Vend POS Review

Vend is a flexible solution that provides customer, inventory, and employee management systems and the ability to set up an online store that can change and grow with your business.

Vend is EMV compliant and accepts PayPal and touch-to-pay options like Apple Pay. Vend also boasts the ability to transfer customer and inventory lists from other POS systems, making it an attractive choice if you are trying to make a switch. Here’s what you need to know when considering if Vend is right for your business.

What You’ll Need

If you want to use Vend to take credit and debit cards at your business you will need an internet connection, the Vend POS software, a PC, Mac or iPad to run it on and a merchant account with a compatible credit card processor. (See Vend and Credit Card Processing for more info on compatible processors.)

Vend offers a free, one month trial of their POS software that you can try out on your existing hardware before you commit. If you decide to continue with Vend, it offers several tiers of service and hardware packages, tailored to suit your business needs.

Vend Features

Vend provides many retail-centric features for your business like inventory, employee and customer management, gift card services, ecommerce, and split or partial payments.

Vend Ecommerce

Thinking about selling your goods online? Vend has an easy ecommerce solution that allows you to create an online store with no programming knowledge necessary. You can pick from an assortment of templates, upload product photos, and sync your site with your inventory so you never oversell your stock.

Customer Loyalty

Create customer profiles at the time of checkout and add them to groups to track spending habits and purchases. Keep track of a customer’s loyalty points and set up a single or tiers of rewards based on how many points a customer has earned. The customer loyalty option allows you to do both. You can also tie special offers to certain customer groups you have set up to provide unique discounts to your most loyal customers.

Inventory Management

Vend provides a customizable inventory management system that allows you to not only keep track of your inventory, but also set up notifications when stock is getting low and automatically reorder product so you never run out. If you have multiple locations for your business, you can sync your inventory across all of them and spread your stock where it’s needed, set up timed discounts with automatic end dates, and set up store specific discounts. If you are switching over from another inventory system, Vend boasts that you can easily transfer your inventory over so you don’t waste all the hard work you’ve already done.

Offline Mode

When connections go down, Vend automatically goes into an offline acceptance mode to allow functions to continue seamlessly. However, it’s worth noting that Vend specifically mentions on its website that it’s likely you will only be able to process cash sales (not credit card sales) in offline mode.

Vend and Credit Card Processing

We’ve listed Vend POS as a “universal” option because it does integrate with almost any processor, but the company doesn’t exactly make it easy to work with processors other than its chosen few. Vantiv Integrated Payments (formerly Mercury) is Vend’s processor of choice. It also mentions PayPal, Tyro, Element, DPS and as its preferred processors.

If you’re the tech-savvy type, Vend lists Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net and Payment Express as gateway options for its ecommerce component. To integrate with Vend POS using Authorize.net you’ll need to use the advanced integration method (AIM), so you’ll likely have to hire a developer with (or that is willing to get) access to Vend’s API.

Want to know exactly what you’d pay to take credit cards with Vend? Request a Vend quote using CardFellow’s quote request tool. It’s completely free and private, so you can check your pricing to use Vend with no pressure from sales reps.

Vend Pricing

Vend offers four tiers of service to fit the size and scope of your business:

Free – $0
10 Products
1000 Customers
1 User
Community Support

Starter – $59/month
500 Products
Unlimited Customers
Unlimited Users
24/7 Email Support

Advanced – $85/month
Includes everything from Starter, plus
Vend Ecommerce
Retail Dashboard

Multiple Outlet – $169/month
Includes everything from Advanced, plus
Priority Phone Support

All Vend tiers of service include one free virtual register. Addition registers can be added for $35/month. Priority phone support can also be added to the Free, Starter, and Advanced tiers for $19/month.

Pricing current as of 2016, but subject to change. Additional fees may apply. Costs for credit card processing are in addition to Vend software costs.

Reporting

Vend provides comprehensive and customizable sales reporting that allows you to compare stores, see product trends, and track individual day sales. You can also manage your employees’ time cards and see their individual sales stats, build a customer database to keep track of your most loyal customers, and manage your inventory. Additionally, Vend can integrate with QuickBooks.

If you are in the Advanced or Multi Outlet tier of service you will also have access to the Retail Dashboard, which allows you to access up to the minute data from your business from any computer or smartphone with an internet connection.

Hardware and Accessories

You can run Vend software on your existing PC, Mac, or iPad, and use accessories you already own to hit the ground running. Vend offers starter packages for PC, Mac, and iPad as well as a la carte ordering for receipt printers, stands, cash drawers, magnetic strip credit card readers, and barcode scanners.