Across our museums and archive we sell in-person using an iPad and Shopify app. I thought i’d share with you our Shopify point of sale (POS) set up seeing as we’ve now rolled it out to five locations. The setup cost is just under £1000 for the kit and running costs are approx £3000 per year for the Shopify software, reporting and add-ons. It is worth mentioning that originally we used the basic Shopify package which is $29 per month (plus $40 for retail pos) but once we started to get serious with our retail management we upgraded to the “Advanced Shopify” which is approx £2800 per year.

Hardware

We purchased our kit from POS hardware as a bundle for approx £455 (ex vat) excluding the iPad and card reader. Most small merchants skip on getting the receipt printer and prefer to use “email this receipt”.

• iPad air 2 – £379
• Bluetooth barcode reader
• Standard till drawer
• Receipt printer
• Contactless Credit/debit card reader with Applepay (approx £20 per month rental)
• iPad secure stand
• Router to avoid public wifi and maintain security – fitted by IT services

Software

A good thing about shopify is that you can scale up your options with the click of a button to install new features. Once you pay you can also install it on as many devices as you like which is great for pop-up shops.

– Shopify retail $40 per month and is essential for turning your standard shopify account into a retail POS
– Advanced Shopify £2800 per year which we use for the “reporting” features
– App – ALT Text FREE used to automatically generate image ALT text for our online shop
– App – Low Stock Alert FREE sends us an email warning which products are running low
– App – Profiteer $15 per month used to add the cost of goods to all products so we can understand our profit
– App – SEO Doctor FREE used to improve our online shop
– App – Shopify Theme Tool which we use for our custom online shop theme

Top tips

Updating shopify or iOS. It normally takes about 45mins to update the app shopify AND update iOS so never do this during hte business day..also avoid Friday or weekends if you have IT support who work Mon-Fri

If possible it is worth having a second iPad in case the primary device falls over for any reason. I’d also suggest you upgrade the software and test it using the second device before unleashing the latest version on the primary device

Shopify has 24/7 support so when I hit a snag I normally use their live chat to help get it resolved