What to use ?

+1

The reason that the ROM-based tills are still build actively developed and produced by the big players is because they are solid, reliable and trustworthy.

If you're planning on using a single unit then there is nothing that can go wrong, short of a hardware failure (power problems can be overcome by a UPS if you need to.

You make some very good points and I appreciate your feedback.

I guess I am just trying to avoid costs, but this might be a bad thing long term...

The great thing about the cloud systems are that you can try without any outlay, I have a fear of paying hundreds out and getting stuck with something that might not be right.

I have decided to give one a go, its free for my size of business and they offer advice for a redundant broadband setup that uses 3g.. which was one of the points raised.

Of course I could be back in a few weeks asking which hardware based system to buy, we shall see.

I really do appreciate the advice, even though I seem to have not taken it at this point

I will report back on how I get on in case anyone is interested.

Just thought that I would update you on my progress.

So far the worst part is populating the EPOS system, does anyone have any ideas on the best way to do this ?

I am just scanning for those that have bar codes and creating a bar code for those that don't.

Can I import stock into a ROM based system, upload a .CSV or something like that ?

You can tell that I am yet to be 100% convinced with cloud based epos

Most back office software for rom based machines will let you import/export csv files.
When programming a Sharp machine, I build up everything I need as csv files then import them into a program called ecrmanager to get them ready. This also applies to Sharp windows based machines too.
The 'cloud' based system I was asked to look at was not particularly well thought out and still had a lot of development ongoing. By far the worst problem was stock control. There was no way to freeze the stock levels when doing a stocktake. Which means if you want an accurate stocktake, you couldn't trade until it was finished.

Most back office software for rom based machines will let you import/export csv files.
When programming a Sharp machine, I build up everything I need as csv files then import them into a program called ecrmanager to get them ready. This also applies to Sharp windows based machines too.
The 'cloud' based system I was asked to look at was not particularly well thought out and still had a lot of development ongoing. By far the worst problem was stock control. There was no way to freeze the stock levels when doing a stocktake. Which means if you want an accurate stocktake, you couldn't trade until it was finished.

Thanks for the information, which Cloud offering did you look at ?