The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.

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Before You Sign For POS Software, Read the Contract

August 7, 2026
4 Min read
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Choosing point of sale software is one of the most important decisions a small retailer will make. The software sits at the centre of the business, handling sales, stock, reporting and customer records every single day. It is chosen with care, and rightly so. Yet in all the attention paid to features and screens, one part of the decision is often rushed: the contract.

The agreement behind the software deserves the same scrutiny as the software itself. It sets out what a retailer is committing to, for how long, and on what terms. Get it wrong, and a business can find itself tied to a product that no longer suits it, with no easy way out.

Why the POS software contract fine print matters

A recurring story in retail is the business that signed quickly, assuming a monthly fee meant a monthly commitment. Too often it does not. Some providers structure their agreements around long fixed terms of two or three years. The monthly payment looks flexible, but the contract is not. Should the retailer wish to leave early, the remaining term can fall due in full, sometimes with an additional penalty on top.

This is not always obvious at the point of signing. Contracts can run to pages of legal language, and in the excitement of moving to new software, the exit terms are easy to overlook. The result is a business locked in place, paying for a product it has outgrown or simply come to dislike.

A different approach

Tower Systems takes a deliberately different path. Its software agreement is written in plain English, and the rental runs month to month. If a retailer decides in any given month that the software is no longer wanted, they simply stop paying the next month. There is no lock-in period, no early exit penalty, and no drawn-out release process.

That structure was introduced in 2019, and the reasoning behind it is straightforward. An agreement that customers can leave easily keeps the company accountable. It removes the false security of a signature and replaces it with something more valuable: a daily reason to earn the business. Software has to be worth keeping, and support has to be worth paying for, because the customer is always free to walk.

What retailers should do before signing

The lesson applies to any provider, not only to one. Before signing a POS software agreement, a retailer should take the time to read it properly. Every clause matters, particularly those covering the term, renewal, price increases and cancellation.

If the document is dense or unclear, there is no shame in seeking a second opinion or brief legal advice. A short review now is far cheaper than years tied to the wrong product. It is also worth asking direct questions: How long is the commitment? What happens if the software is no longer wanted? Are there any penalties for leaving? The answers, and the ease with which they are given, say a great deal about the provider.

There is no need to feel rushed. The strongest position in any business agreement is the moment before signing, because the choice to walk away still exists. Once the signature is on the page, that power is gone.

The bottom line

Point of sale software is a long-term relationship, and like any relationship it works best when both sides are free to choose it each day. A fair agreement, clearly written and free of traps, is a sign of a provider confident in its product and its service.

Tower Systems makes point of sale software for specialty and independent retailers across Australia and New Zealand, backed by local support and a month-to-month agreement with no lock-in. Retailers weighing up their options are welcome to get in touch at sales@towersystems.com.au or visit www.towersystems.com.au.

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Small retail business advice: What is omnichannel, and why should a small local shop care?

August 6, 2026
3 Min read
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Omnichannel is a jargon word, and we are generally, and rightfully, suspicious of jargon. But behind this one sits something every local retailer needs to think about, so here it is in plain terms.

Omnichannel is critical in retail today to retailers keen to run profitable and growing businesses.

Omnichannel means your shop, your web store, your social media and even your stall at the local market all work as one business. Same stock. Same prices. Same customer, recognised wherever they meet you. A customer might find a product on your website at 10pm, check it is in stock, and collect it from your counter the next morning. To them that is one transaction with one shop. Omnichannel is the word for making it feel that way.

You can’t ignore this. It’s essential in retail today.

Why does it matter to a small local shop? Because your customers already behave this way, whether you are set up for it or not. Most people research online before walking into a physical shop. If someone in your town searches for a product you have on your shelf and finds nothing, the sale often goes to a marketplace or a chain, even though the item was sitting five minutes from their house. You lost a local sale for lack of a shop window that happens to be a screen.

There is a fear that selling online means competing with Amazon on Amazon’s terms. It does not have to. A local shop online has advantages the giants cannot match: collect today rather than a parcel on Thursday, a human who answers the phone, easy returns across the counter, and trust built over years. Online is where you get found. Local is why they choose you.

The hard part of omnichannel for a small retailer has never been the idea, it is the housekeeping. Two systems, two stock records, and suddenly you have sold the last one of something in the shop while the website still shows it as available. That is where POS software earns its keep.

Our Tower Systems POS software connects directly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and BigCommerce. The shop and the web store share the same data, updated as sales happen. Sell the last one at the counter and the website knows. Sell it online and the shop knows. Prices, product details and stock levels live in one place instead of being maintained twice by whoever remembers.

The AI tools in the software carry a lot of the load too. Product descriptions are the reason many shops never get their full range online, because writing hundreds of them is dull work that never reaches the top of the list. The software generates SEO-ready descriptions from your stock data, so the range can actually make it onto the site. And if you sell at markets or community events, the Retailer Roam app takes payments there with the same synchronised stock.

One honest caveat: an online store built on messy stock data will disappoint. If your on-hand figures are unreliable, fix that first, because omnichannel amplifies whatever data you feed it, good or bad.

Done properly, omnichannel does not make your shop less local. It makes your localness visible to people staring at their phones, which these days is everyone.

We are happy to show you how the integrations work, live. Book a demo at towersystems.com.au/pos-software-free-demo.html or call 1300 662 957 (AU), 0800 444 367 (NZ).

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Advice for retailers: How to work out which part of your shop floor makes the most money

August 4, 2026
4 Min read
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Retail space usually costs between 11% and 15% of revenue, depending on the type of shop. For most retailers that makes it the biggest cost after stock and labour, yet plenty of shops have not looked hard at how that space earns its keep in years.

This is not advice you will get from your accountant, and you will not find it in your profit and loss. It is a practical exercise, done with paper and pen, that gives you a fresh view of your own business. Retailers who do it are almost always surprised by something.

We share this advice today to help local small business retailers look at the space use in their shop from a profit contribution perspective. Retailers we have done this with have made changes that have led to them making more money. It’s all about profitable space usage.

