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talech POS Review
talech POS is a great option for retail, restaurant, and service-industry businesses needing advanced features at great prices.
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Expert Analyst & Reviewer
UPDATED
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talech POS
| Total Rating | 4.5 |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Excellent |
| Features | Excellent |
| Customer Service | Good |
| Integrations & Add-Ons | Fair |
| Reviews, Complaints, & Testimonials | Good |
Pros
- Numerous built-in features
- Industry-specific POS solutions
- Excellent, transparent pricing
- Choice of payment processor and POS hardware
Cons
- Limited integrations
- Limited offline mode
talech POS Overview
talech POS is a point of sale system with tailored solutions for retail, restaurant, and service-based businesses. While not as well known as POS providers like Shopify or Lightspeed, talech offers features such as online ordering, table mapping, and appointment scheduling that are on par with POS industry leaders, often at a lower price point.
In fact, with advanced inventory features, in-house marketing capabilities, and the ability to integrate with virtually any payment processor, talech takes your standard POS to the next level.
At the same time, talech still lags somewhat with its offline functionality and eCommerce features, as well as the number of third-party software integrations available. If you have specific third-party integrations you can’t part with, don’t have consistent WiFi coverage, or want to grow in the eCommerce sphere, consider looking elsewhere for your POS needs.
Otherwise, talech POS is a solid choice for many small business owners.
Not sure if talech is the POS system for you? Keep reading to find out.
Table of Contents
What Is talech POS?
talech POS is a cloud-based point of sale system with custom solutions for retailers, restaurants, and service-based businesses. talech offers an extensive feature set at great prices, so this POS is a solid choice for businesses of all sizes.
talech POS Pricing
| talech POS Plan | Price | When To Use |
|---|---|---|
| talech POS Mobile Plan | $0/month | If you only need to take cards and contactless payments on the go |
| talech POS Starter Plan | $29/month | If you have a small retail store or cafe |
| talech POS Standard Plan | $29/month | If you have a mid-size retail store or quick-serve restaurant |
| talech POS Premium Plan | $99/month | If you have a large retail store, full-service restaurant, or service-based business |
talech has some pretty competitive pricing, especially considering the level of functionality that comes with the software. You can schedule a 30-minute demo to view the more advanced features of talech or start with the free mobile POS plan.
talech’s pricing is month-to-month, so there’s no long-term commitment.
Regardless of which plan you’re on, each additional device is $29/month.
talech Mobile POS Plan
talech’s Mobile POS plan costs $0/month and includes the following:
- talech mobile POS app to take payments with your smartphone
- 100 product listings
- Basic order management and discount settings
The Mobile plan is best for very small businesses that have no permanent location, sell only a few items or services, and don’t need inventory features.
talech Starter POS Plan
talech’s Starter POS plan costs $29/month and includes everything in the talech Mobile plan, plus:
- Unlimited devices ($29/month for each additional device)
- 500 products
- Products with variations and modifiers
- Cash drawer management
- 24/7 phone and email support
- Gift cards ($19/month add-on)
The Starter plan is best for small retail stores and very small bakeries/cafes.
talech Standard POS Plan
talech’s Standard POS plan costs $69/month and includes everything in the Starter plan, plus:
- Unlimited products
- Multistore support
- Time-based services
- Kitchen printing
- Advanced reporting
- Kiosk mode
- Customer-facing display
- Third-party integrations
- Online ordering ($49/month add-on)
The Standard plan is best suited for quick-service restaurants and mid-sized retailers.
talech Premium POS Plan
talech’s Premium POS plan costs $99/month and includes everything in the Standard plan, plus:
- Online ordering is included for free
- Mobile-friendly appointment booking website
- Appointment staff management
- Table management
- Coursing
- Automatic gratuity
The Premium plan is best suited for full-service restaurants, multistore retailers, and service-based businesses, such as salons and spas.
If you do own a salon or spa, check out our post on the best salon POS systems to see how talech stacks up to the competition.
talech POS Features
talech breaks its POS offerings into three specific categories: retail, restaurant, and services. The retail features are also included in the restaurant and services categories.
Here is a breakdown of the different features available for retail, restaurant, and service-based businesses.
