How to choose a POS for a restaurant in Iceland

Most owners choose a POS only a few times in their working life, and the choice stays with them for years. The demo usually shows a quiet room and a short menu. The evening that really tests a POS is a full Friday night, with a long menu, a busy bar and a guest who wants to split the bill four ways. The best way to choose is to test each system against that evening.

This guide is what we would tell a friend who is about to open a restaurant in Iceland.

Start with your own busiest evening

Before you talk to any seller, write down how your restaurant works on its busiest evening. How many people take orders, and where do they stand? Does the kitchen get a paper ticket, a screen or both? Do you sell takeaway, run a bar tab or take orders at the table on a phone? Do guests often split the bill?

Then bring your real menu to the demo. Ask the seller to set up five of your own dishes before the meeting, including one with choices such as sides or cooking temperature. Add one item at 24 % VAT, for example a T-shirt or a bag of coffee beans to take home. A demo with your own menu shows you much more than a demo with the seller’s sample café.

While the menu is on the screen, ask how the POS shows allergens to the server. If you plan to take orders online or by QR code, ask how guests see the allergens before they pay. Our article on allergens on the menu explains the rules.

The rules your POS must follow

Under the Icelandic rules, each sale is recorded at the moment it happens, with sales at each VAT rate kept apart. The guest gets a receipt with every sale. At the end of the day, the POS gives a daily sales report (the Z report) and a grand total of all sales since the start.¹

Food and drink, alcohol included, has 11 % VAT. Most other goods have 24 %.² A good POS handles both on the same check, including when you give a discount on the whole bill.

Our article on what a POS must do under Icelandic rules goes through each requirement and ends with questions for the seller. Ask every seller those questions, and ask for written answers.

Card payments are a separate agreement

The card terminal and the POS are often two different products. The card acquirer (færsluhirðir) takes a fee on each card payment and often charges a monthly rent for the terminal. Some POS systems work with only one acquirer, and then you take that acquirer’s prices as part of the POS.

Ask which acquirers the POS works with, and whether you can change acquirer later without changing POS. Then compare the card offers on their own. Our article on card fees explains what makes up the fee and how to compare offers line by line.

When the internet connection drops

Ask each seller what keeps working without internet: taking orders, sending them to the kitchen, printing receipts and taking card payments. The answers differ a lot between systems. Card payments also depend on the terminal and the acquirer, because the terminal must reach the acquirer to approve a card.

The simplest test is in the demo. Ask the seller to unplug the internet cable from the router, then take an order, send it to the kitchen and pay. Our article on what to do when the internet goes down has a short plan for an outage.

The end of the day and your accounting

At the end of each day, someone moves the day’s sales into the accounting system. With a good link, the POS sends the day’s sales to the accounting system for you, split by VAT rate and payment type. Common accounting systems in Iceland include dk, Regla and Payday.

Ask the seller which accounting systems the POS connects to. Then ask to see one real day of sales as it arrives in your accounting system, not as a slide. Ask also how the POS handles a company that wants an invoice on its kennitala. Show the answer to your accountant, who will do the work with it every month.

Your data when you leave

Your menu, prices and sales history belong to your business. The Bookkeeping Act says that you keep your accounting records for seven years. If you change the equipment that you need to read them, you move the records to a new medium so that you can still read them.³

Ask each seller how you export your sales history and your menu, and in which format. A plain format such as CSV is the easiest to open in another system. Ask for a sample, for example one month of sales, and open it yourself. A menu export also saves you many hours when you set up your next system.

The contract, the price and the people

Read the contract carefully, at your own pace. These terms matter most:

• The binding period and the notice period.
• How and how often the price can go up.
• Whether the price is per venue, per device or per user, and what a second terminal costs.
• Any start-up, installation, training or exit fees.
• Whether you buy or rent the hardware, and whether it is ordinary hardware that you can buy in a shop.

Ask for a written price for your venue for the first year and for the third year. Then think about support. Restaurants are busiest in the evenings and at weekends, so the seller’s support must be open at those times too. Ask when the phone is staffed, and whether you can reach a person who speaks Icelandic. Before you sign, call the support line one evening and see who answers.

The most useful conversation is often with another restaurant that uses the system. Ask the seller for two customers with a venue like yours, and call them.

Five questions for every seller

1. Can you set up five of my own dishes for the demo, including one at 24 % VAT?
2. What works without internet, and can we test it in the demo?
3. Which card acquirers does the POS work with, and can I change acquirer later?
4. Can you show me one day of sales in my accounting system?
5. How do I export my sales history and menu if I leave?

Send the same questions to every seller, so that you can put the answers side by side.

We make Resto, so we are not a neutral judge. If you want to compare, book a demo with us and ask us the same questions.