Here is the method we recommend.

  1. Take a blank sheet of paper, ideally A3, and roughly sketch the layout of your shop. Mark in display units, wall shelving, the counter, everywhere you have products.
  2. Include your back room if you hold stock there. That space costs you rent too.
  3. Colour-shade the layout by department.
  4. List the departments down the side of the floor plan.
  5. Estimate the percentage of total space each department uses and write it next to each department on your list. Rough is fine. This does not need to be accurate to two decimal places.
  6. Using your POS software, report on the gross profit dollars earned by each department over the last year. If your system cannot do this directly, calculate it from sales figures using the average gross profit percentage for each department. In our software, this is a standard report.
  7. Work out each department’s percentage of total gross profit and write it next to the space percentage on your floor plan.
  8. Circle the best performers in green and the worst in red. A strong department earns a significantly higher share of gross profit than the share of space it occupies. A weak one occupies more space than its profit contribution justifies.

Now stand back and look at the marked-up plan. Space and profit side by side, department by department. This is your shop as a landlord would see it if every department paid its own rent.

What you do next depends on what the page shows you. The work usually leads to one or more of these actions: moving a department to a better or worse position in the shop, giving a strong department more space, shrinking a weak one, improving a department’s margin through better buying, or working to lift sales in a department whose gross profit dollars are below its potential.

Be careful before shrinking a department solely on these numbers. Some low-margin departments drive traffic that shops the rest of the store. Newsagents know this well. The exercise is not a set of orders, it is information you did not have before, and it is up to you to weigh it against what you know about why customers walk in.

Once you have done the shop, you can go deeper: pick one department and run the same analysis by category within it. That is often where the most actionable findings sit.

Do this once a year, or ahead of any refit. Shops evolve, and space allocation tends to reflect the business you used to run rather than the one you run now. This exercise is one way to keep the floor working for today’s shop.

The gross profit reporting this relies on is standard in our POS software, by department and by category. If you would like to see it with your own shop in mind, book a demo at towersystems.com.au/pos-software-free-demo.html or call 1300 662 957 (AU), 0800 444 367 (NZ).

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Younger retailers are done with 20 page reports. Good.

August 1, 2026
3 Min read
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For years, we measured reporting in our POS software by volume. More reports, more columns, more export options. The unspoken deal was that we would produce the data and you would somehow find the time to read it.

We suspect plenty of those reports were never read. Some of ours included.

The AI analysis now built into our POS software takes a different approach. Run any report, click analyse, and in seconds you get a short plain English summary of what the numbers say and what might be worth doing about it. The stock report that would have taken an hour with a highlighter instead tells you, in a few sentences, that one supplier’s lines have stopped moving and are quietly tying up cash.

Who loves it surprised us

When we started demonstrating this we expected the warmest response from older owners who never liked reports in the first place. Half right. They do like it. The people who love it are gen Y and gen Z retailers and managers.

Makes sense once you think about it. This generation grew up with information arriving insight first. News comes as a three paragraph summary before it comes as an article. A product review is a 60 second video. The detail sits underneath for anyone who wants it, and mostly they only go looking when something has earned their attention.

So an AI summary of a sales report feels normal to them. It behaves the way information is supposed to behave. What feels odd to them is what the rest of us grew up with: 20 pages of tables and the answer buried on page 14.

There is a lazy version of this argument, that young people cannot concentrate any more. We don’t buy it, and the research does not support it either. These same retailers will happily spend two hours deep in the numbers once something has hooked them. What they refuse to do is spend two hours hunting for the thing that deserves the two hours. Fair enough. That hunting was always a job software should have been doing.

The detail has not gone anywhere

The full report still sits under every summary. Drill in whenever you like, and please do. An AI summary you never verify is just a different way of not reading your reports.

What the short format changes is the odds that the data gets used at all. A comprehensive report nobody opens is worth nothing. A three sentence insight read at the counter between customers, and acted on that afternoon, is worth quite a lot.

One retailer told us they now glance at supplier performance weekly, a report they had never once run before, because understanding it takes seconds. That is the pattern we keep hearing. People check their numbers more often, not less, once the effort of understanding them drops.

Want to see it on data like yours? Book an obligation free demo, and bring your most ignored report. In our experience that is where the money is hiding.

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Margin is where small business retailers find money they did not know they had

July 30, 2026
3 Min read
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Ask a struggling retailer about their business and they will usually talk about sales. Ask a thriving one and before long they will talk about margin. That difference matters. You bank margin, not revenue, and in our experience most local retailers have more room to move on margin than they realise.

Here is practical advice we share with retailers, and how the tools in our POS software help act on it.

Start by knowing your actual gross profit, by department and by category. Not what you think it is, what the data says it is. Most retailers who run this report for the first time find surprises: a category they love that earns less than the space it occupies, and a quiet performer subsidising it. Our software reports GP at every level, and the AI report insights will flag more useful data in plain English.

Question habit pricing. Plenty of retail pricing is doubling the cost price because that is what everyone has always done. But customers do not know your cost price. They judge value. On items bought as gifts, or in an emergency, or on impulse, a price a dollar or two higher rarely changes the sale. A one percent improvement in average margin lands straight on your bottom line. Test it on a category and measure, rather than guessing either way.

Stop losing margin at the scale and the counter. If you sell by weight or length, rounding down to the nearest unit gives margin away all day. Our software sells 1.2 kg of birdseed or 0.75 of a metre of fabric exactly, with scale integration, so you are paid for what leaves the shop.

Bundle to protect price. A starter kit or gift pack sold at one package price earns more per sale and is harder for a customer to price-compare item by item online. Bundles are built into our software, and they are one of the most underused margin tools we see.

Get cost prices right, automatically. Margin reporting is only as good as the cost prices behind it, and manually keyed invoices are where cost data goes wrong. The AI invoice import in our software reads almost any supplier PDF and updates stock and cost prices without the typing. Retailers use it to save hours, but the quiet benefit is margin data you can trust.