Note: Some features are only available on higher pricing plans.
talech Retail Features
- Customer card on file (dependent on POS hardware you choose)
- Online ordering
- QR code payments
- Order holds
- Customer-facing displays
- Exchanges, returns, and store credit
- Stock takes
- Item/service bundling and assemblies
- Wholesale item breakdown (e.g. breaking down a case of alcohol into individual bottles for sale)
- Real-time inventory syncing
- Inventory tracking by category (e.g. salon product used for services, salon product sold, damaged product)
- Fixed and variable inventory pricing
- Employee clock-in/clock-out and timesheets
- Manager swipe card to restrict who performs administrative tasks
- Digital and physical gift cards
- Points-based loyalty program
- Automated time-based discounts and promotions (e.g. Monday happy hour, salon super sale Sunday)
- Cash drawer till count, payouts, cash drops, pay-ins, and void tracking
- Sell items by weight (great for foodservice businesses selling prepackaged goods, grocery stores, salons selling hair products, etc.)
- Service charges (great for large group charges, rush order charges, delivery fees, etc.)
- Supplier tracking
- Automated/manual purchase order creation
- Invoice order creation with partial payment option
- Barcode generation and PDF printing (no need for smaller retailers to invest in a printer)
- Labor cost reporting
- Basic/advanced inventory reporting
- Track customer history and email marketing engagement
- House accounts
- Multistore support
talech’s manager swipe card builder, cash drawer monitoring functions, and inventory management capabilities make it one of the best liquor store POS systems.
talech Restaurant Features
- Split and merged tickets
- Table mapping
- Pre-authorizations (great for bars and clubs)
- Item modifiers
- Custom order types (dine-in, takeout, third-party delivery service order, etc.)
- QR code generation for contactless ordering
- Self-ordering restaurant kiosk
- Kitchen display systems
talech Services Features
- Mobile-friendly booking website
- Online booking button (acts much like a buy button, which you can use to sell on your blog or website.)
- Staff scheduling
- Auto/manual booking confirmations
- Enable/disable online cancellations
- Mark no-shows and cancellations
- Automated appointment reminders via email, SMS, or both
- Hide a number of appointment slots for walk-in customers to fill
- Start/end padding time for staff to prepare to take their next client
- Client self-check-in kiosk
Is talech POS User Friendly?
Staying true to the DIY model of the 21st century, talech POS is designed to be easy to set up and use. It’s very sleek and user-friendly with an intuitive layout and large buttons. Both POS user admins and cashiers report that one of the highest qualities of talech is the software’s ease of use.
The average merchant can get essential functions up and running with little or no help from the how-to articles or technical support. You can watch support videos to get an idea of how the different parts of the system operate.
Customer Service & Support
In previous years, talech POS reviews included many complaints about customer service, but that trend seems to have ended.
talech offers the following support options for merchants:
- Phone: Available 24/7 with practically no wait time.
- Email: Although this service is also available 24/7, you could be looking at a 12-24 hour response time.
- Knowledgebase: If you don’t feel like contacting support, you can always do some troubleshooting yourself with the searchable database of help articles. There are also some training videos covering basic functions.
- Live Chat: talech has a strong live chat function that promptly connects you with a human. This feature is available Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM.
Payment Processing With talech POS
talech has partnered with several banks and payment processors to make it possible for you to choose virtually any merchant services provider you would like to work with.
talech specifically lists Elavon and Global Payments as EMV-compliant processors that integrate well with the system, but the actual list is much longer, including Bank of America Merchant Services, Vantiv, Chase, and others. Additionally, talech’s USAePay gateway allows talech customers to connect to all major credit card processors in the US.
Contract Length & Early Termination Fees
talech offers monthly and annual plans. You may upgrade or downgrade your pricing plan at any time by contacting talech support, and the changes will take place on your next billing cycle. There are no refunds on any plans.
If you do not pay your fees on time, or talech can’t process your payment, you are automatically charged a $15 fee. talech may also charge a 1.5% late fee (or the highest amount by law, whichever is lower) per month from the payment due date until your account balance is paid in full.
