6 Best Liquor Store POS Systems for 2021

POS Nation is a highly praised software for liquor stores. It has strong inventory features, including tracking for individual items or cases, plus loyalty programs and programmable discounts. Its monthly pricing is competitive, especially since it comes with hardware and 24/7 support for your first few months. It’s great software overall for liquor stores.

It scored a 4.48 out of 5, ranking at the top for checkout features, especially with the ability to scan customer IDs to verify ages. Another plus is the payroll reporting, something many POS systems lack. The CRM allows you to track customer buying habits and customize promotions, but it does not have email marketing capabilities.

KORONA makes an excellent POS system for budget-minded liquor stores. Its flat-rate pricing includes service, installation, and hardware. It offers strong inventory features, including product sales tracking, which it translates into demand forecasting and applies to vendor reorders.

KORONA is a highly-rated POS system with lots of positive user reviews. However, it lacks some of the functions POS Nation includes, such as payroll reporting. But, KORONA can handle promotions and seasonal sales, age verification, customer management, and more, which earned it a 4.29 out of 5 in our evaluation.

IT Retail was built with small markets or grocery stores in mind and has an excellent POS system specifically for liquor stores. It offers a feature-rich inventory system, age verification, and a customizable touchscreen to make sales quick and easy.

In our evaluation, IT Retail earned a 4.23 out of 5. While there are not many user reviews available for IT Retail, the ones it has are very positive. The system can track customers, manage loyalty programs, and even alert the cashier if the customer should get a promotion or discount. IT Retail does not offer email marketing or payroll reporting, but few of the POS systems we examined do.

mPower Beverage offers a lot of strong features for enabling your cashiers to provide great customer service. Cashiers can look up items from the register, find item location in the store, verify ages in multiple ways, track customer loyalty, and even give spontaneous discounts if the situation calls for it.

This system is the most expensive on the list but has good user reviews for ease of use. Its inventory and promotions sync across all your locations, making it easier to manage multiple stores. These features earned mPower Beverage a 4.19 out of 5. Limited customer support, mixed reviews on mPower’s integrated payment processing, and pricey software prevented mPower from earning a higher score.

ShopKeep by Lightspeed is a very popular POS system for online and brick-and-mortar businesses. It has an iPad version for liquor stores that’s highly customizable and integrates with QuickBooks for accounting.

While ShopKeep by Lightspeed will customize your software for your specific needs, it does offer standard plans. We looked at the Essentials plan to evaluate what ShopKeep by Lightspeed offers at a price competitive to other liquor store point-of-sale systems. We found it had strong inventory and cash register functions, including age verification, and online ordering was a big plus. These features earned ShopKeep by Lightspeed a 4.18 out of 5. However, it costs extra for the loyalty program and does not have payroll reporting, which prevented ShopKeep by Lightspeed from earning a perfect score.

Square for Retail is a highly popular point-of-sale system that works great for online and on-location retailers, whether solopreneurs selling items at a fair or small businesses with a website and store. While it has a paid plan, its free plan offers a robust POS and inventory system. Although it lacks some features, the free plan is a great choice for businesses on a tight budget or those who sell alcohol on a limited basis, such as events.

Square is among the most intuitive of POS systems and has customer and employee management tools. In fact, we rated the Square ecosystem as the best overall POS for small businesses, and Square for Retail specifically as one of the best retail POS systems. In this evaluation, Square’s free user-friendly software earned Square for Retail a 3.19 out of 5.

However, it lacks age verification, even in the paid plans. The free plan also does not include loyalty programs. You need to pay for credit card processing, which may be a higher rate than you’ll find with a paid POS system.