Deal with dead stock sooner. Stock that has not sold in six months is not an asset, it is money on a shelf losing value. The reports in our software show exactly what is not moving. Quit it, take the small hit, and put the cash into stock that earns. Holding on feels safer and costs more.

Watch shrinkage like it is a supplier. For many shops theft, internal and external, quietly takes one to three percent of turnover, and that loss comes straight out of margin. Accurate scanning and tight inventory records in the software make shrinkage visible, and visible problems get fixed.

None of this requires more customers or longer hours. It requires knowing your numbers and acting on them, which is what POS software should be for. If your current system cannot tell you your margin by category in under a minute, that is worth fixing.

We are happy to show you these reports live, using scenarios from your own shop. Book a demo at towersystems.com.au/pos-software-free-demo.html or call 1300 662 957 (AU), 0800 444 367 (NZ).

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The most important advice we give small business retailers

July 29, 2026
3 Min read
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At a retail forum the other day we were asked what is the most important advice we give small business retailers. Our answer surprised a few people because it was not about marketing or ranging or margin.

The answer is often considered boring. It turns retailers off.

If only they understood the thousands of dollars to be made by listening to our answer.

The most important advice we think local small business retailers need is to focus on data accuracy. Dry, we know. But it is the factor local retailers most often overlook, and when it slips the damage spreads further than almost anything else in the business.

Here is the pattern we see. A retailer puts real hours into ordering stock and getting the shop looking right, and meanwhile half the sales go through the counter keyed into a department instead of scanned. Or the web store is full of products described as “candle lge” that no customer searching for a soy candle in a glass jar will ever find. Nobody set out to be sloppy. It builds up one shortcut at a time.

The costs rarely look like data problems, which is why they go unnoticed. Your reports can only tell you about what was entered, so vague or wrong entries produce reports that mislead with complete confidence. Decisions made on those reports feel informed. They are not.

Theft is the cost people least expect. Loose inventory records mean you cannot see shrinkage. Stock walks out the door and the numbers are too muddy to show where or how much or since when. Retailers who tighten up their data are often shocked at what it reveals within a few months.

There is a newer cost too. The AI tools in good retail software are only as smart as the data underneath them. With clean data they will flag margin shifts and buying opportunities you would have missed. With rubbish data they will confidently summarise rubbish.

The fix is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Decide that every item gets properly described, every sale gets scanned, and stock records get maintained rather than guessed. Train everyone who touches the counter. Then check, because habits drift.

Retailers who do this tell us the same thing: they wish they had done it years earlier. The reports finally mean something, and for the first time they can see their own business clearly.

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What local small business retailers have been telling us lately

July 27, 2026
3 Min read
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Anyone can write nice things about their own software. We do it in our marketing. So, from time to time we like to hand the microphone to the retailers using it, because their words carry more weight than ours.

This feedback arrived in June from Tara and Cody, who run a rural supplies store in Queensland and recently started using the AI invoice import:

“The time savings, 8 hours a week, for our small business have been incredible! While it doesn’t process every single invoice, it handles the majority of them and has made a huge difference to our day-to-day operations.”

Eight hours a week is a full working day back. And they are right that it does not catch every invoice. We would rather people know that going in than be surprised later.

Switching POS software worries plenty of retailers, understandably. Mel at McLaren Vale Garden Centre made the move in May and told us the transition “has been smooth with plenty of training and support when needed”. The Bookshop Pahiatua in New Zealand went further:

“This is the easiest POS system I have ever used, anything I asked of it it can do! Their online help is amazing and so are the team if you can’t resolve the issue thru the chat.”

Then there are the customers who have grown old with us, in the best sense. Kerrilyn Page bought a traditional newsagency in Mount Morgan back in 2006. Her shop, Wattle Bee Next, looks nothing like it did then:

“With the help of the team at Tower Systems we have diversified to a modern non-traditional store. Tower Systems have been integral in this process.”

We see this a lot. A shop starts in one category and, over years, becomes something else entirely. Software should keep up with that. Too often it is the thing holding a shop back.

Reading back through years of this feedback, the help desk comes up more than anything else. Sheryl Muscat wrote that our team “never make us feel like we have wasted their time and they always seem to come up with a solution”. Jeremy Maitland, director of We Know Pets, put it in commercial terms:

“A piece of software is only as good as the backup that is provided and Tower are first rate in this area. Since installing the Retailer software we have exceeded our growth targets.”

For the record, everyone answering our help desk is based in Australia or New Zealand.

Some of our favourite feedback is the shortest. “We love this system” (John, West Side Newsagency, Port Augusta). “Who knew POS software could be this easy” (Rod, Goolwa Time and Jewellery). “The reports are fantastic” (Leanne, Shepherd Avenue Deli, Port Lincoln).

If you are weighing up POS software, feedback like this is useful but it is not the whole picture. Come and ask us your hard questions at a demo. Call 1300 662 957 (AU) or 0800 444 367 (NZ), or email sales@towersystems.com.au.

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POS software support in your language, whatever your language

July 24, 2026
3 Min read
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Small business retailers are loving that they can ask a question about out Tower Systems POS software in their language, and get an answer in that language.

Ask a question in Vietnamese, get the answer in Vietnamese. Ask in Mandarin, Hindi, Greek, Arabic or Korean, and the answer comes back the same way.

Our POS software customer service chatbot understands questions in more than 40 languages and answers in the language of the question. Not vague, generic answers either. Specific detail on how to use the software: which menu, which button, what to do next.

Tower Systems has offered this for several years now, and customers are loving it.

Here is why it matters. Retail in Australia and New Zealand is wonderfully multicultural. Plenty of shop owners and their team members speak English as a second, third or fourth language. They run terrific businesses. But asking a technical support question in English, about software, under pressure, mid-shift, is harder than it should be.

The chatbot removes that barrier. You ask in the language you think in. You get an answer you can act on straight away. No waiting, no translating in your head, no putting the question off because it feels like too much effort.

English documentation has been the default in POS software support forever. That default quietly excludes a lot of capable retailers. Support in 40+ languages, available any hour the question occurs to you, makes professional POS software support genuinely accessible across multicultural Australia and New Zealand.

