Nextar Review: Ideal for Small Groceries & Auto Repair Shops

In our evaluation of the best point-of-sale (POS) systems for small businesses, Nextar scored a 3.14 out of 5, based on our review of 31 data points. Although it wasn’t one of our top recommendations, we find the POS best for small grocery stores, auto repair shops, and those looking for a free, locally installed POS system.

Overall Score: 3.14 / 5

RATING CRITERIA	Pricing		3.75 / 5
	Register Features		3.63 / 5
	Management Tools		3.63 / 5
	Ease of Use		0.88 / 5
	Expert Score		3.75 / 5

What We Like

• Free plan
• Built-in barcode scanning and precision scale capabilities
• Supports delivery and sales order management
• Local installation means it’s fully functional while offline
• Expiration date control for perishable items

What's Missing

• Multiple registers are only for paid users
• Multiple payment options require a premium plan
• Works only on Windows PCs
• Lacks in-house and integrated payment processing options
• Lacks phone customer support

When to Use Nextar:

• Small businesses selling perishable goods: Nextar lets users assign expiration dates to products and set minimum and maximum inventory stock alerts.
• Auto repair shops: Nextar has part and labor estimating, repair history, VIN tracking, and shop credits. There is also a multi-workstation setup ideal for setting up non-checkout POS terminals at service stations.

When to Use an Alternative

• Stores wanting a cloud POS: Nextar doesn’t have a cloud component and only runs on Windows PCs. If your business would benefit from a cloud system or a hybrid installation, consider a user-friendly cloud POS system.
• If you need a mobile POS: Because Nextar only runs on Windows, it’s not designed for use on the go. Consider a mobile POS app instead.
• Businesses wanting integrated credit card processing: Nextar does not have integrated payment processing, so you will need to use a separate, standalone payment processor. For a completely integrated system, consider any of our top-recommended POS systems (such as Square or Lightspeed).

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Nextar’s features—especially the inventory, delivery, and customer relationship management (CRM) and loyalty—are surprisingly robust, even under its free plan. Grocery stores, for example, can benefit from Nextar’s inventory system because you can assign expiration dates to products. By doing this, you can easily see which products are about to expire and are high or low in stock, so you can either remove them from your system or put them up for sale.

It is a locally installed system, so it works offline. However, it is missing a hybrid setup (cloud-based data storage), integrated payment processing, and advanced reporting tools. Businesses needing a cloud POS or a system that can run on tablets or mobile devices, or those needing robust analytic tools will find Nextar lacking.

The same goes for restaurants, as they have detailed operational and reporting needs, such as kitchen display and communications, table mapping, and recipe management. So, a restaurant POS system built with those needs in mind would be a better fit.

Nextar Deciding Factors

Nextar Alternatives

	Best for	Monthly fee from	Hardware from	Full review
	Security-minded retailers in grocery or convenience stores wanting a lower-cost system	$79	Quote-based	IT Retail Review
	Visit IT Retail
	Businesses needing a mobile and in-store POS	$0	$49	Square POS Review
	Visit Square
	Small retailers, restaurants, and service providers requiring an all-in-one system	$9.95	$99	Clover Review
	Visit Clover
	Convenience stores without gas sales	$59 per terminal	$120	KORONA Review
	Visit KORONA

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	Best for	Monthly fee from	Hardware from	Full review
	Security-minded retailers in grocery or convenience stores wanting a lower-cost system	$79	Quote-based	IT Retail Review
	Visit IT Retail
	Businesses needing a mobile and in-store POS	$0	$49	Square POS Review
	Visit Square
	Small retailers, restaurants, and service providers requiring an all-in-one system	$9.95	$99	Clover Review
	Visit Clover
	Convenience stores without gas sales	$59 per terminal	$120	KORONA Review
	Visit KORONA

Nextar offers a free plan and premium subscription at $5 a month (or $50 a year). The main differences between the tiers are premium features such as multiple cash registers, advanced inventory functions, and CRM and user-level permissions.

Under the free plan, you get bar code scanning, currency adjustments, inventory features (such as adding products and expiration date control), and supplier catalogs. You also have access to email and live chat support.

