POS and accounting software for new businesses

Start with what you need on day one

A new business does not need every module on opening day. It needs to take payment, keep track of stock and know whether it made money last week. The rest, from payroll to year-end, can wait until there is a team and a year to close. Paying for all of it up front only burns cash you need for stock and rent.

Sero is three products you can adopt in order. Most new restaurants and shops start with SeroPOS, add SeroBooks once invoices, bills and sales tax returns pile up, and bring in payroll when they hire. Each one connects to the others, so the early data is not lost when you add the next piece.

Try it before you pay

SeroPOS is self-serve. Download it from the App Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store or Mac App Store, sign up in the app and you are on a 14-day free trial with no credit card, no contracts and no onboarding fees. Demo data lets you practise ringing sales before your first real customer walks in.

SeroBooks and SeroPayroll also start with 14-day free trials. Use that time to enter your opening balances, set up sales tax and run a test pay run, so you know the setup works before the first real deadline arrives. If a product is not right for you, you have lost nothing but a little time.

• SeroPOS Standard: $29.99/mo or $299.99/yr
• SeroPOS Pro: $49.99/mo or $499.99/yr
• SeroBooks Starter: $79.99/mo or $799/yr
• SeroPayroll Starter: $25/mo for up to 10 employees

Keep startup costs low

Opening costs add up fast, so SeroPOS runs on devices you may already have: iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, Windows PCs and Macs. It works with standard ESC/POS receipt printers from Epson, Star and compatible brands, barcode scanners and cash drawers, with no proprietary hardware lock-in. Label printing for price tags and a kitchen display screen are supported too.

When you need card-present payments, SeroPOS supports Global Payments, including the Verifone T650p terminal, as well as Moneris and Gravity Payments. Stripe and PayPal handle online and QR orders. Offline mode keeps the counter running if your internet connection drops during a busy opening week. Sales sync once you are back online.

Good habits from the first sale

The easiest books to keep are the ones that start clean. SeroPOS closes each shift with a register Z-report and keeps 25+ live reports on sales, tax, stock and staff. Its built-in double-entry accounting means your sales are recorded properly from day one, even before you add a full accounting product.

When you move to SeroBooks, the till and the ledger become one system. Bank transactions come in by CSV with rules, with live bank feeds rolling out, and you get bank reconciliation, invoicing and the Sales Tax Centre. Your accountant can join on a free practice seat. Clean books in year one make the first tax filing far less stressful.

• Register Z-reports and shift close
• Low-stock alerts and purchase orders
• Sales and tax reports exported to Excel or PDF
• Cloud backup and restore

Your first hire

In Canada, the first employee brings CPP, EI, income tax, vacation pay and a T4 at year-end. SeroPayroll handles all of it for every province and territory, starting at $25/mo for up to 10 employees, with remittance figures for the CRA and ROE files when someone leaves. Pay stubs go out by PDF or email, with a masked SIN.

US businesses get federal and state payroll inside SeroBooks Pro at $300/mo. Either way, pay runs post to the same ledger as your sales, so labour cost shows up in your P&L without retyping figures from a separate payroll service. You can see what each new hire really costs before deciding on the next one.