To be clear, the chatbot does not replace our human help desk. Our people are still here, on the phone and by email, delivering the locally based support Tower Systems is known for. The chatbot sits alongside them, handling the quick how-do-I questions at any hour, in any language, so the humans can spend their time on the questions that need a conversation.

We think this is what good software support looks like now. The technology has caught up with who our customers actually are.

…

The right POS system or website for any retail business depends on the specific needs of the business. Tower offers POS software and websites made specifically for local small business retailers in a selection of retail channels. To see if we might help you…, request a free, no-obligation demo today.  

Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand. Or, email sales@towersystems.com.au. 

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How the end of day process has changed in retail this year

July 23, 2026
4 Min read
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The end of day process in retail used to be entirely physical. Count the cash, enter the details in your POS software, run the report, lock up, go home.

The counting and the keying are still there. What has changed this year is what happens next.

Smart POS software today can give you text commentary on how the day has transpired, rather than leaving you to read a report and work out the story for yourself. The report is still there for those who want it. But the AI analysis provided by the Tower software is ready the moment the day is done, written in plain language, easy to understand.

That matters at 5.30pm when you are tired and the last thing you feel like doing is decoding rows of numbers.

Here an example of what it looks like

This is a real example from a newsagency business for which we had permission to run their data. Staff and product details have been anonymised.

Business Analysis — The following analysis is AI-generated

Key Performance Highlights

  • Total sales for the day amounted to $2,398.35, with a significant variance of -23.97% from the average Thursday sales.
  • The top-selling department was Magazines, with 86 items sold, generating $676.62 in sales.
  • Staff F led in sales volume, contributing to 85 sales transactions and a total sales value of $1,179.71.

Notable Trends in Sales, Staff, and Time of Day

Sales Trends

  • Magazines and Cards & Wrap were the most popular categories, though both experienced a decline compared to average sales.
  • Collectibles showed a significant drop in sales, with a -31.12% variance.

Staff Performance

  • Staff B achieved higher total sales ($1,218.54) compared to Staff F, despite fewer transactions.
  • Both staff members did not attract any new customers during the day.

Time of Day

  • The peak sales hour was 11:00 AM, with $550.99 in sales.
  • Sales significantly dropped after 3:00 PM, with the lowest sales recorded at 5:00 PM ($29.27).

Operational Issues

  • Discounting was applied to 3 sales, totaling $25.91 in discounts.
  • Cash variance was noted, with an actual cash shortfall of $112.90.

Online vs In-Store Sales Commentary

  • All sales were conducted in-store, with no online sales recorded for the day.
  • 63 vouchers were issued, but none were redeemed, indicating a potential area for improvement in voucher utilization.

Recommendations for Management Action

  • Investigate the reasons behind the significant sales variance in Collectibles and Magazines to address potential issues.
  • Enhance staff training to improve customer engagement and attract new customers.
  • Review cash handling procedures to minimize cash variances.
  • Develop strategies to increase voucher redemption rates.

Weather-Related Impact on Trade

  • The overcast and rainy weather may have contributed to lower foot traffic and sales, particularly in the afternoon.

Summary and Highlights

  • Sales were below average, with a -23.97% variance from typical Thursday sales.
  • Magazines and Cards & Wrap were the top-selling categories, despite a decline in sales.
  • Staff performance was strong, but no new customers were acquired.
  • Cash handling discrepancies need to be addressed to prevent future variances.
  • Weather conditions likely impacted customer turnout, especially later in the day.

Audit Analysis — The following analysis is AI-generated

Excessive Cancellations

  • At 08:51, a sale was cancelled on terminal POS1 by a staff member. The amount involved was $12.80.

Stock Quantity Adjustments

  • Five stock items had their quantity on hand changed to zero on terminal POS2 within a ten minute window, including one item adjusted from 446 to 0.

Discounts Below Cost Price

  • Two sales on terminal POS1 contained items discounted below cost price, totalling $57.49.

Why this matters

Look at what the commentary surfaced without anyone asking. A cash shortfall of $112.90. Sixty-three vouchers issued and none redeemed. Stock quantities zeroed out in a tight window on one terminal. Items sold below cost.

Any one of those could sit unnoticed in a traditional report for weeks. Here, they are called out in plain language on the day they happen, with recommendations attached.

The commentary reaches beyond traditional reporting. It does not just tell you what you sold. It tells you where the day was won, where it leaked, and what deserves your attention tomorrow morning. These are insights retailers can leverage for profit, and they arrive without you having to go looking for them.

Reports tell you what happened. Commentary tells you what to notice. That is the shift this year, and we think it changes the end of day from a chore into a moment of genuine business insight.

If your end of day still finishes with a report you rarely read, it might be time to look at what smarter software can do.

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The Real Cost of POS Software in Australia (2026): What You’ll Actually Pay

July 21, 2026
4 Min read
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The advertised monthly price on POS software is rarely the whole story. Two systems can look identical on a comparison table and end up hundreds of dollars a month apart once everything is added up. Here is what to check before you sign, including the costs providers tend not to volunteer.

The headline price is only the start

Most POS software is sold as a monthly subscription. For specialty and independent retail in Australia, ongoing fees usually land somewhere between $40 and $300 a month depending on what is included. That is a wide range, and the gap between two quotes usually hides in the fees underneath the headline number.

The costs that are easy to miss

Start with how the licence is counted. Some systems charge per register, per device or per staff login. Run two counters and a back-office computer and a “low” monthly fee can quietly double. Ask whether the price covers every computer at your location.

Then there is card processing, and this is the big one. Many providers bundle payments and take a cut of every sale, typically 1.1 to 1.9 per cent. On $40,000 a month in card sales, 1.5 per cent is $600 a month. That is more than most retailers pay for the software itself. Check whether you must use the provider’s payments platform, or whether you can shop around with your own bank and keep that margin.

Some platforms also charge a separate fee on each transaction just for using the software. Your bill climbs as your sales do, which is a strange thing to pay for.