If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you can add multiple cash registers, set up store credits, use its CRM function, manage and track inventory counts, set and manage user permissions, and generate reports (sales, transactions, payables, and statistics).

Nextar offers a 14-day free trial for its premium plan. You can choose not to activate the paid plan after the trial, and you will not lose your data—it all converts to the free plan.

Nextar Payments & Hardware

Nextar POS is light and runs on most Windows computers. It does have minimum system requirements to ensure it runs properly:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz ) or higher 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64)
• 1GB RAM (32-bit) or 2GB RAM (64-bit)
• 2GB of available disk space (more depending on the size of your database)
• Windows 7 or higher

Nextar cannot be used on smartphones, Linux, Mac, or other non-Windows platforms. It also does not support cloud hosting. As of the time of publication, Nextar is working on cloud and mobile solutions for its users.

Payment processing fees depend on your chosen payment provider. Nextar doesn’t have an in-house payment processor or integration.

• Register management by shift/user; user-level permissions
• Barcode labels, barcode scanning
• Integration with cash drawer and scales (sale by weight)
• Customers’ store credit management
• Free and premium invoice templates—printable in any size
• Start the order anywhere, check out at the cashier counter
• Print from multiple orders
• Complete control over the open orders
• Orders to go, with the shipping address
• Reserved stock for the items saved in open orders

Nextar has great register and checkout features, including online ordering and loyalty program capabilities. However, it lacks the ability to do mobile sales—sell across the sales floor, curbside, events, etc.—so it got docked points in our evaluation.

Because Nextar is a locally installed program, it can work offline. It also supports multiple cash registers if you are on a paid plan. With this, you can set up several points of sale from strategic spots in your store to generate orders. Orders rung from different cash registers will automatically reflect in the cashier’s computer, ready for checkout. What’s great about Nextar’s sales order process is that once an item is added to an order, it automatically gets reserved, so you won’t risk selling the same item twice.

Nextar’s point-of-sale interface (Source: Nextar)

User-level permissions will allow you to restrict access to financial statements or managerial-level permissions (discounts, cancellations, and more). Registers are identified by shift or user, making it easy to check for daily balance at the end of the day.

Store credit is managed by choosing “On Credit” when taking payments. Any unpaid amount adds to the customer’s account balance. You can set maximum credit amounts for your customers and check their balances straight from the POS screen.

You can control your cash input and output from your cash register. (Source: Nextar)

• Quick Add product
• Low stock alerts
• Stock level control
• Inventory cost calculator
• Barcode system
• Register reports by email
• Expiration date control
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
• History of stock movements

In this category, Nextar’s inventory management and employee management features earned perfect scores. You can perform easy on-hand counts using a mobile scanner (barcode scanning) and track expiration dates for products.

Purchase orders, reports, and marketing tools provided are rudimentary, but can, at the very least, help small businesses. The only thing lacking with Nextar in this category is the ability to support multiple locations.

Inventory Management

Nextar’s inventory management features are surprisingly strong, even on its free plan. You are given a complete list of tools to help you manage your stock better, including low stock level settings, expiration date control, and the total cost of items available in stock.

Nextar POS displays information that shows you which products are high or low in stock so that you can decide which ones to offer on sale.

Nextar automatically takes note of all the ins and outs after each transaction, so you can review the complete history of stock movements for any saved product. You can export these reports in an Excel file to check your stock. You can also set up stock level controls—minimum and maximum inventory levels—so you will be alerted when to place new orders with suppliers and understand product turnover.

Its COGS reporting feature allows you to set up the product costs to get profit reports and calculate inventory value. The cost price is automatically updated when registering a purchase, and you can also edit it manually straight from the product’s form.

View the products that are about to expire so you can offer them to customers or put them on sale. (Source: Nextar)

If you sell perishable items, you can add expiration dates to your inventory and generate a report showing which products are about to expire. What’s more, under the Location field in your product item window, you can add a code that will indicate where to find the product in the stockroom.

