the format and the decimals have to be yours, with no mental conversions and no odd rounding at closing time.
5. Is e-invoicing part of the system or an add-on?
If your country requires electronic invoicing, this question saves the most expensive pain: having the point of sale on one side and invoicing on the other means typing everything twice, and getting it wrong the second time.
Watch for the catch: a system can be regional and have e-invoicing for a single country. That is not wrong, but it is worth knowing from the start.
What we built
Mi PuntoVenta is our answer. The complete point of sale is free forever: unlimited counter and table sales, inventory, cash control and reconciliation, customers and receivables. It is not a thirty-day trial.
The Android app keeps selling offline and syncs by itself. It prints on 80 and 58 mm thermal printers over USB, network or Bluetooth, and the barcode scanner is the phone's camera. It is multi-currency and works across Latin America; in Costa Rica it also issues electronic invoices valid before the tax authority from the same system.
What you pay for are the modules a grown business needs — pro reports, loyalty, multi-branch and restaurant — starting at five dollars a month.
It is built for diners, restaurants, cafés, corner shops, retail stores, barbershops, greengrocers and food trucks. Open your register today.