If you deactivate your talech account, then reactivate it, you are charged a $50 reactivation fee.
talech may change your fees at any time but will give you a 30-day notice before doing so.
talech POS Integrations & Add-Ons
Unfortunately, talech only directly integrates with the following third-party software:
- Accounting: QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage
- Labor Management: Homebase
- Kitchen Display Systems: Epson, Fresh KDS
On the plus side, talech currently partners with 21 companies related to merchant services and POS hardware, so you have flexibility in terms of payment processing as well as equipment such as registers, card readers, customer-facing displays, and kiosks.
talech POS Reviews, Complaints, & Testimonials
There aren’t a ton of talech reviews. Still, many of them speak highly of talech, especially when it comes to price and software usability.
Negative talech POS Reviews & Complaints
These are some common complaints about the POS:
- Reporting: This area is not as robust as it could be, even if you subscribe to a plan that includes “advanced” reports. You might even need a third-party reporting program to supplement the system, depending on your business needs.
- Limited Offline Functionality: This is to be expected of any cloud-based software, but many of the top-performing POS vendors have found ways to work around internet outages and keep their systems running almost seamlessly in the midst of them.
- Customer Service: Several customers have complained about long wait times or poor customer service experiences.
- Glitches: A few customers complained about the system lagging at various times or functions that didn’t seem to operate as intuitively as they should.
Positive talech POS Reviews & Testimonials
Here are some things customers appreciate about talech:
- Ease Of Use: The majority of talech customers are impressed with how easy the system is to navigate and use.
- Pricing: For the number of features you have access to, talech’s subscription cost is difficult to match; many customers cite this as a significant reason behind their decision to go with talech.
- Customer Management: A common theme among talech users is how easy it is to track customers, keep tabs on their spending habits, and contact them for marketing campaigns.
- Credit Card Processing Options: You aren’t locked into a contract with any “preferred” credit card processor with this software.
- Industry-Specific Features: It’s difficult to offer an all-in-one POS that has the built-in functionality to suit retail, restaurant, and service-based businesses, but talech pulls it off.
Final Verdict Of talech POS
talech offers an impressive array of features at an exceedingly affordable price. This software has both general and niche POS features that give small business owners in a variety of industries the tools they need to operate efficiently.
In fact, talech made our list of the best restaurant POS systems, mostly due to the excellent price point when compared to similar POS offerings.
However, talech doesn’t work as well as other POS systems when there’s no WiFi, which is why it did not make our list of the best food truck POS systems. talech doesn’t have extensive eCommerce features either, so we wouldn’t recommend this POS software for businesses heavily focused on selling online.
In general, talech is one of the best low-cost POS systems on the market. If you’re very budget conscious, though, read our post on the best free POS systems before deciding which POS to start out with.
talech POS FAQs
Nicolette Kier
Expert Analyst & Reviewer
As a small business owner, contributing writer Nicolette Kier has been sharing her knowledge on all things related to freelancing and eCommerce since 2019. She earned a BS in Physics and a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh.
View Nicolette Kier's professional experience on LinkedIn.
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Organization Name: Retro-Rides
I have used this system for over a year now. When it works it works quite well however it regularly freezes, will not process one type of payment or the other, suddenly the cash drawer will not open, we are constantly rebooting the system. I am now at the point of giving up & am researching other systems. I have at the minimum 12 to 14 hours of phone time troubleshooting the system. This is very sad as I am now expanding my bike business to include a café and was hoping that I had found my solution. This is not it!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Sutera's Italian Restaurant
I’ve been using Talech for 4 years in my full service restaurant and bar. It is easy to set up and use. The learning curve for employees is almost immediate. Most everyone knows how to use an ipad or tablet now days and this is just second nature to most of them.I get rapid response from support if I have a question. If they are busy you can leave your phone number and they will call you back.I like how it keeps track of employees time and tips. It makes doing payroll easy. I don’t use the inventory feature anymore but it will give you low inventory warnings. It works great if you want to spend the time doing it.I upgraded my ipads from the ipad 2 to the ipad 6 several months ago and the touch and response of the system is immediate. If you are experiencing any sort of lag check to see if you are using older ipads. My credit card processing is flawless now that I am using newer ipads.It is easy to manage tables and split checks with talech. This is one of the features I like the best.Overall I’m pretty pleased with the system. You should give it a test run if you are looking for a POS system.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hey Bruce, do you have a bar. If so does it work well in the bar ?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Nobacconists
