How to choose a POS in the Maldives
Most POS buying advice is written for a market that does not look like ours. Here is a way to judge any system against the way business is actually done here: transfer slips, island data, GST, and half your orders arriving as a message.
In the Maldives, a POS is worth buying only if it handles four things the brochures rarely mention: bank transfer slips as a proper payment method, selling while the data is out, GST with your TIN, and orders that arrive in a chat rather than at the counter. Features like loyalty schemes and multi-currency reporting matter far less than those four, because those four are where the money actually goes missing.
Price it over three years, not per month, and include hardware, install, training, support and the cost of getting your data out again if you leave.
Start with your day, not a feature list
Every vendor will show you a features page, and every features page looks convincing. The problem is that a feature list tells you what a system can do, not whether it fits the shape of your particular day. Two cafes on the same street can need completely different things.
So before you look at anything, write down your actual day in about ten lines. When does it get busy. How do orders arrive. How do people pay you. Who else touches the till. What happens when the connection drops. What has to be true at closing time. Then judge every system against that list rather than against its own.
The useful question is not "does it have inventory". It is "on a Friday evening with a queue, does this make the next sixty seconds easier or harder". Most systems that fail in the Maldives do not fail on capability. They fail on the sixty seconds.
The twelve point scorecard
Tick what a system genuinely does, not what it says on a pricing page. Take it into a demo and fill it in while you watch. If the salesperson has to go away and check, that counts as a no until proven otherwise.
A system scoring nine or more is worth a trial. Below six, be honest about which of the missing points you will end up doing by hand every single evening, because that is the real price.
Five questions that reveal the most
Demos are designed to go well. These five are the ones that tend to produce an unrehearsed answer, which is exactly what you want.
Costs that never appear in the price
The monthly figure is usually the smallest part of what a POS actually costs. Build the full picture before you compare anything.
| Cost | What to ask |
|---|---|
| Hardware | Terminal, printer, cash drawer, scanner. Who supplies it, what it costs to replace, and how long a replacement takes to reach your island. |
| Install and training | One off or recurring. Whether a new staff member costs anything to train, because staff turnover is the normal case, not the exception. |
| Per user and per outlet | What a second person costs. What a second location costs. Whether the till and the back office are counted separately. |
| Transaction fees | Any percentage taken on sales or on orders. Over a year this is usually the largest line, and it is the one most often left off a quote. |
| Support | Included or a plan. What hours. Whether an urgent call at eight on a Friday is covered or billed. |
| Upgrades | Whether new versions are included or sold. A system you have to pay to keep current is a system that will slowly fall behind. |
| Your own time | The evenings spent entering the catalogue, and the evenings spent reconciling whatever the system does not handle. Put a number on it, because it is real. |
Signs you are about to buy the wrong thing
Ask how you would leave, before you arrive
This is the question people skip, and it is the one that costs the most later. A POS holds your items, your prices, your order history and your customer list. Over two years that becomes the single most valuable record your business owns.
Ask three things. Can I export it myself, without asking anyone. What format does it come in. And does my public link keep working if I stop paying, or does my shop simply disappear from the internet one morning.
A vendor with good answers here is telling you they expect to keep you by being useful. That is a much better sign than a discount.
Where Eveyla fits, and where it does not
We build Eveyla, so treat this section as what it is. The useful thing we can do is be precise about the fit, because a shop that signs up for the wrong reason leaves within a month and nobody wins.
Eveyla is a good fit if
- A real share of your orders arrive as a chat message
- Most customers pay by transfer, or cash on delivery
- You want the counter and the online orders on one list
- You would rather not buy hardware or book an install
- You keep a credit book for regulars
- A flat MVR 299 a month suits you better than a percentage of every order
Look elsewhere if you need
- Card payments taken in the shop or at checkout, which Eveyla does not do today
- A table floor plan with servers and kitchen station routing
- Consolidated reporting across many branches under one group
- A direct connection into an accounting package
- Warehouse style purchase orders and supplier management
For the record, against the scorecard above: transfer slips, offline selling, GST with per item zero rating, chat orders on the same board, browser only, island data, staff seats without the money screens, a proper credit book, shared stock, delivery islands and ferry fields, local support, and export. The honest gaps are the five on the right.
Whatever you end up choosing, run the twelve points against it first. It takes ten minutes and it is a much better use of a demo than watching a slide deck.
Score us
out of twelve.
Fourteen days free, no card, nothing to install. Open it on your own phone, on your own network, and fill in the list.