Support deserves a close look. Cheap software often means expensive help. Check whether phone and email support is included, what hours it runs and whether the team is local. You find out what support is really worth on the day the system goes down.

Ask what it costs to go live, too. Moving your stock file, customer records and sales history into a new system takes real work. Some providers include setup and training. Others charge thousands for it.

The same goes for integrations. Accounting links, e-commerce sync, supplier ordering and loyalty tools are sometimes included and sometimes sold as add-on modules. A cheap-looking system gets expensive once you switch on the features you actually need.

Lock-in is a cost too

A 24 or 36 month contract puts the risk on you if the software turns out to be a poor fit. Month-to-month terms cost nothing to leave. A provider willing to offer them clearly expects the product to keep you there on its own.

Questions to put to every provider

  • Does the price cover every computer at my location, or is it per terminal or per user?
  • Do you charge a fee on each transaction?
  • Must I use your payments platform, or can I choose my own?
  • Is phone and email support included, and where is your team based?
  • What is the one-off cost to migrate my data, set up and train my staff?
  • Which integrations are included, and which cost extra?
  • Is there a lock-in contract?
  • Who owns my data if I leave?

Cheapest is not the same as best value

The lowest monthly fee often carries the highest total cost once payment margins, add-ons and support charges are counted in. The better question is not “what is the monthly price?” but “what will this cost me over a full year, the way my business actually runs?” A system built for your retail category, with local support and no lock-in, will usually cost less to own even when its sticker price is not the smallest on the list.

Work out the all-in annual cost before you decide. Compare that, not the pricing page.

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POS software pricing should not be a secret

July 20, 2026
2 Min read
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If you have shopped around for POS software lately, you know the drill. You find a website, you like what you see, you go looking for the price and there isn’t one. There is a form instead. They want your contact details before they will tell you what their software costs. Then the calls start.

We don’t do that here at Tower Systems. Our prices are on our website, in full, at towersystems.com.au/pricing.html.

No fuss. We don’t need to know who you are. The pricing is there for anyone to see.

Our Startup plan is $145 a month including GST. Our Ultimate plan is $298 a month including GST, billed annually. The other plans sit between. The page also shows the things a headline price can hide. We charge 0% transaction fees on EFTPOS. We don’t charge based on your turnover. Optional extras like cloud hosting and our Roam cloud POS have their costs listed too. Anyone can look, any time. No salesperson required.

Why hidden pricing is a problem

When a software company hides its pricing, it has decided the sales process matters more than your time. It wants to qualify you as a lead before you have information. In some cases it wants room to quote different prices to different businesses for the same product.

Think about a retailer doing research after close on a Tuesday night, which is when this research usually happens. Hidden pricing turns a ten minute job into a week of phone tag.

It should feel odd to any retailer. Every product on your shop floor carries a price ticket. Customers can see it, compare it and decide whether to buy. The companies selling software to retailers should extend the same courtesy.

Sunshine is good for everyone

Publishing our prices keeps us honest. They have to stand up to public comparison every day of the year. Every customer knows they paid the same as the next. And when retailers call us, they already know what we charge, so we can spend the call talking about their business.

We would like to see every POS software company serving local small business retailers do the same. If your pricing is fair, showing it costs you nothing. If it is not, retailers deserve to know that before they hand over a phone number.

Our prices are on our website today. We think that is where they belong.

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Newsagents made us the industry standard, not the other way around

July 17, 2026
3 Min read
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More newsagents have chosen Tower Systems than any other POS software. We didn’t set that label ourselves. Newsagents did, one shop at a time, by choosing us over everything else on offer.

We don’t take that lightly, and we don’t think it happened by accident.

We know the shop floor because we’ve stood on it

We’re the only POS company in this space that has owned and run its own newsagencies. Our founder bought their first shop in 1996 and built our software off the back of what that business actually needed, not what looked good in a sales pitch. That’s still true of every update we ship, even though our company today does not own a newsagency.

Newsagencies aren’t standing still, and neither is the software

The traditional core of a newsagency, magazines, papers, lottery, is a smaller part of the business than it used to be, and it keeps shrinking. The newsagents doing well are the ones shifting shelf space and attention toward gifts, cards, stationery and collectables. Software built for a magazine-and-lottery counter doesn’t help with that shift. Software built by people who’ve made that shift themselves does.

That’s where features like our loyalty tools earn their keep. You can market to a customer based on what they’ve bought, which means turning a regular lottery shopper into someone who browses the gift wall, or a magazine reader into someone who tries the stationery range. That’s not a feature for its own sake. It’s the whole point of the software.

The parts that just need to work, working

A newsagency runs on integrations most other retail software doesn’t bother with. We link directly to The Lott through XchangeIT, so lottery sales are captured without manual entry. Magazine arrivals and returns run through XchangeIT too, so your stock and your credits stay accurate without someone doing it by hand. Greeting card suppliers load in as electronic invoices in seconds instead of an afternoon of data entry.

Beyond the newsagency-specific stuff, the software connects to Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce if you sell online, to Xero for your books, and to EFTPOS with every major bank. If you pass on card fees, the system calculates the surcharge for you. We don’t charge a fee per transaction, ever.

AI tools built into the day-to-day

The AI tools built into the software write product descriptions for new gift lines, help you compare prices, and turn a stack of sales data into something you can act on, which categories are growing, which need attention, without you having to dig for it.

None of this makes us the biggest software company. It makes us the one most newsagents chose. If you want to see why, we’re happy to show you.

Book a free demo, or call 1300 662 957 in Australia and 0800 444 367 in New Zealand.

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Getting the most out of a call to our POS software help desk

July 16, 2026
2 Min read
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Our help desk is human, and it’s local: people in Australia and New Zealand, not an offshore call centre reading from a script. That matters because retail is personal, and so is fixing it when something goes wrong.

But even a good help desk can only work as fast as the conversation allows. A lot of what determines how quickly a problem gets solved isn’t the technician, it’s how the call itself goes.

