Choosing a POS system for a food truck (and what CartFlow isn't)
What actually matters when picking a POS for mobile trading, and how back-office tools like CartFlow work alongside it.
It's worth saying plainly: CartFlow is not a point-of-sale system. It's the back office that runs alongside whichever POS you choose — events, staff, stock, packing lists and profit reporting. Picking the right POS is still its own decision, and this is what actually matters for mobile trading specifically.
Offline resilience is non-negotiable
Markets, festivals and rural events routinely have patchy or no signal. A POS that queues transactions locally and syncs when connectivity returns is essential — one that hard-fails without internet will cost you sales at exactly the busiest moments.
Battery and hardware ruggedness
A tablet-based POS needs a case that survives a day in a truck, a battery that lasts a full trading day without a power outlet, and a card reader that works in direct sunlight glare and cold hands in winter markets.
Speed of the sale flow matters more than feature lists
Watch how many taps it takes to ring up your three most common orders. A POS with a beautiful back office but a slow, multi-screen checkout will bottleneck your queue on your busiest days, which is when speed matters most.
Export quality, not just export existence
Almost every POS claims to 'export sales data'. What matters is whether that export is clean enough to actually feed profit reporting — itemised sales with product names, not just a daily total that tells you nothing about which menu items perform.
Fees add up faster on mobile trading
Card processing fees that look small per transaction compound quickly on high-volume, low-ticket items like coffee. Compare all-in fee structures against your actual average transaction value, not the headline percentage rate.
How the two systems fit together
Most CartFlow customers run a POS for the till and CartFlow for everything that happens before and after the sale — stock, rostering, packing lists and true profit per event. Import your POS sales export and CartFlow turns it into a profit number your POS was never built to calculate.