Struggling with the debate of Clover POS vs QuickBooks POS?
It’s fair to say both of these tools have their own unique benefits to offer, and each has developed quite a strong presence in its field. With both tools, you can increase your sales and improve customer relationships.
While Clover POS is most commonly associated with merchant accounts and standard offline payment processing, QuickBooks POS is more commonly linked to companies who need to keep track of their cash flow and reports as closely as possible.
Both of these tools are excellent for companies in search of a flexible and convenient way to manage a host of payments in the digital and physical worlds.
Here’s what you need to know about Clover and QuickBooks POS.
Clover POS vs QuickBooks POS: An Introduction
As you may imagine, while there is many different point of sale solutions on the market today, there’s often some overlap between most tools.
This is also the case with QuickBooks and Clover POS. Both tools will allow you to take payments and manage inventory offline and online.
Clover Point of Sale is one of the top POS systems built for small to mid-sized businesses, though enterprise plans are available, alongside specialist niche solutions. Clover can offer specific support plans for retail, table service, and counter service.
Clover’s intuitive and easy-to-use point of sale solution is also backed by the Fiserv parent company, which you’ll need to create a merchant account with before you start selling.
The feature-rich ecosystem is fantastic for growing a business, but it can be expensive and challenging in places.
QuickBooks POS is the point of sale solution designed by the Intuit brand. The integrated multichannel retail solution ensure you can take seamless payments and manage transactions in a range of different environments without any disruptions.
With QuickBooks, you can accept a huge variety of payment types, and track your ecommerce environment in the same landscape as your offline store.
There are tons of hardware options to choose from, and you’ll have access to a host of reports to help you with making more meaningful sales.
As you might expect, QuickBooks also allows users to sync their point of sale environment with their QuickBooks reporting tools.
Clover POS vs QuickBooks POS: Software Features
From a software perspective, both Clover POS and QuickBooks POS definitely have plenty of tools to offer.
For most companies, the choice between these two solutions will hinge on what kind of business they want to run, and whether they already have access to certain tools. Here’s what you can do with both Clover and QuickBooks
Clover POS Features
Clover is one of the top credit card and debit card processing tools on the market today. The company is well-known for offering fantastic reliability whether you’re selling online and offline, as well as excellent customer service, and flexibility.
The ease-of-use you get with Clover is one of its most compelling features. The service allows you to accept payments of any kinds, whether it’s an in-person transaction, or an online payment. You’ll also be able to securely track all of your transactions to keep track of business growth.
The back-end ecosystem for Clover means you can manage your business anywhere, and make sales conveniently, even if you don’t have access to an internet connection. Clover offers a range of dedicated tools for restaurant and retail ordering, as well as providing comprehensive online invoicing, sales tracking, and reporting.
When it comes to improving your relationships with customers, Clover ensures you can build in-depth insights into your target audience, develop your own personas, and more. You can also engage your customers with gift cards and loyalty schemes. Features include:
- Support for multiple forms of payment, including contactless and phone-based payments
- Cashflow tracking and insights into your operations with in-depth analytics
- Inventory management and employee tracking in a convenient environment
- Employee management with payroll, scheduling and performance tracking
- Ecommerce options for building your site and sending invoices online
- Comprehensive customer tracking and tools for building loyalty.
- Integrations with a wide range of different third-party providers and marketplaces
- Various security and privacy tools built-in with every package
- Lots of convenient reports for making valuable decisions about your business.
QuickBooks POS Features
QuickBooks is best-known for its invoicing and accounting tools, but it performs well in the POS environment too. The QuickBooks ecosystem empowers integrated omnichannel selling, so you can easily sell across all platforms, and keep track of every transaction.
QuickBooks offers a wide range of hardware options you can use with its software, as well as multiple payment options, such as gift cards, contactless, and mobile.
You’ll also get a full integration with your ecommerce system, so you can manage your business both online and in-store.
QuickBooks is great for building meaningful relationships with customers, with tools for building customer profiles so you can offer more personalized promotions and offers. You can access custom loyalty programs for your best customers, and create gift cards too.
QuickBooks POS also automatically syncs with your QuickBooks account, which means you can spend less time tracking your sales for accounting purposes, and more time growing your business.
There’s even the option to send invoices through QuickBooks if you need to. Features of QuickBooks Point of Sale include:
- Support for all payment types, including contactless and mobile transactions.
- Detailed customer profiles with support for loyalty programs and custom offers.
- Optional wireless barcode scanners and innovative receipt printer tools.
- Complete flexible payment plans and invoicing for more expensive purchases.
- Automatic syncing with the QuickBooks desktop environment for save time on tracking.
- In-built ecommerce technology with automatic inventory sync
- Manage sales, inventory, and customer information in one place across multiple channels
- Complete inventory tracking with instant updates across all channels for orders and returns.
- Vendor, department, size, and color tracking for your inventory.