Retail interrupts everything, including the fix

Support calls usually happen while the shop is open, which means a customer at the counter, and the customer always comes first. Fair enough. But every time a call gets put down mid-troubleshooting, the technician loses the thread. Getting back to where you were takes longer than the interruption itself did. A five-minute pause can turn a ten-minute call into thirty.

Nobody’s fault. It’s just what happens when technical support runs into a trading floor.

What actually speeds things up

A few habits make a real difference to how fast a fix comes through:

  • Start with email where you can. It’s often faster than a phone call, not slower.
  • Include a screenshot and a proper description in that email. No pressure of a live call, so you can properly explain what’s happening.
  • With the details in hand, our help desk can sometimes solve it before anyone picks up the phone.
  • If you do need to call, try to call when you can give it your full attention.
  • If the shop gets busy mid-call, say so. Offering to call back later is usually faster than trying to push through.

Just tell us

If you’re short-staffed and it’s not a good time, say that. It costs nothing, it lets us manage the queue properly, and when you do call back, you get someone’s full attention instead of a rushed half-conversation.

None of this is about making things easier for us at your expense. A call that isn’t interrupted gets solved faster. That means less time away from your counter. Everybody’s better off.

That’s the kind of help desk we’re trying to run: local, human, and worth your time.

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What actually goes into a Tower Systems software update

July 15, 2026
3 Min read
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We’re deep into building our next update right now, which seemed like a good reason to explain what that actually involves. It isn’t someone sitting down and writing new code for a few days. It’s a process, and most of it happens before a line of code changes.

We start with what customers tell us

Every update begins with a review: ideas submitted through Software Ideas, feedback from customers directly, and what our own support team hears on the phones every day. We look at what’s urgent and what will genuinely benefit customers, not just what’s easiest to build.

This step takes longer than people expect. We test what we’re told against the software itself before we act on it, because a suggestion that sounds right in a phone call doesn’t always hold up once you’re inside the actual system. Thoroughness costs time here, and we spend it.

Planning it properly

Once we know what we’re building, we scope it: what the change actually involves, and what else in the software it touches. A newsagency’s software talks to a lot of different parts of itself, magazines, lottery, gifts, loyalty, so a change in one place can affect something you weren’t expecting elsewhere. Understanding that before we start building saves everyone trouble later.

Building it, then testing it, and testing it again

This is the part most people picture when they think of software development, and it’s the smallest piece of the whole process, by far. After the build comes testing. Then more testing. Then testing again. It’s repetitive by design.

We document it before we release it

Once the change is solid, we write it up properly, so it can be explained clearly to customers rather than dropped into an update with no context. Good software isn’t just software that works. It’s software people understand how to use.

Beta testing, in real shops

Before anything goes to every customer, it goes to a small group of engaged customers in live, trading shops. Real stock, real customers, real Saturdays. That’s a different test than anything we can run in-house, and it catches things our own testing sometimes doesn’t.

Only then do we release it

All of that has to happen before an update reaches your till. It’s slower than just shipping code, but it’s why updates tend to work the way they’re supposed to when they land.

We’re in the middle of this right now, building the next one. It’s the same process every time, because it’s the one that works.

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POS software pricing explained: What’s included in each level of Tower Systems POS software

July 6, 2026
5 Min read
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Tower Systems comes in four levels: Startup, Standard, Advanced and Ultimate. Each one builds on the level below it, so you are never paying for a stripped-back version of the software — you are paying for the full system at that level, with every feature that level includes.

This post walks through what each level does, who it suits, and what changes as you move up.

What every level includes

Before getting into the differences, it helps to know what stays constant across all four levels.

Every Tower Systems plan includes unlimited products, unlimited customers and unlimited turnover. There are no per-transaction fees on EFTPOS sales, and no charge based on how much you sell. The software connects to the major banks and payment terminals — CBA, ANZ, Westpac, Suncorp, St George and Zeller via Linkly, plus Tyro, Shift4 and others directly.

Every level also includes 24/7 support from real people based in Australia and New Zealand, a dedicated onboarding specialist, one-on-one training and free e-learning. There are regular group training sessions open to all customers, and a suggestion portal where you can propose software improvements and vote on the ideas of others.

One thing worth mentioning: there is no lock-in contract. Tower Systems runs month to month. You can start, cancel or change your plan on 30 days’ notice.

The software is purpose-built for specialty retail — newsagencies, gift shops, garden centres, jewellers, bike shops, produce stores — rather than a general POS product adapted for retail. That distinction matters in areas like stock management, loyalty and specialist sales functions.

Startup — for new and smaller businesses

Startup is the entry-level plan, designed for new businesses and smaller shops running one or two counters. It includes the full core point of sale system: integrated EFTPOS, layby management, gift cards and vouchers, customer invoice accounts, catalogue and promotions, scale integration, specialist label printing and customer displays.

On the stock side, Startup includes advanced stock management with images, extended descriptions and bulk price changes, along with automated reordering, customer special orders, barcode lookup (over a billion records), stocktaking and manufactured goods or hampers.

Loyalty is included too — discount vouchers, trade pricing, pricing profiles, loyalty points, targeted marketing, VIP pricing, customer segmentation and purchase reminders.

Reporting covers more than 80 business performance reports, plus the Insights dashboard, which runs automatically and surfaces dead stock, lost-sale stockouts, basket analysis, theft detection and staffing patterns without you needing to generate reports manually.

Accounting connections include Xero (free direct integration) and MYOB, Reckon and others via ABCIS Ezylink. Deputy and Tanda integrations for rostering are also included.

The main limitations at Startup: it is capped at two terminals, and it does not include e-commerce integrations, stock item variations, stock reservations, quotes, recurring billing, AI tools, serial number tracking, kits or repairs management. Those features come in at Standard and above.

Standard — the complete core retail system

Standard is the plan most general retailers land on. It adds three things to Startup: unlimited terminals, e-commerce integrations and stock variations and reservations.

Unlimited terminals means you can add counters as your business grows without a plan change. E-commerce integrations connect Tower Systems to Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento and WooCommerce — your in-store stock and your online store stay in sync. Stock item variations let you track and sell products by colour, size, style or any other attribute. Stock reservations let you hold items against a proforma invoice so they cannot be sold while a customer order is pending.

