Cloud POS or a till that works offline: which suits your shop?

Cloud, local or hybrid POS: which suits your shop?

The usual question — “cloud or local?” — hides a third option that fits many Iraqi shops: a hybrid system that keeps working on the device when the internet drops, and still gives management a central picture after sync. The table compares the three paths in daily work. Al-Arjan’s published starting price for accounting and POS is a starting point for one branch and one till (from $500, 2 to 4 weeks, with hardware set out in the proposal); any cloud hosting or on-site server is stated in the written proposal and is not invented here.

How offline POS works

The device keeps a local copy of items, prices and customers, and invoices are recorded locally with unique non-repeating numbers. When connection returns, it sends invoices to the server in order, receives any new price updates, and resolves conflicts with clear rules.

Questions to ask a vendor

These questions show whether “works offline” is a real capability or a marketing phrase:

• Do sales and item search continue offline?
• Do receipts print offline?
• How do you prevent duplicate invoice numbers across devices?
• What if a price changes centrally during the outage?
• Does management see each branch’s online/offline status?

How are conflicts resolved when syncing?

A conflict happens when the same thing changes in two places during an outage: the last unit of an item sold on two devices, say, or a price changed at head office while a branch keeps selling at the old one. A good system doesn’t hide this; it applies stated rules: invoices are never deleted or merged, they’re all added; the correct price is the one in force at the time of sale; and any resulting negative stock appears in an exceptions report for a named person to handle.

Ask the vendor to show you this live: disconnect two devices, sell the same item on both, reconnect and see how the difference appears. That single test reveals more than any feature list.

What usually doesn’t work offline?

Even in the best systems, some operations need a connection by nature: card and wallet payments, checking a customer’s loyalty balance if it’s held centrally, consolidated reports across branches, and any change head office must approve. What matters is knowing this list in advance, and that cash sales, printing and item search always keep working.

What a checkout connected to accounting and inventory needs is covered in accounting and POS systems, the selection criteria in how to choose the right POS system, and published prices on the pricing page.

• Always works: cash sales, printing, search, returns against a local invoice
• Needs a connection: card and wallet payments, central loyalty, consolidated reports, head-office approvals