How Much Does a POS System Cost in Australia Right Now?

When launching a new business, understanding the cost of your operations is crucial. One significant investment to consider is a top POS system, so you can manage your inventory, take payments, and track important data quickly and efficiently.

Typically, a POS system will cost the average Australian business around $1,500 upfront and then $1,800 per year for ongoing usage. But these numbers will vary depending on the extent of POS features and hardware you need, as well as the provider you choose and the industry you’re operating in.

To put it another way, the costs incurred by a newly opened breakfast cafe in Melbourne will be very different from the outgoings of an established fine dining restaurant on the Gold Coast. So, in this guide, we break down the specific hardware, software, and card processing fees you can expect below.

POS System Costs

Business POS system costs usually entail the hardware rental and the software subscription. Both of these are normally charged monthly, with the former referring to the lease of POS equipment (like card readers and barcode scanners) and the latter being the ongoing fee the provider charges to use their program. Hardware is often available to purchase outright too, although this is less common with software packages.

These costs will vary depending on the range and style of POS hardware, and the extent of POS software features, your particular business requires. For instance, a chain grocery store with hundreds of employees may require a more extensive, tool-rich setup than a first-time coffee shop owner with a couple of staff on the books.

Here are some average overall costs you’ll face for hardware and software combined in your first year of operating a POS system (remember, you’ll only need to buy the hardware once; after that, you’ll only have software costs to pay).

Read on for a breakdown of how we got these costs when considering software, hardware and other fees.

POS Hardware Costs

To understand how much a POS system costs, you need to consider the different types of hardware your specific business requires, whether that’s card readers and cash registers or tablets and receipt printers.

As stated, these costs can either be paid upfront or as a monthly fee. For instance, with Clover POS, you can receive its Flex card reader for counter, table or on-the-go use at either a $35 per month price for 36 months or a one-time payment of $599. Which method your business prefers will ultimately come down to how much upfront funds you can stump up and if you feel secure about the long-term future of your business, but an outright purchase will usually be a much cheaper option overall.

Below, we’ve outlined what you’d typically need, and what you can expect to pay in terms of POS hardware costs if you’re running a small, medium, or large business.

POS Software Costs

As well as buying hardware, you’ll need to pay a monthly subscription fee for the software that powers your POS system, although some offer free plans to get you started or the opportunity to purchase a package outright if you prefer.

The overall cost of a POS system for small businesses will differ from those for larger corporations. That’s a given. But to make things easier for you, we’ll use two of the best POS systems in Australia as examples, and explain the various plans, price points and what kinds of business they are best suited to.

Square POS: Best For Small to Medium Retail Businesses

Square is one of the biggest names in payment processing, but it’s POS system is becoming increasingly popular among small businesses. It offers ecommerce integration and in-depth inventory management tools like low stock alerts and bulk inventory uploads, making it a great option for shop owners.

It came out on top in our testing under several sector and product-specific criteria, making Square a superb choice for not only retail but just about any business.

Square POS costs

Square suggests that businesses processing over $250,000 per year will be best suited to its Premium package, while the advanced features found with its Plus plan will work well for most other restaurants, retailers or appointment-based businesses. Its free plan is a solid choice for businesses looking to sell in person, online or over the phone for the first time, too.

Here’s a rundown of each package and how much it’ll cost your business per month.

Clover: Best For Restaurants Looking for Exceptional Hardware

Regardless of the size of your business, Clover is one of the best POS systems around, especially for hospitality. It offers easy-to-carry handheld POS devices, perfect for table service, and responsive terminals with built-in customer displays, perfect for counter service. It closely followed Square under most of our product and sector-specific testing procedures and even won a few.

Clover POS costs

Payment Processing Fees

Alongside hardware and software costs, payment processing or debit/credit card fees are among the most important cost considerations for your business. That’s to say that most of the payment platforms you integrate into your POS system will charge you upon each transaction. Therefore, this will be an ongoing expense every time your company does business, adding up to a fairly significant cost in no time at all.

Standard credit and debit card processing fees in Australia vary fairly significantly, even within the same provider depending on the plan a business is subscribed to. Our research has found that fees are usually between 1.5% and 3.5% of each transaction’s total and sometimes a small fixed amount per transaction is added on too.

Using our experience and industry knowledge, we’ve selected some of the most popular POS suppliers and explained their card processing fees below.

Compare POS System Costs

The easiest way to compare POS systems is to get free quotes from trusted suppliers that best suit your needs. If that sounds of interest, then simply tell us what you need (it only takes a minute) and we’ll match you with the right POS suppliers. They’ll then get in touch with you, offering more information and no-obligation quotes for you to compare.

To give you an idea of how much different POS suppliers might charge your business, check out our examples below.

Example POS system costs for a small business

You’re currently running one or two small stores, and you want to synchronise your brick-and-mortar inventory with an ecommerce store. You employ a small number of employees, but you want to start growing. You also want to view your sales performance with regular reports, in order to make it easier for you to grow your small business.

Your POS system costs are likely to be around:

• POS software cost: $150 per month
• POS hardware cost: $1,200 upfront
• Plus transaction fees of your selected provider plan

Example POS system costs for a large business

You run multiple stores or business locations, selling across multiple channels. This means you need a retail POS system to help you stay on top of your sales figures, your inventory levels, and your employees’ performance. You need more advanced features, such as gift cards, advanced reporting, customer relationship management (CRM) to help retain customers, and much more.

Your POS system costs are likely to be around:

• POS software cost: $300+ per month
• POS hardware cost: $6,500+ upfront
• Plus transaction fees of your selected provider plan

Our Research and Testing Methodology

The Expert Market team tested and assessed 15 different EPOS systems to be able to confidently recommend Square and Clover’s POS systems to our readers. We spend around 160 hours researching POS platforms, and over 20 hours testing them. During that time, we used our learnings to evaluate how each POS system fared in six categories that are important to businesses, broken down into between four and 12 subcategories, in order to get an impartial ranking.

Here’s what we looked at:

• POS software: the breadth of features included in the POS software, and how valuable they are to the average business, including inventory management, menu/product creation, customer engagement tools and table management.
• Hardware/equipment: the variety of equipment available to purchase or rent, with special importance given to key items, such as physical terminals, customer displays, and accessories.
• Ease-of-use: how easy each system is to use, based on feedback from several average users who were assigned basic tasks to complete on each system, such as menu/item creation, accessing report, or applying a discount.
• Help and support: how effective and reachable the customer support teams are, with bonus points given to POS systems with help centres and training modes.
• Costs: the price of the system, how it compares to competitors, and whether it’s good value for money.
• User experience: whether everyday users know and like the system, whether they’d recommend it, and what they say about it in online reviews.

We gave each POS system a score in each of the above testing and research categories, and combined them to produce an overall score, which was used to rank them.