Everything in Startup is included. Standard is the right choice for gift shops, garden centres, toy stores and homewares retailers who want the full system with no per-sale fees and no terminal limits.

Advanced — for retailers that quote, repair or sell serialised goods

Advanced adds AI tools and a set of features for businesses with more complex sales processes — jewellers, bike shops, electronics stores and similar retailers.

The AI tools let you post blog content, import supplier invoices from PDF, get price suggestions, generate product descriptions and summarise reporting data. ChatGPT integration supports document handling and task automation.

Beyond AI, Advanced adds quotes and proforma invoices (with the ability to reserve or order stock from a quote), recurring billing for subscriptions or services, tax and duty-free sales tracking (including flight numbers for customs), serial number management from arrival to sale, kits for bundle selling, and a full repairs and job management module.

Repairs management covers the full workflow: logging the job, communicating with the customer, allocating parts, tracking history and storing images. It is designed for bike shops, watch repairs, electronics servicing and similar counter-based repair work.

Ultimate — for newsagencies and delivery-based retailers

Ultimate includes everything in Advanced and adds tools for channels with specific operational needs: newsagencies, produce businesses and rural retailers managing freight and deliveries.

Newsagency tools cover phone recharge, lottery terminal integration, XchangeIT automation and home delivery management. Freight invoice management lets you split delivery costs across supplier invoices and adjust pricing accordingly — useful for produce and rural retail where freight is a significant variable. Dispatch management tracks delivery resources and runs, produces driver run lists and pick slips, and integrates with Allotrac. Valuations are also included, for jewellers tracking item valuations.

Choosing the right level

The level you need depends on your business type and the features you actually use.

Startup works for new or smaller businesses running up to two terminals that do not need e-commerce or stock variations. Standard is the practical choice for most established retailers — it covers the full system with no limits on terminals or turnover. Advanced makes sense if you quote, repair, sell serialised goods or want AI tools built into your workflow. Ultimate is built for newsagencies and businesses managing freight, dispatch or home delivery.

For current pricing and to see a full feature comparison, visit towersystems.com.au/pricing.

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Advice for retailers: The numbers that warn you before the bank balance does

July 3, 2026
4 Min read
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By the time the bank balance looks wrong, the trouble started weeks back. Money in the account is a lagging number. It tells you what already happened, not what’s about to. Run a shop on the bank balance alone and you’re forever finding out too late to do much.

The early warnings live in the trade, not the account. They turn up small, and they turn up first, if you know where to look.

We have been asked for help by many small business retailers where this is the case. We’;re not accountants or business consultants but day to day we do get into discussions with retailers and we help where we can, drawing on our experience in retail from years back and the support we offer today with our POS software.

One is basket size easing off. People still coming in, still buying, just spending a bit less each time. The day’s total holds for a while because the traffic covers it, right up until it doesn’t. Spot the slip while it’s small and you’ve got room to move.

Another creeps in through how often people come back. A regular who was in twice a week is now in once. Weekly becomes fortnightly. No single customer tells you anything, and that’s the trap, because the ones drifting off are the ones you stop noticing. Put them all together and it’s a trend you needed to see a month ago.

Then a category goes quiet while the busy parts of the shop cover for it. The overall figure looks fine. Underneath, something you lean on is fading, and you won’t feel it in the takings until it’s well down the track.

The catch is that finding any of this means running reports, lining up one period against another, and knowing what you’re hunting for in the first place. Most retailers haven’t got the time. Plenty were never shown how. So the warnings just sit in the data until they finally show up as a number too big to miss.

That’s the gap the Insights Dashboard closes.

It’s a business intelligence dashboard, free to every Tower Systems customer. It uses smart AI tools and a good deal of built-in retail know-how to watch your trade as it happens and tell you what’s worth knowing, the good and the bad. You don’t run a report. You don’t go digging. The insights are curated as the day goes on, kept fresh, and sitting there when you look.

So the slipping basket, the lengthening gaps between visits, the category drifting off the boil, it all surfaces on its own, while there’s still time to act. You get to spend your attention on the decision instead of the digging.

For a small shop that’s what business intelligence ought to be. Not one more report to find an hour for. Something keeping watch on the trade and tapping you on the shoulder while the warning is still early enough to use.

The retailers who get ahead aren’t drowning in data. They just catch the right thing at the right time. The Insights Dashboard puts that in reach of any retailer, free, and built into the software you’re already running.

…

The right POS system or website for any retail business depends on the specific needs of the business. Tower offers POS software and websites made specifically for local small business retailers in a selection of retail channels. To see if we might help you…, request a free, no-obligation demo today.  

Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand. Or, email sales@towersystems.com.au. 

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Advice for local retailers: What the chains get wrong, and how you turn it into an advantage

July 2, 2026
3 Min read
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The big chains are good at what they do. Buying power, slick fit-outs, ad budgets you’ll never touch. It’s easy to look at all that and feel like the small shop is on the back foot.

You’re not. The things that make a chain efficient are the same things that make it slow. Most of their weaknesses you can use.

Our customers here at Tower Systems are local small business retailers, independent retailers. This issue of big versus small is on our minds because we see too many small business retailers get in their heads about big competitors.

A chain runs on uniformity. Every store the same, every price set by head office, every range decided by someone who has never set foot in your suburb. That’s how you keep a thousand stores consistent. It also means the manager on the floor can’t change a price, can’t bring in a line a local keeps asking for, can’t back a hunch. They send it up and they wait. Usually the answer is no, or it comes too late to matter.

Small business retailers are not bound by the inflexibility of the chains and heavy structure. You can decide something at nine and have it live by ten.

That’s the advantage, and it’s where the right software earns its keep. Flexibility is only worth anything if you can act on it before the moment passes, and that’s the part plenty of small retailers leave sitting on the table.

Pricing is the obvious one. A chain sets a price nationally and leaves it there for months. You can put a special on the slow stock this afternoon, match a price for the shopper standing in front of you, or build a bundle that suits your local trade. Our POS software lets you set that up in a few minutes. The chain physically cannot move that fast, no matter how big it is.