Absolutely Awful company, we had signed up to talech, bought 3 POS systems as well as Ipads at a cost of over £1k each for the system to not work, our problem was with multiple discounting on a single transaction, we were told that an update was in the works that would address the problem and that as soon as it was ready I would be notified, after a year with no update and a useless system I was told that “the update was not spoken about and that if it was there was no length of time involved with the update”(i thought it was not spoken about), I asked for a refund and was told that they would not be giving a refund as they told me there was no time limit put on the update i hadnt asked them about???!!!Steer clear and buy an abacus.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Sweets Canada
Hi All,I have been Talech customer for a 2 months.We sell product by weight in Gms. Like our product is weight on scale and we add the weight to the POs and get total. However it does not multiply correctly, Tried with customer service they were helpful but could not solve problem. They are front line third party service provifer who know precious little of back office programing.I seriously recommend to any one going for this system to try it out few days before actually investing in this. Just unable to reach person in charge in this company. I give it ZERO starsSam
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Talech is not ready for prime-time for a busy fine-dining restaurant/bar.I wish talech was what was advertised because we are many months into it and the software is just not up to snuff to take care of, especially, a high-volume bar.I think their main issue is lack of sufficient development staff. Another issue for us is them claiming during their online sales pitch call that their system was appropriate for our fast-past fine-dining restaurant bar. Lack of sufficient development staff: We have found many bugs and inefficiencies in the short time we’ve been able to use talech. It says online “customized for your needs”, but right now in spite of spending over $10k in consultation fees with our local salesman/information technologist we can’t even fully transition to talech because they weren’t really ready for our type of business and they aren’t responding to our issues.The system is NOT good-to-go for a busy bar. There is no ability to key in an order and open a cash drawer without going through multiple selection screens. In addition, in order to start a tab, at least with our chip reader/swipers, you can’t simply swipe a credit card and get the process going. Starting a tab requires typing in either a table/bar seat number, customer name, or searching for a customer name, as opposed to being able to simply touch and select. Even finding a regular customer name is multiple steps and keystrokes. As a result, we are currently using talech for our restaurant/tables and 2touch (our old system) for the bar. In a slow business these elements might not be a problem, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of customers waiting for service every keystroke counts–especially the ones that you know simply should have been programmed better.Reports: Touted as one of the most appealing parts of the system, the reports don’t do basic restaurant report functions. We want to see what percent was sold food/wine/beer/liquor/parties and this is not available. We would like to have details on the daily report on comps and this is not available. Their is now house credit for comps, but after issuing hundreds of dollars of comps last night (due to a broken kitchen printer cable–not talech’s fault) I am seeing a zero balance in house credit summary. We would like to email reports end of day to our management and this is not available. Bugs: Even the split function which is being promoted to sell the product on their main home page has problems, in that when you are splitting between positions the keyboard keeps popping up and you have to keep force-hiding it. A new issue popped up last night: servers are entering orders and they are not getting printed. This is a HUGE problem, of course. We are not sure why this is happening. I watched a server enter a Blue Moon and hit send and then hit save and nothing came up on the printer. The next time he did that it did print. We are simply unsure why this happened, but it is incompatible with running a restaurant. If we don’t figure this out we will have to abandon talech.IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES: We actually planned to launch January 2017 but could not do so until April 2017. We thought they were going to assist with the transition from 2touch, but really it was on us, so that took a good chunk of time. We then suffered from their lack of preparedness to utilize chip-readers and a huge delay in syncing up with our merchant services. (It’s a plus that we can choose our merchant services, but we did not expect 6-8 weeks of implementation delay because of it.)The BoomTown training we received was a waste of time, as the trainer knew nothing past the easiest functions, so multiple times during our short online non-video! session with 10 managers present had to call for help from her own management while we sat and waited, and some questions she couldn’t answer at all.SUMMARY:I’m not abandoning talech, as we’ve invested too much time and money to start looking for an alternative. Additionally, there are great benefits to the hand-held system as far as speed of order delivery. However, we as a business feel like guinea pigs paving the way for possible success for future businesses using talech, while we suffer through and report all the problems and wait who knows how long for them to address our problems. After all, we are not retailers, and we are frequently reminded that this system was initially developed for retail.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: 1965
