What to Expect in a POS Demo (and the Questions Worth Asking)

Treat the demo like an interview

You're not being sold to — you're hiring a system your venue will depend on every service. The demo is where you make the vendor work through your day, not their slide deck.

Ask them to drive your workflows

• "Show me a split bill for a table of six, two items shared."
• "Show me a refund, and where it appears in reporting."
• "Show me what the kitchen sees when a waiter flags an allergy."
• "Show me end-of-day — all of it, including how sales reach my accounting software."

If any of these get a "we're working on that", you've learned something a brochure would never have told you.

The money questions

1. What's my effective rate? Ask for the all-in percentage on your card volume, not the headline rate.
2. What does exiting cost? Contract length, termination fees, and whether you keep your hardware. (Payflo's answer: no lock-in, and you own your terminals.)
3. What's included versus extra? Support, updates, integrations, extra devices — get the full monthly figure in writing.

The support questions

Ask who answers the phone at 7pm on a Saturday when a terminal drops off the network, and how fast replacement hardware ships. Support quality is invisible in a demo and decisive in year two.

Come with your numbers

Bring your monthly card volume and your current fees. A good provider will model the comparison live — an honest one will tell you if you're already on a fair deal.

Book a free 30-minute Payflo demo — live walkthrough for your venue type, no hard sell.