For a barbershop the point of sale is mostly a payments decision wearing a software badge. The difference between two card rates, across a shop taking real money six days a week, dwarfs the difference between two subscription prices. So price the processing first, at your own volume and your own average ticket, and only then compare what the software does with tips, chair rent and the diary.
Point of sale products barbershops commonly shortlist, and what to price or ask for
Not a ranking. Siftvo publishes no score of its own and no vendor pays to be named here. The order is alphabetical and the line after each name is the thing to make that vendor show you in a demo, scored on your own sheet.
- Boulevard: front desk and payments together: ask how a tip is attributed to the barber rather than the till operator
- Clover: general small business point of sale: ask whether it understands barbers, chairs and commission at all
- Square: published rates and free software: price the rate at your volume before anything else
- Squire: barbershop-specific with payments built in: ask for a week's payout with tips, commission and rent on one statement
Work the card rate before you look at features
Take your monthly card volume and your average ticket, apply each product's published rate including any per-transaction fee, and put the annual difference into the cost calculator against the subscriptions. On a shop taking thirty thousand a month, a fraction of a percent is a real number, and it frequently reverses the ranking a feature comparison would have produced.
Tips, splits and the barber's own view
How a tip is prompted at the terminal, how it is attributed to the barber who did the cut rather than the one at the till, and how it reaches them at payout. Then commission on product sales and chair rent deducted on the same statement. Ask to see one week's payout produced from the till data with nothing retyped, and score what you see.
Hardware, and what happens when it fails
What terminal, whether it is bought or rented, whether it works offline when the connection drops, and how long a replacement takes. A shop that cannot take cards on a Saturday afternoon loses a day's takings, so ask about the failure case explicitly. Card handling also carries security obligations, and using a provider that keeps card data out of your systems is the ordinary way to meet them.
Questions people ask about best pos system for barbershop
Should the POS and the booking system be the same product?
For most shops yes, because the tip attribution and the payout depend on knowing who did the cut. Two systems means somebody reconciles them weekly, and that is a real cost.
Is a free POS worth it?
Only after you have priced the card rate. Free hardware and free software paid for by a higher processing rate can easily be the most expensive option at a busy shop.
Do you publish card rates?
No. We publish no price list. Take each provider's own published rate, put it into the calculator at your volume, and compare the totals.