I would like to upgrade my review in anticipation of new changes to a 3.5/4. It has taken a year, and talech didn’t come up with the solution, but we will be switching to a swipe at the bar and staying with emv in the restaurant. We think this will solve the speed problem. Talech has issues, but I do like that servers can order on ipads at tables, speeding up service for us. I need to review my old review, but a fair number of issues have been resolved.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thank you for the review, I am very interested in this system for the business I am getting ready to purchase. You did not mention anything about a layaway program in the system. We still have customers who do this every year. Does the talech system have that
Capability?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Melissa,
Yes, talech does have layaway functionality. Here is more information. I hope this helps and if you have further questions please don’t hesitate to let me know.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Completely unsatisfied, and would never recommend this system to anyone. We have had issues since day 1. Customer service is alright sometimes, but not worth the troubles we have experienced. We have to reset the machine at least twice a day, sometimes it wont take credit cards, and we have to give away food at our restaurant for free, just to keep our customers happy. Not set up good for restaurants at all. Keyboard is not responsive enough. Seems like you have to push every button twice or more. Whole system freezes, etc. Looking for a better sytem at the moment, and we will have to start from scratch. Very disappointing.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi,I thought I would share my (limited) experience with the talech system.Preface: My name is Brendin, and I do not own a restaurant, but I did grow up in one. My family has operated a medium sized restaurant for about 20 years. The entire time they were using all hand written tickets. They were recently approached by a rep from US Bank about Talech and they decided to give it a shot. Neither of my parents are very tech savvy, me on the other hand, I am a young graphic designer and web developer. Not an expert in my fields by any means, but defiantly know more than the average joe. But please keep in mind POS is not my main focus.Set Up: Setting up the talech hardware was pretty simple. Mostly plug and play. After running the dedicated network cable for the printers, the iPads were set up in about an hour. One thing we have noticed over time, download the app via talech’s website, NOT the app store. Apparently the app store version is not up to date (This may have changed since the last time I checked). Menu Set Up: We were first offered to have our menu set up by a talech member. But I asked if I could take the reins to see how I liked the system. Having worked with systems like shopify before, the paradigm of menus and variants makes sense to me. But as I explained how to create and manage the variants/menus, my parents were a bit lost. For those who and not tech savvy, you may want to enlist the help of someone who is.Updates: One thing that I did not expect from the beginning is the amount of updates to the system. And I don’t mean updates like “oh we fixed bug 92002”. I mean like every couple of month they have added a new feature. The blog goes over the updates. And with the release of iOS10 the front-end has seemed to get an entire overhaul! It seems promising to me for the system to improve like that. Future: Im not sure if talech ever reads reviews… but if they do, I hope they read this. I like the system but I think they could benefit heavily by opening up to more developers. I understand wanting to keep the quality high, but I think there is sooooo much to gain! I am a huge fan of shopify (e-commerce not POS) because how well they treat their developers and how they make the data accessible, light weight, and easy to develop. If talech and shopify teamed up, I think we could see the winning combo of restaurant e-commerce/POS integration. It only seems a few steps away for that to be a reality. I see that it is currently possible to integrate the two with OneSAAS. But opening the API like shopify has done, could boost talech’s growth even more!Negative: The one downside we have had for sure has been working with Elavon. This is a little outside of my field, but we have had a couple of issues with refunds AFTER 15 days. Some of our customers are a little older and only check their bank statements once a month in the mail. If they catch an error it becomes a hassle to issue a refund, simple because its past the 15 days. I know this is an issue with Elevon, but I had to mention it since talech seems to push it so much.I hope someone find this info useful!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thank you Elizabeth for all your reviews – you have saved me from endless hours of research. I’m in agreement with the above commenter (Steve Cote). I will be contacting talech today! This is the POS system I have been looking for!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hello Mary! So glad that we could help you make the best decision for your business! I hope that talech is working out for you! Let us know if we can help you with anything else!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Elizabeth. Man, am I happy I found your review. I love the fact it is un-biased and complete. I don’t feel like I need to read even one more review about the talech solution. THANK YOU for saving me time and for giving me peace of mind.Steve
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thanks so much for your positive feedback Steve! We really try to provide our customers with clear, honest, and unbiased reviews so that you can make the best decision for your business! Please let us know if we can help you with anything else!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.