Hello fellow firearms retailers! I’ve been in business for going on 2 years now. I started with bluedog. I’m not sure if anyone is familiar with that point of sale but it was great cause it was simple. It didn’t keep atf books or anything. And to be honest I don’t know if I care for that feature. I’d rather have the physical book I think. Regardless. They recently merged with a company called fortis pay. And now have a whole new portal to use and it’s awful. I’ve been researching other pos software but it’s just overwhelming. I’m just a small business. About 80-100 firearms in stock. Just looking for a good simple effective pos. And I figured who’s better to ask than others in the biz.

Following.

I am in the same boat. I'm about to open a small shop and would like a simple POS. Here is what I found out at the Palm Beach NSSF Expo in July this year.

There were some big POS companies there that are all in one and on the pricey side.
Coreware, had all the bells and whistles. Saw some bad reviews on some of the FFL facebook groups so I opted not to contact them.
Axix (Gearfire), $15K to get started. I'm out on that price point.
Bizflow, was a nice software, all inclusive, I liked how simple it was to use, $2500-$5k set up fee, then $299-$500 / month. If it was a bit more affordable I may have picked this one.
FFL Boss, I use their electronic A&D, they did get a lot of flack in Nov / Dec 2020 when the new 4473 came out. It had a lot of bugs but I hung in there and it's working fine now. They are in the middle of an updated POS that will run like $40-$50 / month. It should be out 1st quarter. I'm not sure if it will work for me or not until I see it's functionality.

That's all I have to share but still looking for an affordable yet simple and functional POS as well.

Well I’m currently paying something like 9.99$ a month to use the app. + paying per transaction based on the card rates. I talked to the tech people there today and they said the have a new platform for me to try called SWIPE SIMPLE. It Apparently does everything the bluedog app did. Process payments including cash, so keeps nice transaction records. Invoices are a extra fee they said not sure how much yet. But I’ll post once I know more. Again this software is just processing and billing. No back end management. I suppose everyone’s business will differentiate based on volume and employees and so on.

Update: so it turns out the bluedog. Is actually the financial software behind a lot of the other POS tools on the market. I found this out talking to their tech person just now. He was very helpful and they switched me over to their easy swipe or swipe easy which ever I can’t recall.Again it’s still just 9.99 a month pretty much the same set up except you can run off of tablets and Mobile which is cool so you could do gun shows. I just had to buy the scanner for 150 bucks. But I will keep this updated. Hopefully this software functions a lot better than the other one. And I am so of course open to any new ideas from some of you out there with perhaps more experience.

I'm using clearent, and got a call from blue dog/fortis looking to switch me over. They both use Swipe Simple as the POS interface. I like it. Pretty easy for me to operate, send invoices, and generate reports for taxed/non taxed goods.

blue dog/fortis is about half the fees of clearent, so I'm considering switching.

I use aimsi. Has alot of features.

Currently using coreclear and happy with them I also use corestore. Just recently dropped Fortis (Bluedog) stay away from them portal issues and gateway problems. Even after I dropped and faxed cancellation they still are billing me PCI and monthly. Customer service is horrible as well as reporting.

Check your paperwork you signed for Clearent. You’re locked in for at least a 3 year period and have penalties for cancelling. Blue Dog wanted me to switch but I knew the agreement I signed with Clearent was for a set term so I couldn’t. The money Blue Dog was going to save me did not amortize out to switch.