Range is the same story. A chain ranges for the average store in the average suburb, which doesn’t exist. You range for the actual street you’re on. When a local asks for something three times in a week, you bring it in, watch how it sells, and decide whether it earns its place. The numbers are right there in the software. No committee. No national rollout. Just you reading your own shop.

Then there’s the customer. A chain has a loyalty number and a postcode. You know Margaret buys the same card every month for her grandkids and would want a heads-up when the new range lands. Our software remembers what people buy, so you can do something with it. That’s a sale the chain can’t see, from a relationship you already have.

Loyalty is another. You could decide right now to implement our most popular loyalty facility (it’s available free in our software) and you could be live in 5 minutes. Bam!

None of this is about beating the chains at their own game. You won’t, and you don’t need to. Play the game they can’t play instead. They’re built to be the same everywhere. You’re built to be right for one place, and good local software is what lets you move as fast as being small allows.

That’s what local POS software for local retailers actually means. Not a longer feature list. The freedom to back yourself, and the speed to act before the chance is gone.

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POS software advice: It’s EOFY. A few things worth doing today.

June 30, 2026
2 Min read
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End of financial year is here. It always seems to sneak up, and then it’s a scramble. An hour today saves you a fortnight of it later.

First up though, take a moment, breathe. You made it through another financial year!

Run your stock listing. You want an accurate, properly valued picture of what’s on the shelves as at today. Your accountant will want it too, and pulling it together now is far easier than reconstructing it in August. If you’ve got time for a stocktake, even across just your bigger categories, do it.

Take a special backup. Capture your year-end position and keep that one separate from your daily backups. Our latest software does this for you, so if you’re on it, that box is ticked. Still worth a glance to confirm it ran.

Then there’s dead stock. Today is a good day to be honest about what isn’t selling. Stock that’s sat untouched for months isn’t an asset, it’s a shelf you’re paying for. Mark it down, bundle it, run a clearance, or send it back if your supplier takes returns. Shifting it helps your closing figure and gives you cash and room for the new year. Your POS reporting will tell you exactly what’s been dragging.

While you’re at it: reconcile your supplier accounts, chase up any laybys and outstanding customer accounts, and have a look at your best and worst sellers for the year so it feeds your buying. Tidy your loyalty data too. And if you can still get your accountant on the phone today, take the call now rather than after the books close.

One note. We are not accountants. Treat the tax side of this as a reason to ring yours, not advice from me.

Do the basics today and 1 July starts clean.

…

The right POS system or website for any retail business depends on the specific needs of the business. Tower offers POS software and websites made specifically for local small business retailers in a selection of retail channels. To see if we might help you…, request a free, no-obligation demo today.  

Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand. Or, email sales@towersystems.com.au. 

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Free POS software training from Tower Systems. Still free, still regular.

June 29, 2026
2 Min read
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Most POS software companies sell you the software and leave you to work it out. Tower Systems doesn’t. We run free training for our customers, on a regular schedule, and we have done for years.

Training long after you have started using POS software is valuable. We know and this is why we continue to offer free training to our customers.

This isn’t a one-off or a sweetener to close a sale. It’s an ongoing part of being a Tower Systems customer. Sessions run often enough that you can pick the topic you need, when you need it, rather than waiting for an annual roadshow.

The part people value most is the Q&A. You’re not watching a recording. There’s a real person running the session, and you can ask your own question about your own shop and get an answer on the spot. That’s rare. A lot of companies charge for it, or don’t offer it at all.

The training suits everyone. New staff finding their feet on the counter. Owners who want to use a part of the software they’ve never touched. People who’ve used Tower for years and want to sharpen up on the features added since they last looked.

Here’s what’s coming up.

  • Getting more from your sales reporting
  • Stock control that actually saves you money
  • Running a stocktake without closing the doors
  • Managing repairs and the jobs that come with them
  • Tracking the KPIs that tell you how the shop is really going
  • Loyalty and customer marketing built into your POS
  • New features you may have missed in recent updates

Topics rotate, so if the one you want isn’t listed this round, it’ll come around again. You can also tell us what you’d like covered. A lot of our sessions started life as a customer request.

It costs you nothing. It’s there because retailers who understand their software run better businesses, and that’s good for everyone. The shops that get the most out of Tower are almost always the ones that turn up to a session or two a year.

Click here to see the full list of sessions.

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Saturday trading is its own thing

June 27, 2026
2 Min read
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Saturday is not a weekday. Anyone who has worked a counter knows that. The flow is different, the basket is different, and people ask for different things.

Most shops are open today. Yours probably is. Trouble is, being open all day doesn’t tell you much about how the day actually traded and how it compared to other Saturdays.

Here’s a fair question. Can your POS software show you how today stacks up against your recent Saturdays? Not the last few days. The last few Saturdays, because Saturdays are different.

A Tuesday won’t tell you anything useful about a Saturday. The two days don’t trade the same way, so comparing them is a waste of time. Put a Saturday up against other Saturdays and you can see what’s really going on.

Tower Systems POS software does exactly that. It compares a single day of the week against itself over time. Line up today against your recent Saturdays in a few clicks and you’ll spot things. Maybe the morning carries the day and the afternoon drops off. Maybe a category sells on a Saturday that barely moves midweek. Those are the openings you miss when every day blurs into one number.

It’s this type of granular insight that can show you opportunities into which you can lean. We created the single day performance comparison because retailers had the need. This was back when Saturdays were completely different to the weekday for certain types of retailers.

It’s specialist insights like this that can really matter in local small business retail. They are insights that generic software tend to not cover because, well, they are generic after all.

One more thing about today. Our help desk is open. Real people, working this Saturday, ready to help retailers who are trading right now. Local support for local retailers. Some software companies don’t bother on a weekend. We do.

So, having said all that and rambled a bit, have a good Saturday. Trade well. Make it could. And, leverage your data for today and see how it compared to other Saturdays.

We’re working too. Give us a call.

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