InfoGenesis POS is a point-of-sale software solution with features such as empower your business and Apple Pay integration.
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ShopKeep
Score 7.1 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
ShopKeep is an iPad point of sale system; The vendor says it is intuitive, secure, affordable software that helps merchants run smarter businesses. The product optimizes staffing and inventory, while offering sales reports and customer information on a cloud-based platform. The product includes low-cost, integrated payment processing, as well as point of sale hardware. According to the vendor, ShopKeep has 23,000 customers, and a customer…
The terminals themselves don't seem to be well designed and have the appearance of being put together with off-the-shelf components. Hiding cables can be challenging. The design is slim and svelte enough, but it has the appearance of being more fragile (although it doesn't appear be particularly so). These terminals are best when left in a single location, at least in our implementation as switching revenue centers requires IT involvement.
ShopKeep can maintain up to 10,000 individual stock items. This is perfect for a cafe, coffee shop, wine bar, small retail store, etc. If you're inventory exceeds the 10,000 items then it may not be a fit for you. Also, ShopKeep works with Apple tablets only (iPad 2 or later). If you prefer Android or PC based tablets then this won't work for you.
ShopKeep provides solid pre-sales support. They did a pre-sales screen-share demo that helped us ensure that their system would handle the needs of the business, and they assisted us in making decisions around which hardware would be appropriate.
ShopKeep's hardware seems well thought out and well integrated. One exception is issues with the connection between their recommended iCMP credit card scanner and the register. Other than that, the hardware works well together.
The register has excellent configurability and customization capabilities, and handles a large variety of products easily. High-volume products can have their own buttons on the register. Products can be added to a purchase by using these buttons, by scanning a bar code with an integrated bar code scanner, or by doing a live text search.
The register is also easily configurable to handle product options - either multiple options like pizza toppings, or exclusive options like regular or decaf coffee.
The ShopKeep system can handle hybrid retail/quick serve/restaurant scenarios with grace. This was a factor that eliminated many other systems that are optimized for one or the other, or where the products for handling retail are completely separate from the products for handling quick serve/restaurant operations. Since this customer has a location where there is a quick serve counter, a restaurant, and a retail gift shop all in the same location, ShopKeep's ability to handle all of these kinds of transactions from the same platform is a powerful advantage. ShopKeep also recently added functionality to transfer open tickets between registers, so that if a customer starts out with a cup of coffee at the quick serve counter, their ticket can be picked up and added to at the gift shop if they wander in there to purchase items.
ShopKeep has a Back Office system that can be accessed through any Web browser, or through their mobile app. The Back Office system is used to import and export data, manage inventory, configure the iPad registers, set up product options, manage employees, and report transactions, sales, product costs & margins, and other data.
Discounts, returns and credits are relatively easy to handle from the register, and the system can be configured to require a manager to approve these kinds of transactions, or not.
Bulk imports and exports are handled well by ShopKeep's Back Office. When setting up initial inventory, products can be added through Excel, then imported as comma-separated values (CSV) files by uploading them through the Web browser. Once inventory is established, adding or modifying items can be done directly through the Web interface.
ShopKeep has a mobile app that can be used by owners or managers to remotely access real-time snapshots of sales and other important data whenever they wish.
Integration with rGuest Seat is terrible, and it's a companion product. This definitely never lived up to its promise.
The boot process for the terminals is long and ridiculously unprofessional looking. There are some sloppy defaults for the boot process and the initial setup is needlessly complicated.
Shift management is confusing for staff, particularly when signing out at the end of a shift. Would like to see more work on this area.
Because we expect the current issue with the credit card reader disconnecting from the register to be solved with an upcoming software update, and we like many of the features of Shopkeep.
The register functionality is excellent, both from a learning standpoint and an operations standpoint. Cashiers learn how to use the register quickly, and the registers can be configured with hot buttons for fast-moving products. Setting up product variations and additions is straightforward. The web-accessible Back Office has good features, but lacks enough granularity to provide a store manager with the ability to modify inventory settings without giving them access to all of the financial reports as well.
Support is hit or miss with this platform. If you get a tech that knows the system, the experience is excellent. There have been more instances of escalated tickets going unanswered, which I deem unacceptable. Even if the answer is "I don't know" or "we can't do that" I expect an answer. Contrast this with VMware, who will file a bug report if they can't resolve the immediate issue and then will follow up with you. When it comes to IG support, I don't have confidence that they'll pursue a concern very far and they've been lax with follow-up
Occasional long waits [5 minutes or more] or call-backs needed for telephone support. Email support replies usually take several hours. Support personnel are generally friendly and knowledgable.
If moving from a "dumb" cash register system, spend all the time needed to get starting inventory and product costing and pricing correct. Shopkeep has good tools for reporting inventory, margins, and other critical business info, but the information is only useful if the starting figures are accurate.
InfoGenesis had a great implementation team and worked with us closely on the rollout to ensure minimal disruption. Micros terminals had better design overall and looked like they'd have lasted for 100 years, but Oracle was not fun to work with. IG's reporting options have made our Finance people happy as well. We were concerned with multiple integrations on the platform it replaced, but all of these turned out to be non-issues and we were able to work with IG staff to get what we wanted out of it. I'd prefer the hardware to be thought out more thoroughly, as it's weak in appearance by comparison despite being very usable.
ShopKeep is an inexpensive choice iPad POS system that comes with all of the tools needed to do business without any long-term contracts or expensive fees. It also offers free 24/7 phone and email support along with online live chat during business hours. Coffee Shop Manager offered some of these items, but they also tied you into a long-term contract and you were charged fee after fee for support, etc. Also, the CSM system was big and took up a lot of space compared to ShopKeep's integration with an Apple iPad tablet.
Our previous platform required more than occasional love and care and was hard to develop solutions for. InfoGenesis terminals don't have a lot of trouble in operation, which leads to more uptime and happy customers.
I previously mentioned rGuest Seat integration. We never got this to work as promised and got different answers from different resources when asked the same question.
Server sprawl began almost immediately. We went from a two server design to five in the end and still have occasional problems with kitchen printers.
ShopKeep didn't integrate with my accounting software. I had to double enter all financial data.
Without inventory controls, all of my financial information was inaccurate. It is impossible to grow a business without accurate financial information.
