A restaurant POS is the screen your cashier uses all day, but its real job is bigger. It decides whether orders reach the kitchen correctly, whether you know your food cost, and whether the cash in the drawer matches the sales at night. Pick the wrong one and you end up back on parchi and a register within a few months.
This guide gives you a step-by-step way to compare options before you pay anything. It is written for owners of dhabas, karahi restaurants, cafés, bakeries, fast food outlets and cloud kitchens in Pakistan. If the term is new to you, start with what a point of sale system actually is.
Step 1: Write down how your restaurant actually works
Before you look at any software, spend one evening writing down your own process. Most bad purchases happen because the owner judged the demo instead of judging the fit. Answer these questions on paper:
- Which order types do you run? Dine-in, takeaway, home delivery, or all three?
- How does an order reach the kitchen today? A handwritten parchi, a printed kitchen ticket, or a waiter shouting it?
- Who handles cash? One cashier per shift, or whoever is free?
- Do you buy raw material daily from the mandi, weekly from suppliers, or both?
- Do you give food on credit to offices or regular customers?
- Do you have, or plan to have, a second branch?
Keep this list with you during every demo. If a system cannot handle the way your busiest hour works, nothing else on its feature list matters.
Step 2: Check the billing screen under pressure
Your cashier will press the billing screen thousands of times a month. Ask the seller to let your own cashier try it, with a realistic Friday-night order such as one full chicken karahi, six naan, two raita, one salad and four soft drinks, split across a family table. Time it.
- Can the cashier find items in two or three taps, using categories and search?
- Can one order be switched between dine-in, takeaway and delivery?
- Can items be added to an open table bill as the family keeps ordering?
- Are discounts and voids recorded with the name of the person who did them?
- Does the bill print clearly on an ordinary thermal receipt printer?
Voids deserve special attention. A cancelled item after the food has been served is one of the most common ways cash goes missing. Read our glossary entry on voids and refunds and ask every vendor how voids are logged and who can approve them.
Step 3: Look at the kitchen side
Half of the problems in a busy restaurant start between the counter and the tandoor. A good POS sends each order to the kitchen the moment it is billed, either as a printed kitchen order ticket or on a kitchen display screen. Ask the vendor to show you what the cook sees, how changes reach the kitchen, and how the kitchen marks an order as ready.
Step 4: Ask about inventory and recipe costing
This is where cheap billing-only systems fall short. If the system only prints bills, you still have no idea where your chicken, oil and ghee are going. Ask whether you can enter a recipe for each menu item, so that selling one karahi deducts one kilo of chicken, the tomatoes, the oil and the spices from stock.
Recipe-linked stock lets you compare what you should have used with what you actually used. That gap is where theft, over-portioning and waste show up. If food cost is new territory for you, our guide on food cost percentage explains the numbers to watch.
Step 5: Cash, expenses and staff control
In a cash-heavy business, the POS is also your control system. Check these points carefully:
- An end-of-day summary showing cash, card and bank transfer sales separately.
- A place to record petty cash spends, such as ice, gas cylinder top-ups or a quick vegetable purchase, so the drawer total makes sense.
- Staff roles, so a cashier cannot delete bills, change prices or see profit reports.
- Customer and supplier ledgers for credit customers and suppliers you pay later.
- If you are registered for sales tax, invoices reported to FBR or PRA from the POS itself, without a separate machine.
ArfaPOS, for example, sends invoices to FBR and prints PRA e-invoice receipts with a QR code; the FBR integrated POS page explains how.
Step 6: Compare the full cost over a year
Monthly fees look small, so owners often skip the yearly maths. Always compare the annual cost, and check which features sit in which plan or cost extra as add-ons. Here is an example using published ArfaPOS plan prices, which are billed monthly with no yearly lock-in:
| Plan | Monthly price | 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Rs 4,999 | Rs 59,988 |
| Starter + FBR ePOS add-on (Rs 2,500) | Rs 7,499 | Rs 89,988 |
| Growth (FBR included) | Rs 9,999 | Rs 119,988 |
| Business (multi-branch) | Rs 14,999 | Rs 179,988 |
Then compare that cost with the leak you are trying to fix. Say your restaurant does Rs 90,000 in sales a day. If missing bills, unrecorded voids and over-portioning cost you just 2% of sales, that is Rs 1,800 a day, or Rs 54,000 over a 30-day month. A system that closes even part of that gap pays for itself quickly.
Also ask about hardware. Most restaurant POS software runs on a normal Windows PC with a thermal receipt printer and a cash drawer. You do not need a special machine, so be careful of vendors who push expensive hardware packages.
Step 7: Setup, training and support
Software is only as good as the first two weeks after you install it. Ask these questions directly:
- Who enters my menu, prices and recipes, and how long does it take?
- How will my cashiers and kitchen staff be trained, and in which language?
- Where do I go when something breaks during dinner service? Is there WhatsApp support in Urdu?
- Can I add a second branch later without changing systems?
Red flags during a demo
- The seller avoids showing reports and only shows the billing screen.
- Deleting a bill leaves no trace.
- There is no way to enter recipes, so food cost is a guess.
- Pricing changes depending on who you ask, with no written plan.
A simple scoring sheet
Score each option from 1 to 5 on the points below, and weight them by what matters most for your restaurant. A karahi house with heavy dine-in will weight the kitchen and table handling higher, while a cloud kitchen will weight delivery and online orders higher.
| Area | What to check | Weight (example) |
|---|---|---|
| Billing speed | Your cashier can bill a large order quickly | 20% |
| Kitchen flow | Orders reach the kitchen instantly, changes are clear | 15% |
| Inventory and recipes | Ingredients deduct as items sell | 20% |
| Cash control | Voids logged, end-of-day summary, petty cash | 20% |
| Staff roles | Cashiers cannot change prices or delete bills | 10% |
| Cost and support | Clear yearly price, Urdu support on WhatsApp | 15% |
If you want to see how one system handles this checklist, ArfaPOS covers dine-in, takeaway and delivery billing, a kitchen display, recipe-linked inventory, petty cash and staff roles, with setup and training done remotely by the AiroxLab team. Run it through the same scoring sheet as any other option.
Tip: ask for a trial or demo using your own menu. A system that looks fine with a sample café menu can feel very different with 120 items, half and full portions, and family deals.