There are still tens of thousands of UK counters running a traditional till: keys, cash drawer, Z-report at close. If yours works, the EPOS industry's insistence that you are a dinosaur deserves scepticism - upgrading has real costs. But there is a point where the old till quietly becomes the most expensive thing in the shop. Here is how to tell which side of it you are on.
What the old till does well (really)
Credit where due: a traditional cash register is bought once, needs no subscription, no updates, no wifi, and rings sales for a decade. For a low-line business - a chippy with eight menu items, a village shop, a barber taking cash and card side by side - it does the only job a till legally must do: record the sale and hold the cash.
The honest case for keeping it: your product range is small and stable, you do not employ staff you cannot see, and you already know your numbers well enough that a report would tell you nothing new. That describes more businesses than the EPOS industry likes to admit.
What you are actually paying for the old till
The costs are invisible because they arrive as time and error, not invoices. The typical counter with a separate card machine mistypes amounts occasionally (always awkward to unwind), takes stock by walking the shelves, and does its bookkeeping by rekeying a paper Z-report into a spreadsheet or handing a carrier bag of them to an accountant.
Each is small. Together they are commonly several hours a week plus a steady drip of shrinkage you cannot see - the gap between what sold and what left the shelf, which a keys-and-drawer till has no way to show you. If you have staff, that gap is where it hides.
What EPOS actually changes day-to-day
Not the ringing of sales - that is the same speed either way once staff know the screen. The change is everything around it:
- The card machine and till agree by design - the amount goes over automatically, so mistyped payments disappear.
- Stock counts itself down as you sell; you order from a report, not a walk round the shelves.
- Takings, VAT and bestsellers land in your accounting software without rekeying - Making Tax Digital stops being a chore.
- Staff sales, voids and no-sales are logged per person. Most owners learn something within a month they had not known for years.
- Price changes take thirty seconds from a screen, not an evening of relabelling PLUs.
The honest cost of switching
Money first: from roughly £30 a month (iPad plus app-based EPOS like Square or SumUp POS) to £50-£80 a month with proper hardware from the likes of Epos Now - our POS cost breakdown has the full numbers. If you were not taking cards before, add transaction fees; if you were, you are paying those already.
The real cost is the fortnight of friction: loading products, retraining muscle memory, the first busy Saturday on the new screen. Do the product load in a quiet week, run the old till as backup for the first few days, and it is a bump rather than a crisis. Our switching checklist applies almost unchanged.
The verdict
Keep the traditional till if: your range is small and stable, you are behind the counter yourself for most trading hours, and cash is still a big share of takings. The subscription would buy you reports that confirm what you already know. That is not backwards; it is correctly sized.
Upgrade when any of these arrive: staff serving unsupervised, stock you cannot count in your head, VAT returns built from paper, or a card machine that regularly disagrees with the till. At that point EPOS is not a gadget, it is the cheaper option - the comparison table shows what each system costs, or answer five questions and we will shortlist for your counter.
FAQs
Can I keep taking cash on an EPOS system?
Yes - every mainstream EPOS supports a cash drawer and cash sales alongside card. The drawer even pops the same way. EPOS changes what is recorded, not what you can accept.
Is a traditional till cheaper long-term?
On invoices, yes: no subscription, no fees on cash. In practice it depends on scale - once staff, stock and card reconciliation errors are in play, the hours and shrinkage usually cost more than £30-£50 a month. One-person, cash-heavy counters are the genuine exception.
Do I legally need EPOS for Making Tax Digital?
No - MTD requires digital VAT records and compatible software, not a specific till. But EPOS makes compliance nearly automatic, whereas a paper Z-report till means bridging spreadsheets and manual entry every quarter.
How long does switching from a till to EPOS take?
For a small shop: an afternoon to load products, a day of staff wobbliness, and about two weeks until nobody misses the old till. The product load is the real work - do it before the hardware arrives, not after.