Delivery Management

• Quick view of pending orders to go
• Registration of delivery staff
• Orders listed by delivery person
• Total received in delivery fees, by day or by month
• Google Maps integration

Nextar has a built-in delivery order system that is straightforward and intuitive. Just ring the order, set delivery directions, view the map route, assign a delivery person, and add a delivery fee. Its Google Maps integration allows delivery riders to check the best way and see directions right on the POS screen. Every dispatched order is saved in the assigned delivery person’s profile.

You can easily assign a transporter, add a delivery fee, and edit the shipping address with Nextar POS. (Source: Nextar)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) & Loyalty Program

• Registration form with ID photo
• Account balance statement
• List of purchases
• Loyalty program: Birthdays List
• Loyalty program: Reward Points and Products

To help you with your CRM objectives, Nextar offers a contact management system that lets you build a client info database. You can easily register your customers into the system—its registration form goes beyond the basics as it can get extra information such as parents’ information (for underage customers), preferred delivery person, and customer credit.

A sample view of Nextar’s customer registration form (Source: Nextar)

You can generate a list of clients who haven’t been purchasing within a set period so that you can reach out to them for special offers (each client has a complete transaction history in their profile). If you want to offer a loyalty program, you can easily generate a birthday list (and send promotional emails for birthday-related offers or discounts) each month and have a reward points system (either by purchase or giveaways).

• Onboarding tutorials with videos
• Help center
• FAQ Section
• Email (24-hour resolution)
• WhatsApp (chat support)
• Live chat Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Brazil time; Saturdays for emergency support, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Brazil time

Nextar scored low in this category because it doesn’t offer hybrid installation and isn’t available on a variety of devices. Customer service plays a big part in our criteria, and Nextar doesn’t offer phone support and only has business hours for live chat and email.

The upside is that customer feedback about Nextar’s email support service is positive. It also has a comprehensive list of guides and videos to help users navigate the installation process.

Nextar Setup & Installation

It is easy to install Nextar. Go to the provider’s website, enter your email address, and the download will automatically start when you click on “Download Now.” Open the app on your computer and start the installation by following the wizard prompts. When that is done, two icons—NexServ and NexAdmin—will appear on your desktop.

• NexServ: Nextar Server must always be open. To check if it is, you will see its icon appear next to the Windows clock in the lower right corner of the screen.
• NexAdmin: This is your store manager where you make sales, set up and open the register, enter customers’ products, and more.

Now you can start using the software. Remember to have NexAdmin and NexServ running for Nextar to work normally.

Here, we considered the overall value the POS provides, user reviews, feedback based on our own experience testing the system, and any unique or standout features. Overall, Nectar offers strong POS features even under its free plan.

Customer feedback, while few, are all positive. Its features are adequate for small businesses, especially those looking for a free POS system to use.

Nextar User Reviews

At the time of publication, Nextar does not have updated reviews on the most cited user review sites. However, other sources have reviewed its POS application. SoftwareSuggest gave it 4.8 out of 5 based on aggregated reviews. Most of the users liked its affordable pricing, program stability, and warehouse management feature.

Meanwhile, SourceForge gave it 4 out of 5. One user’s positive feedback was about the program’s ease of use and its helpful customer support team. However, they also commented on the lack of an online version of the software. CompareCamp gave it 8.2 out 10 based on its own criteria; it highlighted Nectar’s comprehensive POS tools, inventory and sales commission management, and customer and supplier catalogs as strengths.

Methodology: How We Evaluated Nextar

To evaluate Nextar and other POS options, we looked for systems that are affordable for independent business owners and included basic POS functions like check and order management, the ability to process multiple forms of payment, and inventory tracking. To find the best, we also looked for systems that support multiple business types or that dominate in the industry they serve.

Click through the tabs below to see the full evaluation criteria.

Nextar Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Who should use Nextar?

When should I use a Nextar alternative?

Bottom Line

Nextar’s robust and advanced inventory, delivery, and CRM and loyalty features make up for its lack of a hybrid installation—not to mention that all those features are available with a free plan. And, if you choose to upgrade to its affordable paid tier, then you get even more features, such as multiple points of sale and cash registers and extended support hours.

Sign up for Nextar’s 14-day free trial of its premium subscription. You won’t lose your data once the trial ends, and your subscription will automatically revert to the free plan.

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