- Trend identification with extensive reporting features and analytics
- Detailed reporting via integrations with Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable.
Clover POS vs QuickBooks POS: Hardware Solutions
After exploring the software capabilities of your POS system, you can then begin looking at hardware. The good news is there are various options available for taking payments with both Clover POS, and QuickBooks.
Clover starts simple with the easy-to-use “Clover Go”, ideal for companies looking for mobility. This hand-held miniature reader can go with you anywhere, allowing for rapid payments on the move. Go costs around $49, so you can even get multiple if necessary.
There are also larger POS solutions available for much bigger businesses. For instance, the Station Solo has a large display for all of your transaction needs at a price of $1349, or you can double up with the Station Duo at $1649 which includes a front-facing POS. You can also consider the $499 Clover Flex for mobile payments, and Clover Mini for $749.
For QuickBooks, you’ll have a selection of hardware bundles to choose from, as well as stand-alone accessories and tools.
The $900 hardware bundle comes with a cash drawer, receipt printer, PIN pad, and wired barcode. Alternatively, you can access a simple PIN pad at $389.
The solutions available from QuickBooks online are a little pricier for small businesses, but they offer excellent functionality. It’s worth noting you won’t get the same modern and sleek designs as you would with a company like Clover or Square.
Notably, you can also access an iPad stand if you’re using mobile processing via Android or iPhone. This will allow you to keep track of bookkeeping and POS software details in a slightly more mobile format with your point of sale system.
Clover POS vs QuickBooks POS: Performance and Analytics
From a performance perspective, it’s hard to go wrong with either Clover or QuickBooks. Both of these tools are excellent for getting your company up and running in no time, with a host of state-of-the-art tools to handle transactions.
Clover allows you track all of your sales consistently with a host of easy-to-understand analytics. The business tracking software looks at a range of metrics, giving you direct insights to your best-selling items and busiest times. You can also create granular custom reports.
Clover’s comprehensive solution provides real-time tracking across all channels in an instant, and you can even get help with tax prep, thanks to the built-in POS reports designed specifically for accounting purposes. It’s a fantastic all-in-one system for business intelligence.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, QuickBooks is also fantastic for analytics, as it offers full access to a range of tools for tracking your cash flow, your inventory, and your sales success.
You’ll have plenty of tools to help you generate reports for tax season, as well as useful insights which help you to determine where you can improve your cash flow.
As one of the most popular tools for accounting in the world, QuickBooks will ensure you can not only understand the trends in your business, but create the kind of reports your accountant and government groups might need too.
Clover vs QuickBooks Pricing
When it comes to choosing an all-in-one POS software and hardware solution, few things are more important than ensuring you can afford the right package.
You need to ensure the right bundle of software, apple or android hardware, and software can fit into your budget alongside other customer experience tools like CRM software and service desks.
Your pricing options from Clover depend on a number of factors, so it’s a good idea to contact the team if you’re not sure exactly what you need.
Options include:
- Payments Plus: $4.95 per month
- Register Lite: $9.95 per month
- Register: $39.95 per month
- Counter service: $39.95 per month
- Table service: $69.95 per month
It’s also worth figuring out how much hardware you want to purchase on top of those costs. As an extra point, you’ll also need to pay transaction fees, which start at 3.5% plus an additional $0.10 for keyed payments. This can be quite expensive compared to some alternatives.
QuickBooks has a range of pricing options available, but it takes a slightly different approach to Clover, with a one-time purchase, instead of a subscription. Options include:
- POS Basic: $1200 for contactless payments, inventory management, ecommerce integration, reporting, and QuickBooks financial software integrations.
- POS Pro: $1700 to accept contactless payments, track and manage inventory, handle basic reporting, and generate purchase orders.
- POS Multistore: $1,900 for all the features of Pro, plus management for multiple stores, advanced reporting, and layaway and gift card features.
Of course, you will still need to pay for extra features, like your hardware options. For transactions, you’ll have the option to pay as you go at a rate of 3.5% for keyed payments or 2.7% for swipe or dip payments.
Alternatively, you can pay $20 per month and only pay 2.3% for swipe or dip payments, and 3.2% for your keyed payments.
Clover vs QuickBooks POS: Which is Best
As with most of the investments you’ll make in your store, it’s not always easy to know which solution is best at a glance.
It’s worth checking out some user reviews and FAQs before you dive into either QuickBooks or Clover.
You’ll need to check everything from integration abilities with tools like Lightspeed and PayPal, to how much phone support and guidance you can expect from the service team.
In general, Clover and QuickBooks both have a lot to offer. Clover is likely to be more of the tool for you if you’re looking for credit card processing made simple, with excellent customer support and a range of hardware options, like the Clover Station.
Alternatively, if you already use QuickBooks as your accounting software and want to take that functionality to the next level, QuickBooks POS could be ideal for you.
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