Every business needs to track its sales and manage its expenses. It is to ensure that the business’s growth, health, and ability to pay bills are helping all stakeholders in the right way. Two major financial management programs are Point-of-Sale (POS) systems and accounting programs.
A POS system is used at a retail store or in a restaurant and tracks quantities of products sold and pieces of merchandise. An accounting program keeps track of information related to bank accounts such as deposits, withdrawals, interest earned or paid, and loans made.
Let’s explore the difference between the POS system and accounting software with a clear-cut view.
What is the POS system?
The POS is the Point of Sales. It is the place where your business sales happen. A POS system will let the businessers receive the payments from the customers and track all the business sales. Their setup is based on the businessers requirement. It can be either an online store or be a physical store or even both.
The Point of Sale (POS) system is used for the store’s cash registers. In the current scenario, the POS system is the complete package of the digital process. You can analyze your customer and traffic even if you are not in the workplace. Just you need the right POS system app, with the device and an internet connection.
What is accounting software?
Accounting software is the software where you can manage all your business accounting and bookkeeping in a single app or software. You can store & access all your business accounting, financial data, and all transactions with the accounting application.
With the accounting software, you can manage accounts payable, account receivable, invoicing, billing, estimation, balance sheet, trial balance, miscellaneous transactions, financial reporting, payroll, bookkeeping, and all the stuff you have on accounting and bookkeeping.
Difference between POS system & accounting software | POS Vs. accounting software
The dissimilarity between the POS system software and the business management software like accounting software is that both have some common features, and are shared in a different kind of business marketplace as per the requirement.
POS System
In general, the Point of Sales POS system will most and best suit B2C companies. With the POS system companies and shops can manage the walk-in customers effectively who visit the location. They operate on mortar stores, physical retail brick and primarily sell goods straight to the shoppers.
The above point does not mean that POS systems are only used by B2C, and not used by B2B. Because there are B2B businessers who use the POS system. Wholesale distribution companies who have to operate with the cash amount and harbor the location will utilize the POS system for their business.
In the POS system, the inventory management will be more at an advanced level with barcode features. Rather than a few POS software, most POS systems cannot have the reports and utilities to file the GST. But with the help of accounting software, the assets are very much used for the GST filing process.
The big difference is that if your business mainly markets to other businesses, and has narrow walk-in sales corresponding to your different sales channels, you’re more suitable in finding an alternative answer to just POS software.
Accounting Software
Accounting software is another business management solution. It holds some similar ERP software features. As we discussed before, with the accounting software, you get a clear-cut and real-time report of all your business management. Some are cash flow, accounts payable, accounts receivable, TDS payment, profit, and loss, financial business forecasting, and more, which focus more on the cash and makes it easy for the GST filing process.
One of the major differences between the POS system and the accounting software is that more than saying inventory is advanced, we say accounting software as efficient inventory management, which focuses more on products and their tax in most of the software. Expense management is not possible with the POS system, but it is done effectively and efficiently using accounting software.
Benefits of POS & accounting system integrated
When you integrate the POS system with the accounting software, here is the list of benefits.
Power of vendor and customer information
When you integrate the accounting software with the POS system, you get the real-time data of customer management with the history, their cash flow status, profit, and loss, with the purchase history, which help you and your staff member to analyze more.
Saves your business time
With separate software, either POS system or accounting software, the efficiency is low. It is because there is some necessity to access the POS system by accounting software to pull more of your information. When this is done manually, it consumes lots of time. And you focus less on your business sales and marketing.
Efficient ledger balance maintenance
With the integration, you can visualize your business’s financial status and cash flow at ease without any difficulty. You can make more accurate business decisions than you made in the past when you integrate the POS and accounting software.
Avoids working with multi-software
When there exists for business to maintain both the POS and accounting software, then when the businessers manage them separately, there exists risk on errors and time-consuming. But when it is integrated, you tend to avoid mistakes and risks. It will give you added peace of mind as you are on the right track of paying for the right people at the right time.
Consistently be organized for the taxman
It is one of the greatest opportunities for the taxpayers. You can transfer all the data from these two crucial aspects of your business in a simple way and make all your reports more accurate with the accurate workflow.
List of best POS software for small business
Are you looking for the best POS system for your small business? Here is a list of the best POS system for small businesses. Each of the below POS systems is great for small businesses. Take a look at them and choose one that will help grow your business today!
SNAPOS
If you are a small business owner looking for a budget-friendly POS app, then SNAPOS will be your best POS companion. SNAPOS is an app that has a POS system and an online store in one app.
Zobaze
Zobaze makes it easy to run your business with easy-to-use point-of-sale software. From taking payments to keeping track of inventory, you have everything you need to make running your business simple.
Square POS
Square POS is one of the POS apps for small to large size businesses. It is simple and easy. But the cost of square POS is a bit expensive and difficult to afford for most small businesses.
EHopper
EHopper POS software is the best and easiest way to run a company. It comes with everything a small business owner needs to run a company: an easy-to-use point of sale system, inventory management tools, and more.
Vend
Vend is trusted retail software that your employees will learn how to use in minutes. Vend POS helps you manage your inventory, sell products and take orders from customers, all from a single touchscreen interface. It is expensive for small businesses.
List of best accounting software for small business
Since accounting software is your primary tool in managing finances, it’s important to find the right one that makes it easy to manage accounting and taxes, along with other business functions.
Are you looking for the best accounting software for your small business? These are the top 5 accounting software packages that leading small businesses to use to run their operation.
mybooks
If you are a small business owner and looking for affordable accounting software to match your business with all your accounting needs, then mybooks will be your choice to pick. It also has a free version. We found that it is difficult to choose a small business accounting software in this budget.
Freshbooks
The second affordable accounting software on the list next to mybooks is FreshBooks accounting software. Even though affordable it is double the price of mybooks.
Wave
Wave accounting software is free software, but they consume payment for each transaction. One of the drawbacks of this accounting software is that the wave supports the only US and Canada.
Xero
Xero accounting software is one the suitable accounting software for small businesses. But similar to Freshbooks, their cost looks difficult to afford when compare to mybooks accounting software.
List of Point of Sale Software with Accounting Integration
Looking for a pos system with accounting software integration? Check here for some of the lists of pos systems with accounting software for small businesses from basic. We have listed 5 pos accounting systems.
mybooks
If you are looking for point-of-sale accounting software with primary features, then try mybooks. In the future, mybooks will explore integrated pos and accounting software with SNAPOS to make your business tracking more efficient.
IVEPOS
IVEPOS is an online Point Of Sale for your business. IVEPOS is a tool that allows small and medium-sized businesses to manage invoices, products, payments, inventory, and accounting.
myBillBook
mybillbook is one of the basic pos accounting software for small businesses. It holds some of the basic pos accounting software for small businesses.
Gofrugal
On the line, the next point of sale accounting software for small businesses is Gofrugal. Small businesses can try this app but one of the huge drawbacks with software is that it is expensive and hard to afford for small businesses.
Korona POS
The last software is Korona POS. This is also the POS accounting software. But similar to Gofrugal, the pricing looks drawback for most small business owners.
