POS system Dubai: what to check before you buy

Buying a pos system Dubai suppliers sell is not a hard decision if you separate it into three questions. What the tax rules require. What the machine has to do. And which orders it will never see.

Most of the buying advice online covers the second question only. The first sets the rules and the third decides how much money you leave on the table.

The two UAE tax questions

Get these settled first, because they narrow the shortlist faster than any feature will.

Are you registered, or about to be? The Federal Tax Authority publishes the rules on registering for VAT, and a growing restaurant crosses a threshold without anyone announcing it.

Do the invoices your system produces meet the requirements? The FTA also publishes what a tax invoice must contain. Ask each supplier to show you a real invoice their system produces rather than a slide about it. Check your TRN is on it, check the VAT is broken out, and check that you can reprint one from three months ago without calling support.

These are dull questions. They are also the ones that matter when somebody asks for records.

What the machine has to do

Once compliance is settled, judge a restaurant pos system Dubai suppliers offer on behaviour, not on a comparison table. Ask them to show you:

• A dish with three required choices ordered start to finish, and count the taps
• An item running out mid-service, then try to sell it anyway
• A price changed while you watch, then ask what it costs if they do it
• Your own sales and customer list exported, now, without a fee

That last one is the question people skip and regret. Counter software is easy to enter and varies enormously in how easy it is to leave.

Ask for a two year total with every module you will actually use switched on, including installation, training, the second training round after staff turnover, support tier and any per-app integration fee. The monthly licence is rarely the line that hurts.

The orders the machine never sees

Now the part that costs more than the hardware.

Count where a normal Dubai evening's orders come from. Some are people sitting at your tables, and those reach the counter. Some arrive through a delivery app on its own tablet, at a commission. And a great many arrive as WhatsApp messages, typed at somebody who is also cooking.

WhatsApp is not a workaround in this market, it is the channel, and the messaging platform is documented and built for business use. A counter screen sees none of that traffic, and no module added to it will.

"Every restaurant here has a screen for the walk-ins and a phone full of messages nobody has time to answer. Nobody sold them anything for the second one, because the second one does not come with hardware."

— Tanzeel ur Rehman, co-founder of Get Menu

The layer that handles the rest

No hardware, running beside whatever machine you buy:

• Your menu, your edits, with options and add-ons that carry their own prices and required choices the kitchen can trust without a phone call.
• The price is decided at checkout, every line, from the live menu, so raising a dish by a dirham is safe the moment you save it.
• 3 messages in about 2 seconds, none of them typed: the confirmation to the customer the moment the order lands, the kitchen ticket, and the rider's link carrying the pin dropped at checkout, on WhatsApp's own business platform.
• Counts on every item and every option, falling as orders land, with a dish greyed out at zero so it cannot be sold twice.
• Regulars earn stamps and move up tiers, each with an automatic discount, on a card that lives in the wallet through Google's loyalty card format.
• A PDF tax invoice with your registration number on it, downloadable by the customer without logging in (the format the tax authority sets out).
• Table numbers travel with the code, which means a waiter never has to ask twice where an order goes.
• One bill for a group, with everyone ordering from their own phone.
• Bundles, upsells and coupons that respect caps, exclusions and expiry, with no chance of two automatic discounts at once.
• Menu import from a spreadsheet, for the day you move two hundred dishes across.
• An ordering page under your name, with 12 page layouts to choose from so the menu reads as you intend, not as a template decides.

Two things Dubai adds that the brochures miss

Buildings. A large share of delivery here goes to towers with their own rules: a different fee, a different minimum, a security desk that will not let a rider up. If that lives in your staff's heads, it is wrong on the nights the usual person is off. It belongs in the checkout, applied per building.

Languages and shifts. Your team turns over and your customers do not all read the same language. Judge how quickly a new member of staff becomes useful on a system, because that is a cost you pay repeatedly rather than once. Ask to put someone who has never seen it in front of the demo and watch what happens without coaching.

Neither of these appears on a feature comparison, and both decide how the system feels in month six.

The commission question

The other number to put beside the hardware quote is the delivery marketplace. It takes a share of every order it brings you, and a good share of those orders come from people who already knew your restaurant.

Your own ordering page takes no commission on your sales, so your hundredth order in a week costs no more than your first. Pricing is on the pricing page rather than in this article, because a figure written into a guide goes quietly stale. The trial runs 15 days without a card, long enough to put a real fortnight through it.

Payment stays yours: cash or your own card machine at the door or the table. There are no online payments in the system, which means no card details are held in it, and old order details are cleared automatically after 120 days.

Frequently asked questions

Is Get Menu a POS system for Dubai restaurants?

No. It opens no cash drawer, drives no card terminal and does not do your end of day. It is the ordering, menu, stock and loyalty layer that runs beside whatever counter system you use.

What should a POS system cost in Dubai?

Too variable for a number here to help. Ask every supplier the same thing instead: a two year total with the modules you will really use, plus the cost of leaving early.

Do I need one at all?

If people pay you face to face, yes. What is worth questioning is the second and third screen, since the device for taking orders away from the counter is already in your customer's hand.

Will it produce a compliant tax invoice?

Ask to see a real one and check it against the FTA's published requirements. Do not accept a claim on a slide.

How do customers pay through the ordering page?

Cash or your own card machine when the food arrives. The software carries the order and never touches the money.